The multi-location signage problem: what Pier 1's 100-store study teaches franchise operators
USD 1997 - Ellis, Johnson and Murphy's The Economic Value of On-Premise Signage at the University of San Diego School of Business - included a hundred-store Pier 1 time series over seven years. After building-sign upgrades, weekly sales lifts ranged from under 1% at the strongest stores to 23.7% at the weakest. The mean was around 5%. When a primary-sign upgrade was combined with two minor signage additions, the combined weekly lift averaged about 16%.
That spread, inside a single brand with identical merchandise, identical operating procedures and identical seasonal merchandising, is the multi-location signage problem stated in a single dataset. The brand mark on the fascia is the same at every Pier 1 location. The work the sign actually does for revenue is not.
This is the case for franchise operators and multi-location brand managers - whether they own a Canadian regional chain or are operating a national franchise opening new Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec locations - taking that variance seriously. It is also the case for choosing a regional install partner who can deliver consistent quality across the rollout.
The franchise signage paradox
National franchise brands invest heavily in brand standards. The exact letter spacing in the wordmark. The Pantone reference for the primary colour. The minimum clear space around the logo. The acceptable fonts for secondary copy. All of that is documented, audited, and enforced.
The actual sign performance at the storefront is rarely audited at all. Two locations of the same franchise in the same city can have:
- Different fascia constructions, because they were installed by different sub-vendors a decade apart.
- Different illumination spec, because the landlord at one site required a more restrained colour temperature.
- Different sightlines, because the plaza orientation, the pylon panel position, and the building setback differ.
- Different secondary signage, because directional, blade and window graphics were added piecemeal over years.
The brand mark is identical across all of those locations. The way the sign system performs against the actual site is not. Most operators have never measured the gap.
What Pier 1 actually proved
The methodology is worth reading carefully. USD 1997 used multiple regression analysis across 162 fast-food restaurants in the broader study, controlling for site characteristics, demographics, and operating hours. Within that work, the Pier 1 time series tracked weekly sales at one hundred locations over a seven-year window before and after building-sign upgrades.
The aggregate finding - 4.75% annual sales lift per additional on-premise sign, statistically significant at the 95% confidence level - sits alongside the Pier 1 distribution. The distribution is the part most franchise operators have not heard.
The bottom-quartile Pier 1 stores got the biggest absolute lift when their primary signs were upgraded. The top-quartile stores got smaller lifts because their signage program was already doing most of the available work. The mean lift was about 5%. The maximum observed was 23.7% weekly sales lift after the sign upgrade alone, with combined effects rising to around 16% across the average when paired with two complementary signage additions.
Translated to a franchise rollout: the strong sites do not need help most urgently. The weak sites do. A multi-location refresh that touches every site equally captures most of the available lift at the weak sites and almost none at the strong ones. A program that diagnoses where each site sits on the curve and refreshes the weak ones first captures the available revenue with the smallest capital spend.
UC 2012 (Rexhausen, Hildebrandt and Auffrey at the University of Cincinnati Economics Center) replicated the broader USD finding. Roughly 60% of businesses surveyed reported sales lifts of about 10% after sign upgrades. Underperforming locations saw lifts closer to 15%. Two different research teams, two different methodologies, the same direction of effect. For more on the underlying evidence base, see the business case for storefront signage research summary.
Brand consistency versus site-specific adaptation
Every franchise operator runs into the same tension. Corporate brand guidelines say one thing. The actual fascia available at a specific Ottawa or Eastern Ontario location requires another. The plaza pylon panel allotment is fixed at a size smaller than the brand standard calls for. The fascia depth is shallower than national spec allows. The landlord requires a colour temperature on the LED illumination that is half a notch warmer than the brand spec. The Quebec-side location requires French in markedly greater predominance under provincial language law, which the national brand guidelines do not address.
A national sign vendor based in Toronto or Mississauga produces a sign that conforms to the brand standard. A regional sign installer who has worked the Ottawa, Kingston, Gatineau and Cornwall plazas for years can read the site, flag the conflicts before fabrication, and recommend the cleanest solution that respects both the brand and the actual site. That difference shows up at install. Skipping it produces signs that are either out of brand or out of code.
The install partner problem
Most large franchise rollouts use a national sign vendor for fabrication. The actual installation is then subcontracted - usually to a network of regional installers the national vendor manages but does not employ. Install quality across that network varies by sub-vendor, by region, by season, and by the specific lift operator who happens to be on the truck that day.
The reasons are mechanical. A sub-vendor whose primary geography is Toronto does not have the same familiarity with Ottawa permit flow, Kingston plaza approval processes, or the bilingual layout discipline that Gatineau requires. A sub who normally works in southern Ontario in May is not the same crew you want on a Cornwall plaza fascia install in early February. The national vendor's brand standard arrives at the install correctly. The install execution does not always match it.
This is the gap that regional white-label trade partner networks fill. Lundon Calling's trade partner program handles franchise installation in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec on behalf of national vendors and franchise operators who want a single regional install partner. The fabrication can stay with the national vendor or shift to local production depending on the program. The install consistency comes from working the same regional permit and landlord networks every week.
What a well-run multi-location refresh looks like
The research-backed playbook for a multi-location operator running a refresh program across Ottawa, Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec:
Audit first. Map the existing sign program at every location against the four signage functions (identification, branding, wayfinding, impulse induction). Score each site against each function. The sites that score weakly on multiple functions are the highest-priority refresh candidates. The sites that score strongly are not in the next refresh cycle.
Refresh the underperformers first. UC 2012's finding that underperforming locations saw roughly 15% sales lift after refreshes is the strongest empirical argument for sequencing the program this way. The capital efficiency of the program improves substantially when the worst sites are addressed first.
Touch primary and secondary signage together. Pier 1's 16% combined-lift finding when a primary sign upgrade is paired with two minor signage additions argues against refreshing primary signs in isolation. A primary fascia refresh combined with directional signage, a blade sign, and updated window graphics produces more lift than the primary fascia refresh alone.
Bake bilingual layout discipline into the spec. For any location in Gatineau (subject to Quebec language legislation requiring French in markedly greater predominance on exterior commercial signage), and for any location in Hawkesbury, parts of Cornwall or parts of east Ottawa where the patient or customer base is substantially francophone, French has to be designed in at fabrication, not added later. The bilingual layout discipline is one of the most common reasons national franchise rollouts use a regional install partner for the Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec leg.
Plan around the seasonal install window. Most exterior signage installs in our service area work best between roughly April and November. Vinyl and certain adhesives are temperature-sensitive at install. Lift-truck access in deep winter is more complex. Operators planning a multi-site rollout should budget the install timeline against the season, not against the corporate fiscal calendar.
Taylor, Sarkees and Bang's 2012 finding that 85% of on-premise sign users said they would lose sales without their sign, with an average projected loss around 35%, applies across the multi-location portfolio. For an operator running ten or fifteen locations in Eastern Ontario, "what would happen if we lost our exterior signage" is a question with a quantifiable answer.
The Ottawa, Kingston, Gatineau and Cornwall context
Franchise operators rolling out in Eastern Ontario face four regional realities that out-of-market vendors often misjudge:
Variable municipal permit regimes. The City of Ottawa, City of Kingston, City of Cornwall, City of Gatineau (Quebec), and each of the smaller municipalities (Smiths Falls, Hawkesbury, Pembroke, Belleville) each run their own sign permit processes. The application content, the fee schedule, the review timeline, and the inspection requirements differ. A regional installer who works all of those permit offices weekly delivers consistent timelines. A vendor that submits its first Cornwall permit application on a national rollout will absorb a learning curve. See sign permits in Ottawa for the Ottawa-specific flow.
The bilingual requirement. Quebec language law requires French to appear with markedly greater predominance on exterior commercial signage at Gatineau-side locations. Eastern Ontario does not impose a compliance requirement, but customer expectations in Hawkesbury and parts of Cornwall mirror Quebec. A franchise installer working the region produces bilingual layouts as a default rather than as an exception.
The seasonal install window. April to November is the working window for most exterior signs. Operators planning a rollout that includes January and February installs need the partner to either schedule those installs into the spring or use specific cold-weather installation techniques.
Landlord approval at plazas. Most multi-tenant plaza sites require landlord sign-off on the sign spec before the municipal permit application can be filed. Plazas in Ottawa, Kingston and Gatineau each have their own master sign program documents that govern letter height, panel position and illumination spec. A regional installer who has read those documents at most of the major plaza chains saves the franchise operator weeks of back-and-forth.
All four are reasons a regional franchise signage partner in Ottawa, Kingston, Gatineau, Cornwall and Hawkesbury outperforms a generic national sub on rollout consistency, install quality and timeline reliability.
What this changes for the operator
A franchise operator with 15 locations in Eastern Ontario applying the bottom-quartile-first refresh logic from Pier 1 might find that three or four sites carry most of the available lift. A 15% lift on a $1.2M location is $180,000 of incremental annual revenue. A $20,000 sign refresh that produces that lift has a payback measured in weeks, not years. Multiplied across the three or four weakest sites in the portfolio, the program pays for itself faster than most other capital spending the franchise will do that year.
That is the math the Pier 1 study makes available. Most operators do not run it because their signage portfolio is not measured the way their P&L is measured. The refresh program that starts with site-by-site auditing is the one that produces the highest return per capital dollar.
About Lundon Calling
Lundon Calling is a full-service commercial signage company based in Ottawa, serving Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. We design, permit, fabricate, and install exterior and interior signage for franchise and multi-location brands, dental and healthcare practices, and commercial property managers across a 200 km service radius - including Kingston, Brockville, Cornwall, Smiths Falls, Pembroke, Belleville, Gatineau, and Hawkesbury. White-label installation available for national sign vendors through our trade partner program.
Contact us today for a complimentary signage assessment.
(613) 854-9255 info@lundoncallinginc.com lundoncallinginc.com