Company:  Fredrickson Outdoor Advertising

Markets:  Minnesota

Phone: 612.616.8133

Email: fredricksonoa@msn.com

Fredrickson Outdoor advertising operates a billboard plant in Northfield, Minnesota.  The company was formed in 2005 and is owned by Duane Fredrickson.  Insider talked with Fredrickson about his company.

The current Fredrickson Outdoor Advertising is actually the second version of the business. The first go around was started in 1980. I grew that company and sold it to a national company, Naegele Outdoor Advertising, headquartered in Bloomington, MN. I started this company in 2005. Originally, I got into the outdoor advertising business in a rather unusual way. I was just a kid and working behind a counter at a lumberyard. I knew that I wanted to own my business and I wanted it to meet certain criteria. I wanted it to be business to business, have no moving parts, very little or no warranty work, and a whole page of other criteria. I narrowed it down to cement burial vaults and outdoor advertising. The barriers to entry with cement burial vaults was too high and so I chose outdoor advertising. I got in my car and wrote down the location of a number of grassy hills on major roads. I soon found out that there was a whole lot more to the business.

I currently have 18 faces that I own and another dozen or so that I either manage or assist with operations. I have a mix of freeway locations and city/rural surface street locations. All of these are what you could refer to as either second or third tier suburbs of the Minneapolis/St. Paul market. Outdoor advertising is regulated throughout the country but in our area it is regulated extremely tight.   Many of the communities have a very simple outdoor advertising ordinance: prohibited with the exception of existing locations. So it’s great if you have a location in the community, but pretty rough if you don’t.  Fortunately, most of my locations are in the areas that don’t allow additional sites. Currently, we are at or near 100% capacity. There seems to be a renewed interest in outdoor advertising. Marketers are realizing that it doesn’t do a lot of good to spend thousands of dollars on web development if no one visits their sites. Outdoor is great for driving traffic to a company’s website. Also, because of the tight labor situation, a number of my sites are used to recruit employees.

At this point, I’m at a bit of a crossroads with my company. I would like to expand into digital to optimize the existing sites I have. But as you know, going digital requires a considerable cash infusion.  I’m actively seeking to sell or partner with another outdoor company or investor in order to branch into digital.

The Matecjek project was a lot of fun. The original concept was thought up by Paul Matecjek, the owner of Matecjek Implement. For years he has had huge reproduction of a Case IH tractor mounted 50′ in the air next to I-35 in Faribault, Minnesota. He recently contracted with Brushworks in Faribault. I have worked with them on a number of projects; they’re a great bunch. About two years ago I worked with Paul to modernize the 12’x 24′ billboard that sits next to the tractor. Paul contacted me and brought forth the idea of having an earth mover connected to the tractor and wondered if I thought it could be done. It presented a few challenges. As the two structures are not attached, and 50′ in the air, they sway independent of one another. I worked with my son Eric and nephew Jeff Martin to come up with a solution to the problem. It took a little math but we figured out how to accomplish the task.  Check out the time lapse video that my son Eric took of the project. I think it catches your eye.

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