Address Plaques > Backstory
Address Plaques > Backstory
Embedded Files
7/17/2025
Around 2010 we started offering Address Plaques as part of the metal art offering. The plaques were done by over laying a front plate on a back plate, in steel and/or aluminum, and then painted or clear coated.
The plaques ranged in price from $99 to $129. They offered a more contemporary option for metal address plaques with more color options than the Whitehall products offered at the Home Depot, Lowes and elsewhere.
The plaques generated traffic and conversation at our arts and crafts booths and they made for decent sales. However...
Mounting Options - We discovered people wanted and needed custom mounting options -- our standard 4 holes was actually not ideal for most even though it gave the product a cool look.
Mounting Needs - Some needed help with mounting to brick
Font selection was of interest to some buyers -- but doing anything other than block fonts on a CNC plasma was challenging.
Reflective Qualities - The lack of a reflective quality was comparable to other non-reflective metal options, but less than ideal for those looking for that type of functionality as well.
As the only game in town for what we were offering people either took it or left it -- finding CNC cut signs like ours online was non existent at that time. Nobody was doing 2 plate overlays and remarkably they still are not today -- but it would have been nice to have had more options -- all of which would could have gotten into -- but it all takes time to master.
We had an opportunity to go to online sales in 2010.
We didn't go to online sales in 2010 because the complexity of running the machine made it such that I would either need to run it myself or I'd need someone to do it with as much knowledge as I had, and that was not going to be easy to find -- and if I did, if that person left I'd be back to step 1. There also was not enough money to easily sub out 1 off work like this to someone else with CNC plasma. For those reasons and more, it was going to be hard to scale the business, it was going to hard to leave the business for weeks at a time if needed, and the lack of a backup machine if mine went down was also a concern.
As of 2010, Etsy was in its infancy but it did offer a good place to go to market. Etsy and the global marketplace has changed dramatically since then. Now vendors in China and India are shipping CNC cut plaques direct to US consumers via Etsy so our entry into the market will be much harder, and the threat of knock offs coming online quickly has risen dramatically but such is life.
In 2012 we moved to CA. I had to sell the CNC Plasma table to a fellow artist who had to learn the machine to the same level I did -- which created an opportunity for a partnership. However, that meant I had to work with him or someone else with a CNC plasma table to produce 1 off products from 3000 miles away. That introduced complication and cost into the equation -- and he had his own artistic business to run which was far more complex and interesting to him.
Around 2016 I started investigating CNC Lasers, CNC Routers and/or CNC Water Jets as an alternative option.
The smaller CNC Lasers that I could afford will not cut steel at the gauge we needed. Surprisingly, cutting aluminum requires even larger lasers, as aluminum is NOT conducive to cutting with a laser due to heat and reflective problems.
CNC Water Jets are typically large and expensive, but a college student had created a low cost DIY machine that looked ideal. He was preparing to commercialize it when I found him and it. We spoke on the phone. It was loud and slow, but it would have been perfect. He engaged with one of the Silicon Valley incubators, moved to China and started up his business. Unfortunately the landed cost ended up being double or triple what I initially expected and oddly, his investors took him to market through distributors. To me, the entire process ended up being a way to prevent him from disrupting the lower end CNC marketplace. He's produced a beautiful machine, but it's not cost effective for this or many other applications at this time.
CNC Routers were affordable but they are very complex when it comes to material hold down, drill bits and speed management. In that regard they are the most complex of the the CNC systems mentioned prior, including plasma -- but they were the only viable option. However, for steel and aluminum plate cutting CNC Routers really are not ideal --- as all the other CNC options are better for the task, but far more costly.
During this time I was able to figure out way to introduce reflective material between the sign plates, so that was cool.
Eventually I surmised that a CNC Laser was something I needed to consider. But that would require a change in material. I explored Acrylic and plastics with a local sign material vendor. I told the vendor what I was trying to do, and then showed him my metal sign samples. That's when he introduced me to the Aluminum Composite Material / Aluminum Composite Panels (ACM / ACP) . This material has been used by Commercial Sign vendors as a substrate for decades. It's intended to be cut on a CNC Router but sign vendors are just cutting outside shapes with it, not small and intricate lettering -- and they were doing it for large signs or mass production -- not one off items. Their detailed work was printed material affixed to the substrate before or after cutting.
That's when I saw the potential for a totally new type of product offering. However, it was unclear if the ACP could be machined for the lettering for the front plates on any machine, much less a low cost machine. For the back plates it was a no brainer, but no sign makers had experience with detailed lettering needed on the front plates.
So , at that time I knew I could cut the ACP on a CNC router but unclear if I could just do back plates or front too -- and I knew I could cut the Acrylic on a CNC Laser for front and/or back plates, but that came with higher material costs and several other product durability and product handling concerns.
If I could have cut the ACP on a CNC Laser, that would have been the Cat's Meow and this business would have launched in the 2018 time frame. Unfortunately, the aluminum surface of the ACP is NOT conducive to laser cutting with affordable CNC lasers.
An attempt to sub out the CNC routing of the back plates went horridly wrong. I eventually found 2 different vendors to do it, with very different styles of machines, but neither was a business I felt I could work with long term.
At that time I had someone interested in partnering who had CNC Lasers and that background down but without the CNC Router systems solved we would have been limited to Acrylic and that just wasn't attractive for the reasons listed prior.
In 2018 I bought a CNC Router to figure out if I could do what was needed on a small, DIY machine. However, we were in a rental with a tiny garage that was shared with the landlord. It took forever to try to make a space for it and attempt to get it up and running. In addition to struggling with good cut quality, sound, debris management, and material storage were all very problematic.
Cutting the ACP on a CNC router is an art that has been mastered by many sign makers, but it's not a widely publicized artform on YouTube. There are surprisingly few videos on it. The sign makers have been holding on to that secret for many decades, and after trying to master the machine and material I can see why.
It was unclear if we could cut the back plates on the CNC router, and the front plates were an entirely different level of difficult with the lettering requirements. Even if we could cut the front plates, they would not match the ease and precision of laser on acrylic.
The Acrylic is bread and butter for CNC Lasers. It comes in all kinds of colors. It is the easiest of the CNC machines to manage. However, the Acrylic is more expensive, handling it is more difficult and it is not a forgiving material to work with. The customer can crack it during install if not careful. The Acrylic could also be cut wth a CNC router but that is not the best choice given the low cost of cnc lasers and the higher cut quality obtained with them.
From 2018 to 2020 , due to all the complexities listed above, I focused on other business opportunities.
In 2020, COVID hit. I focused on developing Small Business Educational Curriculum and "DIY Software". A partner and I attempted to monetize that via various Professional Continuing Education systems, and found that to be harder than expected -- and more controlled -- in a negative and monopolistic way, than was expected.
In 2021 we were forced out of our rental. We purchased a home with a garage and an out building that offered the potential space for this business, but we were the victims of a gross case of Real Estate Brokerage and Seller Fraud.
From 2021 through 2025, we had to do major renovations to recover from the real estate fraud -- and the garage that would have been ideal for this was filled with construction toolds and material. As we pursued the fraudsters legally -- we discovered things about the Monterey County and California legal system that may turn this place inside out some day. Unsure if we were going to stay, or even survive the legal problems, with my hands overflowing with other non-revenue work -- I didn't put more time into this idea during that time.
In May and June 2025 bizarre events transpired to closed out our lawsuits. They ended, even though that story has not. We did not win any money back -- and there's a larger twist that will be discussed elsewhere that makes living in California even more disgusting -- but for now, we've decided to stay -- an it was time to try to launch this business.
And that's how a simple product idea took 15 years to come to launch and we still haven't worked out the details yet, I just know they are doable, I have two machines setup to do it and now I have to master the machines and the production process (in the next week or so, hopefully).
The competition now for CNC products is 10x to 100x more competitive than it was in 2010, but this two plate, ACP / Acrylic idea still has not been discovered by the other vendors yet , nor has the idea to use reflective material between them. Because it requires a mix of CNC technology for a full set of offerings, we will have a head start on the others, but I imagine the copy-cats will come along quickly and getting as large of a head start as possible is of interest to me.
NOTE: we have one other major product launch using the ACP and routing technology that is significant -- and we may have figured out a mass production item with that -- as opposed to one of customs. We also have several other products in R and D now that are useful and unique along with a DIY Software sales system to debut. I'm also going to put some of the metal art products on my Esty story -- to add some diversity to our store and gain some attention. people LOVE the big dragon fly. I have enough for 20-30 units. Then , i'll have to figure out if I want to try do those winds from ACP material too -- or find a CNC plasma vendor to work with.
Report abuse