News

There's always something new happening at Midwest! Below are summaries of the latest events and changes within our company.

• Omaha Golf Tournament
• 2008 Bill Anderson Charity Classic: Getting Stronger Every Year!
• Franklin Joins with SkillsUSA
• Fourth Annual Bill Anderson Charity Classic
  
• Denver LED Seminar Rocks!
  
• Congrats to the Top 25!
• Midwest Donates to Extreme Makeover Home Edition

Omaha Golf Tournament

The 20th Annual Midwest-Omaha Golf Tournament was held on Monday, June 23, a perfect day for golf: temps in the low 80’s and lots of sun! We had 88 golfers participate this year, helping to make this event a great success and a lot of fun.

There was some fantastic golfing on the course, with the guys from Sign Design Inc. taking home the first place trophy. The Shaw Screenprinting team took the second place trophy, coming in just two strokes behind first place. And, for the sixth year in a row, the Goofy Golfer trophy went to the Sign Design Inc. ladies, who admit that, despite the possibility of humiliation, “it’s been fun for them.”

After the golf awards, Midwest COO Jim Fisher awarded more than $1500 in vendor-sponsored gift certificates. The top prize, a 19" LCD TV, was presented to Jim Dykes of Renze Display. No one was fortunate enough to take home the $10,000 Hole-in-One prize...maybe next year.

During the delicious dinner, Jim Fisher made a point to recognize that Omaha Branch Manager John Barratt, “by the grace of God,” was able to be at the tournament despite having a serious health scare early this year. The crowd gave John a standing ovation, which was a very moving show of concern and appreciation that Midwest customers have for John.

For the first time, Midwest Owner and CEO Nancy Anderson attended the Omaha tournament. She spoke briefly about who she was and how she came to acquire Midwest. It was a treat to have her with us for this event!

We had a very successful tournament, and we’re already looking forward to next year!

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2008 Bill Anderson Charity Classic: Getting Stronger Every Year!

Click here for the recap!

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Franklin Joins with SkillsUSA

On April 9, Midwest-Franklin sponsored and judged the textile screen printing event at the Wisconsin SkillsUSA Championship, held at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, WI.

SkillsUSA is a national organization that brings together students, teachers and industry professionals to help students excel and ensure America has a skilled workforce. The Wisconsin championship showcased nine of the best screen printing competitors from six Wisconsin high schools. Wisconsin's champion will go on to the national competition in Kansas City, Missouri.

Midwest loaned a Sidewinder manual press, Economax dryer and Acoma Flash for this event. Midwest-Franklin Sales Rep Tom Robinson served as a judge of the students’ work, which consisted of setting up the screens, registration, printing and quality of print. A written test on screen printing (83 questions) and a one-on-one interview were also part of the competition. Russ Gnant, owner of Spectrum Digital, a Midwest-Franklin customer, did the formal one-on-one interviews. Bob Eisenach (Ulano) took the written test to be used as a master copy for grading, and Midwest-Franklin Branch Manager Kent Paterick graded all contestants' written test papers.

During the course of the day, numerous teachers and district supervisors from a variety of state high schools came through the Midwest booth/competition area, looking to gain more knowledge of the products Midwest has to offer.
M&R, Ulano and Wilflex donated various items for this event, including ink mixing kits, pens, note pads, emulsions, etc. These were handed out as gifts to each contestant.

Midwest-Franklin was excited to be a part of this competition. Seeing the future of screen printing in action was a great opportunity, and we hope to be a partner with SkillsUSA in the years to come.

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Fourth Annual Bill Anderson Charity Classic

Midwest Sign and Screen is pleased to announce its 4th annual Bill Anderson Charity Classic to be held at the Southview Country Club in St. Paul, MN on Monday, June 16, 2008. Since its inception in 2005, following the untimely death of former Midwest President Bill Anderson, the tournament has raised over $160,000 to benefit Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) and CaringBridge.

Click here for more information.
Click here for a registration form.
Register online!

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Denver LED Seminar Rocks!

The GE Lumination LED Product Seminars held at the Denver location on Thursday, February 21, were a huge success. We hosted 35 attendees from 15 different companies and GE sent FOUR representatives! GE Reps were Speaker, Guy Bobbora, Signage & Specialty Regional Sales Manager; Mark Egbuonu, Signage & Architecture Product Manger; Eric Stevenson, Signage & Architecture Marketing Product Manager; and David Clemens, Technical Service Leader.

Featured products were Tetra® Max, Tetra® Contour, Tetra® PowerGrid, Tetra Mini and Tetra Power White LED Lighting Systems. Guy reviewed the history of LEDs in general and then connected the dots with GE Lumination and the part they play in the industry. Back in the 1960’s, GE scientists invented LEDs. The focus of GE Lumination is on Signage & Architecture, Traffic Signals, Rail Signals, Display Lighting and most recently, European LED Signals. Guy demonstrated cost savings through the combination of brightness and efficiency of GE Lumination LEDs and power supply management.

After the informational part of the seminar, a hands-on demonstration took place. There, seminar participants were shown how to use the featured products and were encouraged to work with them to get a feel for the ease of usage.

The response from our customers was overwhelmingly positive. Many will be retrofitting and replacing neon with these more safe and efficient products. They were appreciative of the time and efforts of GE Lumination and Midwest to bring them up to date on the LED marketplace.

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Congrats to the Top 25!

Midwest would like to extend warm congratulations to five of our customers who made it into the Top 25 in 3M's "Wrap to Win" conest! They are:

• Design8 Studio (Omaha, NE)
• Dynamic Signs & Graphics and Driving Force Graphics (Boring, OR; Bend, OR)
• Main Media (Everett, WA)
• Palmer Graphics (Roseville, CA)
• Ziglin Signs (Washington, MO)

Midwest was also a sponsor the "Wrap to Win" Rousch promotion.

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Midwest Donates to Extreme Makeover Home Edition

Midwest is honored to be a sponsor for the 100th episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, filmed in Minnesota from August 21-27. Teaming up with a loyal, long-standing customer, Signs of Perfection, Midwest donated over 6,000 square feet of banner and other supporting materials, which Signs of Perfection used to create signage for the show. The signage recognized the businesses and people who made the project possible as well as provided direction on the set.

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