Company of the Day: Norris Outdoor

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Company:  Norris Outdoor

Market: Kansas

Headquarters:  112 W. St. John, Girard, Kansas, 66743

Phone: 620-249-7462

Email: jnorris@norrisoutdoor.com

Norris Outdoor currently has 25 locations with 48 faces throughout Southeast Kansas including one display in SW Missouri.  The firm is also expanding its digital presence with one operating digital billboard in Pittsburg, Kansas with others soon to be added in the coming months. The firm is owned by Jerod Norris who is also the publisher of Hometown Girard Newspaper and M.D. News Greater Kansas magazine. They manufacture their own digital signage and also offer digital sign sales to other businesses and out of home companies.

Jerod, how did you enter the out of home business? 

Started in 2013. Long story short, being in print advertising I had always wanted to get into the billboard business. I had just started Hometown Girard Newspaper after leaving a previous position as publisher of another publication. I had to find a way to replace that income and I thought, “well, if you’re ever going to do it – now’s the time.”

We started with one display in Girard, Kansas and began deriving more from there. That was 4 years ago and we’ve continued to expand our out of home presence each year.

Tell us about your plant.  

Small and simple. As in – my office has a restroom, a shower and some small closet space. That’s about it. When the situation is right and the opportunity presents itself we have big plans in the future for a larger office space with an accompanying shop.

What’s the local market like? 

The local market, while rural, has many smaller to mid-sized cities that make up one footprint – and a lot of eyeballs. Billboards tend to stick out very nicely in a rural setting, where less competitors are setting up shop. Rates are certainly a fraction of what they would be in a larger city, so you have to have more displays to make things work.
We’ve been very fortunate to have great, long-term relationships with our advertisers which keeps our displays full and often not a lot of vacancies available. If you offer good, competitive rates and take care of your customers they will stick with you.

You’ve got a digital billboard.  Whose digital billboard do you use and what have your learned? 

Digitals are great. However, our initial experience was really bad, we bought the display from a 3rd party overseas with little to no support for any of it. I had this really nice, 10mm digital billboard, but had no idea how to run it or even turn it on.

Through a referral I found Skyslate Digital Signs out of Oklahoma City, they got us up and running in no time. We’ve been over-the-top happy with them. Our relationship with Skyslate has allowed us to begin manufacturing digital signs for other out of home as well as on premise businesses. All designed, engineered and manufactured in the United States. Going digital does not have to be as difficult as I made it on our company, but we learned a lot from it and will be adding more digitals in the near future.

Are there synergies between your newspaper business and the out of home business?

Absolutely, any way we can help our customers we will make an effort in doing so. If they’re looking for advertising opportunities in our area through the newspaper, we always cross-market and let them know about our Out of Home opportunities if and when applicable. It’s a multi-media approach. Every advertiser in print is a potential customer for billboards.
Generally if we can’t help them we know of a business that can, which also includes other out of home businesses. We’re most interested in helping out our customers and the people that take the time to call us, even if it means referring them to a competitor. We as out of home business owners should be able to find referrals within each other.
We’re all trying to do the same thing, and that should be to provide the best service to the customer.

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