Billboard Insider is running a series of interviews with out of home legend Charlie MacIntyre who recently sold Bullfrog Outdoor to Adams. Charlie has talked about site development and sales and marketing. Today he talks about building signs, acquisitions and operating during the Great Recession.
Did you do construction yourself or contract it out?
There was a fabricator that I met and he owned some storage facilities and was going to build billboards on his properties. He needed blueprints and I gave him mine. When I could not get financing he became my fabricator and bank. In return, I sold his billboards and took a commission like an ad agency. I paid for the crane, crew and concrete out of cashflow. I acted as the general contractor and things took off.
Did you ever grow through acquisitions, or was it all organic?
Both, but the acquisitions were opportunistic. The best deals I ever made came when someone got into billboards thinking it was easy money and then discovered it wasn’t. I could buy their inventory for the cost of the steel. I remember buying signs in November from a guy who was running a fireworks ad the entire month. He didn’t have a paying advertiser, but didn’t even know enough to put his phone number on the board. That’s the kind of acquisition I loved.
You managed through the Great Recession. What did you learn.
My business was OK in the first half of 2009. Then the second half of the year I was down 20%. the next year I was flat, and after that I just started climbing. The lesson I took from it isn’t really about cutting costs—it’s about discipline in the good years. You always need to leave a little in reserve, because the bad times will come. A lot of operators have been in the business only since 2009. All they know is up and to the right. The world doesn’t always go up and to the right.
To receive a free morning newsletter with each day’s Billboard insider articles email info@billboardinsider.com with the word “Subscribe” in the title. Our newsletter is free and we don’t sell our subscriber list.
Paid Advertisement
