by Kerstan Szczepanski
In 2001, Craig VanVelzer started the San Diego Sign Company out of his garage. VanVelzer saw a need for competitively priced wholesale display products for resellers. Starting small, WS Display grew into a company in three cities with resellers in the sign company, tradeshow builders, and other categories of resellers in the display world.
Specializing in portable tradeshow displays, banner stands, and large format digital printing, WS Display offers its products and services through a network of authorized distributors. These include promotional displays, event planners, marketing agencies, exhibit display providers, commercial printers, and sign shops. WS Display ships hardware, print, and sew and finish custom graphics throughout the US and Canada.
The first 10 years saw rapid expansion as a demand for the company’s products and services grew. Moving from that fabled garage into a 1,500 square foot warehouse with one printer was only the beginning for VanVelzer and company. Starting in 2005 WS Display moved five times in five years, through ever growing facilities with more and more printers. By 2010 the company had nine printers in 30,000 square feet in Carlsbad, CA and even that wasn’t enough. 2014 saw their latest expansion to an 83,000 square foot facility in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 2018, a 61,000 square foot maquiladora was built in the Pacific Fulfillment Center and in 2023 increased that center to over 120,000 square feet.
There’s no sign of stopping for the custom graphic company. “While WS is a very strong provider of portable display products,” says Mike Morrison, Vice President of Sales for WS Display. “We are now embarking on growing our custom display offerings to be a stronger, more viable player in that realm for current and prospective clients.”
Morrison has been with WS since 2016, starting as National Sales Director and moving to his new position earlier this year. “I owned a sign shop in Metro Atlanta and was an actual client of WS Display,” he says. “I became aware in 2015 that they were going to start marketing aluminum extrusion and SEG graphics which led to a few conversations and a couple of meetings and ultimately accepting a position within the organization.”
Part of WS Display’s success comes from their wholesale paradigm. “Marketing and selling our products through our reseller network is the backbone of the WS Display business plan,” says Morrison. “It’s very interesting because we could probably make more money selling directly to end users… But the problem is we don’t have the bandwidth to work directly with end users with their display questions and problems that have to be taken care of. Our reseller network is who we depend upon to assist end users with their display concerns. They are the feet in the street in the marketplace. Our hands are full of working with them one-on-one to make sure that clients have their questions answered. Staying within our reseller lane, so to speak, is where we need to be successful.”
Attitude and approach to business and clients is another key to the company’s success. “We’ve all heard the saying, ‘Good, Fast, and Cheap… Pick two!’ What sets WS Display apart from everyone else is we cover all three of those areas for our clients,” says Morrison. “We offer lifetime warranties on all of our hardware, strong warranties on our graphics and electrical products, very fast turnaround times for the production of our product, and a very strong, aggressive pricing proposition to the industry. That mentality has helped WS display grow into a very successful provider of wholesale display products. We are constantly pioneering new products for our reseller network and will continue to do that as technology and client desires to evolve occur in the future.”
Innovative response to client needs helped keep the company afloat during the pandemic. “We had just come off an extremely strong 2019 and everyone was looking forward to how business was going to grow during the fiscal 2020 year, only to be crippled by show cancellations, shutdowns, and the worst time in the business that I can remember,” Morrison remembers. “We had to pivot to products that kept us busy marketing during that dreadful time. Everything from signage to promote safe areas, to hand sanitizers, to acrylic dividers and even roll-up banner stands that were clear or
a hybrid of signage and clear for protection.”
WS Display is not looking back but looking forward. As Morrison says, “Developing our custom offerings for clients is our number one goal at this point. I believe another goal for our company is to begin offering more technology-based products which are in demand at the moment within the display industry.”
This story originally appeared as a truncated version in the Q1 2025 issue of Exhibit City News, p. 72. For original layout, visit https://issuu.com/exhibitcitynews/docs/ecn_q1_2025/72.
