Saint Paul / Minnesota / United States
Grafix Shoppe was founded in Minneapolis, MN in 1988. We began in typical small-company style, doing a wide variety of jobs for a wide variety of clients. But within a year or two, we began to develop a strength in vehicle graphics, both for commercial vehicles and police cars. In 1991, the body style of police cars changed dramatically, and departments were almost literally forced to change their designs, as their old graphics no longer fit the new cars. To capitalize on this, we created the idea of a graphic kit, which was essentially a stock graphic design that could be easily modified, produced and shipped for installation by the customers local body shop. This business grew rapidly and fueled our expansion throughout the 1990s. Concurrently, we did a lot of commercial vehicle graphics, and also enjoyed a great relationship with Daytons, a regional department store chain which subsequently became Marshall Fields and was recently acquired by Federated Department Stores who own the Macys nameplate. Our relationship with Fields led to years of expansion into digital printing on both vinyl film and rigid substrates. This relationship of over 15 years really helped us to become problem-solvers for our clients, not just sign makers. This has helped us attract other retail clients, including Target, Room & Board, Clear Channel Communications and Mall of America. Today, we employ 25 people and do all of our production in our facility in Eagan, Minnesota. Most of our people have been here eight years or more, and about have been here ten or more. We continue to serve the same four markets ( law enforcement, retail graphics, event marketing and commercial vehicles ) as we have for years, but every year these change, and we change with them. We still try to solve problems for our clients, and to make their jobs a little easier and their image a little better. We have fun every day doing this, and hope they do too!
