Chances are, the car-mounted sign atop the pizza-delivery vehicle that whisked through your neighborhood last night was made here in Spokane by Cassel Promotions. The same might be true if you lived in New York, Boston, Las Vegas, or a host of other U.S. cities.


We see our product everywhere we go, says Sam Cassel, vice president of the company.


Cassel Promotions, at 130 S. Division, makes and sells three-dimensional, lighted signs that look similar to those seen atop taxis. The signs, which the company calls Cabbies, are made in several sizes and shapes and can be attached to the roof of a delivery vehicle with magnets or affixed to its window. The Spokane company also makes flat signs and windsocks that can be attached to a vehicles window.


Cassel claims only a few companies nationwide make delivery-vehicle signs similar to those of Cassel Promotions, and the Spokane company has captured about 40 percent of the market.


The delivery vehicle signs are just one aspect of Cassel Promotions business, though, says Tracy Cassel, the companys president and Sams brother. It also operates a promotional products division that prints customers logos on all manner of items, as well as a banner and sign division.


In all, the company employs 15 people, including several other Cassel family members, and has annual sales of between $2 million and $3 million.


Sandwiches and windsocks


The Cassels launched the venture in 1987 when Tracy Cassel, who owned a delivery-only deli in the Spokane Valley, wanted to mark his delivery drivers cars and attract attention to his business. To do that, he designed a windsock that was about four-feet long and a foot-and-a-half in diameter that rotated in the wind from a mast mounted on top of a car with a complicated system of straps, gutter hooks, and suction cups.


It drew the eye. It was huge, he recalls.


Tracy teamed up with Sam, who was working in advertising and promotions in Seattle, to form AutoSox USA Inc. to make and market the big windsock. We thought it would be one product that we could get rich quick on and move on, Tracy says.


Instead, the product evolved, and so did the company, adding banners and other promotional products to its mix over the years.


Customers who buy vehicle-mounted signs often asked Cassel Promotions for refrigerator magnets, T-shirts, and other promotional items as well, so the Cassels gradually began adding those items. They opened a showroom for their promotional products in 1994, Tracy says.


The following year, to reflect its increasingly diverse inventory, the company began doing business as Cassel Promotions, which is a division of AutoSox, he says. Soon after, Cassel Promotions added a banner-making division.


But back to the windsocks. The first change in the companys original windsock was a new mounting system so the windsock could be attached to a cars window and fly above the cars roof, Tracy Cassel says.


The company received a patent for that system, and helped make window-mounted signs standard in the pizza-delivery industry, although other manufacturers of them use several different mounting systems, he says.


The Cassels also experimented with the signs sizes, shapes, and materials. They made the windsock smaller, then made a hard plastic sign that could be attached to the same window-mounting device.


Tracy Cassel, however, wanted to mount the signs atop vehicles where they would be most visible, and set to work with his brother to design the Cabbie, which could be attached to a vehicles roof with magnets.


Tracy says pizzeria owners can see how effectively the lighted signs attract customers by tracking the number of orders they get from a neighborhood where a delivery has just been made. These signs sell three to 10 pizzas a night, he asserts. Owners love them.


But if owners like the signs, many drivers hate them, Tracy says. The magnets, which were powder-coated for smoothness, still sometimes marred a vehicles finish.


Early this year, Cassel Promotions started using lighter, more powerful magnets, and developed soft vinyl covers for the magnets so they wouldnt scratch a cars paint.


So far, drivers and owners have responded favorably to the improvements, he says.


We still sell lots of window-mounted signs, too, Tracy says.


An international reach


Cassel Promotions obtains most of the parts for its signs from Spokane suppliers and subcontractors. The company produces the sign graphics and assembles the signs at its shop on Division.


From there, it ships the signs to customers across the nation and abroad. Sam Cassel says the U.S. is home to more than 50,000 pizzeria operators, all of which Cassel Promotions views as potential customers, and the company sells signs to customers in Canada, Australia, South America, Europe, South Africa, and Guam. Pizza is a universal food, he says.


Cassel Promotions typically makes between one and 20 signs for each order, although some orders call for as many as 100 signs.


The company recently shipped one of its largest ordersworth nearly $200,000 for 2,500 signsto a Midwestern Pizza Hut franchisee with 1,000 restaurants which was planning a big promotion of its delivery services, Tracy says.


To complete the signs in time for the campaign, Cassel Promotions four-person production crew split into two crews of two workers each, and with help from the front office and sales staff, took turns manning the shop for two shifts a day, seven days a week, for three weeks. We made the deadline, and the customer was just gleaming, Tracy says.


Other suppliers who were helping the franchisee gear up for the promotion couldnt meet the deadline, so Cassel Promotions also picked up an order for 3,000 pizza-delivery bags that it was able to fill at the last minute when it found an importer who had the bags on hand, he says.


Cassel Promotions also once produced 1,500 signs for Little Caesar franchises, Tracy Cassel says.


The company is beginning to expand beyond just pizza delivery signs, his brother says. Delivery is always a growing segment as restaurants find there is a market (for the service), Sam Cassel says. For instance, the company produced a big order of custom, bucket-shaped signs KFC used nationally to introduce its delivery services about three years ago.


In addition to food-delivery vehicles, Cassel Promotions signs also have been used on florists delivery vehicles and the cars of sales representatives for Dole pineapple.


The company is reaching out to other businesses that want temporary advertising on vehicles, such as radio stations, real estate agents, and home-based multilevel marketers, he says.


The signs simply can be used to provide vehicle identification, and Cassel Promotions is targeting that capability to newspapers for their carriers, Sam Cassel says.


He says that efforts are under way in parts of Tennessee to require all service vehiclesfrom newspaper carriers to landscapers to delivery vansto mark their vehicles clearly to eliminate calls to law-enforcement agencies from residents who spot suspicious, slow-moving, or frequently stopping vehicles.


Conversely, the state of Pennsylvania and a handful of municipalities around the country dont permit lighted car-top advertisements, so signs made for customers in those areas have reflective surfaces instead of illumination, he says.


Golf tees to banners


The Cassels say that operating three divisions provides a one-stop promotional shop for their customers, and also helps fill sales voids when any one of the divisions falls on soft times. While the delivery-vehicle signs reach customers around the globe, the banner and promotional-products divisions primarily serve local customers.


Sam Cassel says the market for promotional products has been extremely strong in recent years. Cassel Promotions offers about 450,000 items that can be imprinted with a companys name and logo, from cheap, plastic items to embroidered hats and clothing to upscale, engraved clocks, desk sets, and more, he says.


If its being made, we can put a logo on it, Tracy Cassel says.


He says the company subcontracts with Spokane companies for the printing, silk-screening, and embroidery work to personalize the items.


Among Cassel Promotions largest local customers for promotional items is Coeur dAlene Bingo & Casino, which buys from the Spokane company all the souvenir items emblazoned with the casino name that it sells in its gift shop. Cassel Promotions also has a contract with Amazon.com to provide the big online bookseller with promotional products.


The Spokane company has seen an increase in business from local golf tournaments, for signs, giveaways, apparel, golf balls, tees, and other items, all marked with the tournaments or the sponsors name, he says.


The companys sign and banner division uses its thermal-printing equipment that makes the logos for the Cabbie signs to make big banners, tiny labels, and auto graphics that are permanently affixed to cars and trucks.


Sam Cassel notes that all the companys work starts with a logo, and the companys graphics department can help customers design logos that will reproduce well whether theyre printed in a single color on a ballpoint pen or on a giant, multicolor banner. Were not a design firm or an ad agency, but we do have a wide range of services, he says.


Cassel Promotions also handles licensing of T-shirts and other products for Evel Knievel, whom the Cassels met in the 1980s and developed a business relationship and friendship with. The Cassel brothers recently co-authored a book of Knievels personal photos and reminiscences.