HELP US CELEBRATE DUALITE’S 75TH ANNIVERSARY!
After 75 years in business, we wish to reflect on how our industry's success was made possible, and all the wonderful changes that were made along the way! This is a tribute to our treasured employees, leaders, and partners that have all come together to shape Dualite’s story. We truly appreciate all the support throughout the years, especially the trust placed in us by our customers, empowering us to take the lead on their crucial branding endeavors. This enduring trust has encouraged us to continue innovating and serves as a prime motivation for our team to always bring the Dualite best to the table.
WHAT WE’RE ABOUT
Dualite takes delight in uplifting businesses across the nation by assisting with creation and enrichment of overall brand image. Our customers can be confident in the knowledge that they are placing their best foot forward by shaping their brand with quality, handcrafted signage executed by Dualite. After completion of the signage product, the installation and service projects are placed in the hands of experienced signage professionals. Our customer base entrusts us with creating solutions to their branding problems across industries – we’ve broken into the retail, banking, insurance, hospitality, carwash, and restaurant industries – you name it- we have been a part of it!
ILLUMINATING THE GREATER CINCINNATI AREA
Dualite’s two founders were Jack Applegate and William (Bill) Cobbe, who had both grown up designing signage and now wanted to break into the booming sign industry with their own company. They officially founded their dream of creating custom signage on September 16th in the year 1947 on Madison Road in Cincinnati with a four-man team. Additional locations around the area opened steadily over the following years as production departments further developed; including the addition of the silk screening and plastic forming processes in 1951.
After facing challenges due to the rapidly expanding scale of production, Dualite sold the production portion of the company, initiating a sharp pivot towards perfecting sales and design. Shortly after this pivot, production was successfully reintegrated into the business with a more deliberate and controlled expansion of production to keep up with the growing business demand. To this day, products created by Dualite are displayed in the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, and the company is a partner countless local businesses and community leaders.
WILLIAMSBURG, OHIO AND BEYOND
Dualite’s headquarters moved to Williamsburg, Ohio in 1963 when the company took over the vacant office and factory formerly occupied by The Williamsburg Box Company. The sign company built two expansions in 1987 and 1988 respectively, and is still the largest employer in Williamsburg today. A strong hometown presence and close collaboration with Clermont County initiatives propels Dualite as the company provides nearly 200 jobs to the community. In honor of Dualite’s 75th anniversary, the Mayor of Williamsburg Mary Ann Lefker presented Dualite with an official proclamation naming September 17th “Dualite Day” - a testament to the impact of Dualite on the Williamsburg community.
OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP
Unfortunately Jack Applegate passed away within a year after opening the Williamsburg location. This left Bill Cobbe as the sole owner and led the company until his passing in 1986 at which time Frank Schube took over Dualite business management. Frank was a beloved director who went out of his way to be involved in operations on a daily and personal level. He knew every employee and took pride in providing a steady livelihood for those employee to support their families. Frank raised his children in the same manner and his son, Greg, now runs the company today.
Greg Schube took over after his father retired in 2012 and encourages breakthroughs in the industry while staying true to the long-standing knowledge of tenured employees and partners. He collaborates closely with customers, vendors, and employees in all departments to impart great influence upon all those connected by Dualite.
Another notable fact about Dualite’s leadership over the years includes the significant portion of women in leadership positions, especially in the early years of the company, such as in 1958 with the Office of Corporate Secretary. Another notable woman in Dualite’s leadership was Dorothy Black, a Dualite Officer elected in 1967 for a term of over two decades. Paula Mueller is our current VP of Finance and has guided the company through successful financial years and managing investments in our products and growth. Dualite prioritizes giving women a seat at the table and believe that this priority is a key ingredient to success. Historically the employee pool is actually comprised of a majority of women – which some may find surprising in the manufacturing sector. A varied employee base is just one of the goals that Dualite strives for in the recruiting and retention arena as the company welcomes employees with disabilities, varying sexual orientations, gender expressions, education levels, ages, socioeconomic situations, religions, and ethnic backgrounds.
TRANSFORMING ADVERTISING TECHNIQUES
Dualite has always partnered with recognizable brands such as Chevron, the Cincinnati Reds, Stihl, Motel 6, Michelin, and one of our longest standing accounts - Dollar General. From classic polycarbonate faces and fluorescent illumination through the 1980’s fascination with neon signs all the way to LED and Electronic Message Centers today.
TURNING BACK THE CLOCK
In 1952 the Cincinnati-based Gruen Watch Company, one of the largest watch manufacturers in the United States at the time, requested a groundbreaking solution to the need for indoor signage. Dualite developed a model of an indoor clock called the “bubble clock” to provide a signage and timekeeping combination. The indoor clock sign models became the stylish way to provide sensible time-telling with the function of a clock doubled with a contemporary advertisement for interested brands such as Ace Hardware, Cooper Tires, and Sherwin Williams. Three of the most popular versatile models included The Champ, The Fanfare, and The Sovereign. Many of the clocks currently hanging in Dualite today were created decades ago to showcase our past work and still keep time accurately. The best decorations are the signage solutions that we have been honored to produce over the past 75 years in business.
INDUSTRY CHALLENGES
Over time Dualite has faced many challenges but continues to shine with adaptability. Challenges that have been overcome include difficulties predicting customer needs long before our customers can ask for them; giving them revolutionary options whilst guiding the signage industry to support these new innovations, and more. We take pride in our classic methods for creating a traditional and quality made sign while embracing new methods over the past 75 years. The largest pivots in our business include expansions of production departments, increasing neon, indoor, and digitally printed signage, as well as ramping up Dualite’s service offerings. Regardless of changes we remain committed to forging our path in the signage industry with our customers’ priorities top of mind.
Another ongoing challenge faced by the signage industry is creating sustainably sourced signs to reduce the negative impact our business has on the environment. In particular, we have been committed to phasing out all non-LED lighting since 2011; Dualite even became an official US LED distributor starting in the 2011 – 2012 calendar year. An alternative option available to customers interested in custom signage is solar panel powered lighting. We are pleased to support sustainably driven brands with signage products that conserve power and align more closely with their core environmental values. We are innovators in the industry making every effort to efficiently produce signage while being mindful of the limited valuable human resources and natural resources that need to be conserved wisely. Dualite continues to strive towards reducing our environmental impact and that of our customers.
An even greater addition to the trials of guiding the signage industry has cropped up over the past few years due to the start of the pandemic. Understanding the changes to the way the industry transformed through the pandemic while striving to maintain the safety of our company and the health of our workers. Dualite continued thriving as an essential manufacturing business, staying cautious while providing stability for our production employees through turbulent times. We are grateful for our employees who have stuck with us throughout their careers and through uncertain times. It is not uncommon to periodically celebrate employee tenure by a measurement of decades - with many employees celebrating 40 to 50 year anniversaries at Dualite. The pandemic did push a significant portion of the American workforce to retire early, relocate, or otherwise shift their shift their places in many industries. As an attempt to reduce the effect of these staff changes, Dualite has been doubling down on training for newer employees to allow our tenured employees to pass along vital industry information and skills for the new additions to our workforce in both production and service.
A further difficult situation proving the resiliency of Dualite has been an ongoing struggle procuring all the necessary supplies and raw materials for our signage production. The demand for signage products did not downturn sharply during this time, although continuing to order large quantities of supplies has been near unattainable in some cases. Our employees and operations team work continuously to shape innovative ideas for alternative functions of products to circumvent the low supply challenges and keep production from stagnating at a time when new orders are surging. Despite the unexpected challenges we have faced, our industry experience and wisdom has seen us through to the light of a successful signage business.
PRODUCTION WE CAN BE PROUD OF
Not to toot our own horn, but Dualite has been a pioneer when it comes to staying one step ahead of the game with signage production. We have been developing and utilizing cutting-edge technology since day one. Jack Applegate’s influence on Dualite didn’t stop at his leadership skills. The Applegate Automatic Press was a testament to his ingenuity, developed fully in-house to set Dualite’s plastic forming apart from all other sign companies, and being an exclusive machine that could only be found at Dualite!
In 1984 the project began for a climate-controlled screening production area which would be the first of its kind in the signage production industry. The screening area to this day has semi-automatic and fully automatic screening machines, with a UV drying oven for all of the screened products. The result is a clean finish and consistent look across the board for each sign face that gains pigment through this process.
As far back as 1988, Dualite was the first signage company that possessed three different Cybermation machines, keeping up with automation available to us and being able to train our employees to skillfully run these newer machines. Notable headway being made currently in the signage industry includes our ever-intensifying presence in digitally printed signage, with professionally certified color specialists and printer operators. We have always maintained a delicate balance of investing swiftly in improving our processes while simultaneously placing ongoing effort in our classic quality processes passed through generations of sign crafters. We can’t wait to see what the future of the signage industry has in store!
SERVICE AND INSTALLATION FEATS
Our team’s motto is “On-Time, On-Brand, On-Budget” since we understand the importance of keeping a project on track. At the first inquiry about signage each potential customer is set up with a salesman who can walk them through the process of choosing the best Dualite products to carry out the branding they envision for their company. After collaborating closely with our Engineering Department and Graphic Arts Department, a final vision can be sent into production. During production our Account Services Department organizes shipping options, site surveys, and installation appointments with subcontractors across the country for a full-service project, even including future maintenance contracts. We have over 700 installers nationwide, so there is always a local option for our customers for any installation or maintenance needs. Our team handles all points of contact making signage projects a hands-off approach for all of our satisfied clients.
The tool critical to our project success especially over the past 20 years has been Dualite’s Web Access option started in 2002 which we boast as the most powerful and comprehensive Project Management Data System in the entire industry. Within this system created, there are individual website portals unique to each customer with all of the relevant project information available at the click of a mouse. This is a vital database for our customers, suppliers, and even for internal use by our own team to provide job status updates daily. Online quotes, production orders, shipment information, and invoice processes are available at our team’s fingertips through this system, keeping them at the top of their scheduling game. All of these website codes are maintained by Dualite’s very own Information Systems Department.
We continue to strive for ways to set ourselves apart in the industry through the devotion to stellar service and flawless installation projects. A feat that went down in Dualite’s history was the installation of the LaQuinta Inn illuminated sign pole structure in Augusta, Georgia. This installation project began in 1993, becoming the tallest illuminated sign pole structure in the US, with a height of 185’ to the very top. Even the base pole itself was a whopping 8’ in diameter! We are excited to be leaders in our industry, steadily making history over the past 75 years with groundbreaking projects.
TAKING ON A REBRANDING PROJECT ALL OF OUR OWN!
Lastly, we would like to reintroduce ourselves as Dualite Signs & Branding, where signage is the name of the game and we are in it for the win with quality branding solutions! In honor of our 75th anniversary we are reminiscing about our rich history as a company in the Williamsburg, Ohio community. Staying true to our roots of attentive sales and excellent service, we want to continue to provide businesses across the nation with quality cutting edge signage and branding solutions, being the spark that illuminates brands across the nation!
