2006 was my first year at the new location in Penfield, NY. It was a rather disappointing year, as only about 30 people came throught the garage. To increase the number of people that visited my garage in 2007, I took several measures to generate some publicity. The first was to create a couple of signs. I ordered them from the Sign Specialists (http://www.signspecialists.com). Initially, there was some confusion over what I wanted. Apparently, they tried to send pictures of what they intended to make, but for whatever reason, I never got the emails, so they went ahead and made them and sent them to me. The signs they sent me were attractive signs but not exactly what I had in mind. They looked like this:

My concern was that I found them difficult to read from a distance, especially when it wasn't all that bright out. The signs needed more contrast than this color scheme provided.

I contacted them, and they were quick to offer to redo the signs or refund my money. The original signs did not have my address on them, so they would only be useful on my property. Instead of just redoing the signs at no cost to me, I offered to have another sign done with slightly different text, and I offered to pay half price for it. After all, the signs I had were usable, just not what I asked for. They did up a new sign for me as requested and did not charge me for it. As a result, I rate the customer service for the Sign Specialists as exceptional, and the quality of their product is very good, too. I did not shop around extensively, so I can't say how their prices compare, but I am quite happy with their product. The new sign they made for me looks like:

It isn't as pretty as the first sign, but it is much more readable from a distance.

The second thing I did to get some publicity was to contact the Penfield Post to see if they would like to do an article about my garage. "HECK YES!!" was the reply I received. They interviewed me on 10/22, and my article appeared on the front page of the 10/25 issue of the Penfield Post. I have the text version of the article as well as a scanned-in version, which is in two parts: part 1 and part 2.

The last thing I did to increase publicity was to volunteer to run the Harris Hill elementary school's haunted house as part of their Spooktacular event on Friday, October 26. The night of the event, I hung one of my new signs by the entrance to the haunted house. During Halloween night, I heard a number of people talk about Spooktacular, so I knew at that point that my efforts at Spooktacular had helped increase the turnout at my garage. I made a video walkthrough of the Spooktacular haunt. I also took some pictures of it.

Halloween 2007
Halloween Index

Page last modified 11/15/2007