Brothers build global sign business in Bloomington

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — In an unassuming building on Bloomington’s west side, Melvin Kull guides aluminum sheets through large machinery to create traffic signs — from stop signs to speed-limit signs — that will be posted in cities and towns across the globe.

The Traffic Sign Store, which began as a small-scale manufacturer out of Kull’s Bloomington garage in 1999, is in line to reach $1 million in sales this year.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Melvin Kull, a retired McLean County Highway Department employee.

Kull’s brother and business partner, Randy Kull, said the duo formed the business with the goal of generating signs to be shipped to cities and municipal governments in central Illinois.

But with the development of the Internet, and the company’s site, trafficsignstore.com, the company now competes in a global market.

“The Internet is amazing,” Randy Kull, 56, said. “I was working out of my house in Towanda (during the company’s early years) and my second boy was still crawling and I could go on the Internet and bid on a $52,000 project.”

Now about 60 percent of the business generated comes from local and federal government agencies who find the store online, said Randy Kull, a former Arizona newspaper journalist. The remainder comes from central Illinois, including the town of Normal.

Scott Dennewitz, supervisor of street maintenance for Normal, said about 80 percent of the town’s signs, including stop signs and street signs, are purchased through the Bloomington sign shop. The business’s proximity and custom work is a perk for Normal, Dennewitz said.

“With uptown Normal changing so quickly, we need unique signs quickly,” Dennewitz said. “If I go in (to the business) in the morning, we’ll have signs by the afternoon.”

And signs at the Bloomington business are priced more reasonably than other sign businesses. A no-parking sign costs about $16, while a stop sign costs $28.50, Dennewitz said.

Signs created here are shipped across the U.S. and abroad to cities and towns in Europe, South America, Canada and the Middle East. The company, now at 1231 N. Mason St., also has created custom signs in Arabic to be used by military personnel in Bahrain and Spanish signs to be used in developing countries in Central America, Randy Kull said.

The store also sells traffic posts, roll-up signs, traffic cones and other accessories and ships product from 45 locations across the country. Signs created at the shop have also been used for production sites including the filming of the movie “Bruce Almighty” and television shows “Trading Spaces” and “As the World Turns,” Randy Kull said.

For Melvin Kull, generating ideas for new signs is a hobby that he can spend many hours working on, he said. With the emergence of electric vehicles across the country, his latest project is generating signs to be posted at electric car charging stations.