Paramount Promotions, a dynamic printing company based in Phoenix, Arizona, recently had its successful business path turned upside down in a matter of minutes due to the effects of a devastating fire that occurred on April 7, 2015.  The real story here is not one of devastation. Instead, this is the story of one business overcoming adversity through a combination of hard work from its employees and an outpouring of local support from its customers and the overall community Paramount has served for more than 20 years.

Prior to the fire, Paramount was facing the seemingly happy problem of a need to expand its facility in order to sustain continued growth and increasing demand. Now, with everything that has happened, the decision of "how or when" has been simplified. This process is now moving along more quickly than planned, but nonetheless, they are pushing ahead with a positive outlook.

The Fire

The fire started at approximately 1:30 p.m., right in the middle of production hours.

“When the fire first broke out, my initial thoughts were to make sure everyone was okay and to see what we could do to quickly get it under control,” says Brad Bergamo, president and owner of Paramount Promotions. “It started as a small fire at the base of the power line by our back shed, and frankly, in that moment it seemed like more of an inconvenience than anything else. My mind began to race on fulfilling our orders that day. I was thinking that we have orders to ship, and as long as we only lose an hour of production we may miss our 3:30 p.m. pick-up time, but we could still meet shipping deadlines without delay if we drop them at the airport.”

Unfortunately, it was windy that day—and it was blowing in the direction of the primary building. While waiting for the fire department to arrive, numerous employees attempted to control the fire with extinguishers. Within minutes, there were multiple fire trucks at the site with more than 100 firefighters.

Bergamo watched his building go up in flames. His initial thought of losing just an hour of production time quickly became thoughts of how to move forward now that his primary facility was out of production for the foreseeable future.

“We may never know the exact cause of the fire," Bergamo says, "but some things are certain: I am so grateful that no one was was hurt; I am so proud of how my employees have handled the situation to ensure that we continue to take care of our customers; and lastly, I am truly humbled by the support we have received from our loyal customers, fellow business owners, and the overall community that we have served for over 20 years.”

Up and Running Within Days

Immediately after the fire, Paramount received a flood of phone calls from businesses within the sign industry offering any assistance they could provide to help with overflow work and to keep them in production. One business in particular, Group Imaging of Mesa, Arizona, and its owner Jeff Burris, presented their facility to Paramount Promotions’ employees to use their space and equipment to complete projects during the off-shift hours during the summer. 

The owner of Super Signs based out of Tempe, Arizona, also contacted Paramount the day of the fire. The owner, Joanie Cartwright and her husband Lenny Ambrosiano, heard about the incident and let Paramount Promotions move into a warehouse facility just three days after the fire, as it happened to be vacant during that time.

“We were able to complete projects without missing a beat, fulfilling every single order that was pending through sheer hard work from my employees coupled with the amazing support we received from the community and our loyal base of customers,” say Bergamo. “We are very lucky and extremely thankful to everyone who reached out to us and offered support in our time of need. We couldn’t have completed production right away without them.” 

Within a week of the fire, Paramount had transitioned customers to the online ordering system. Immediately after the fire, orders continued to be produced out of local supporting business locations as well as Paramount’s out-of-state facilities.

New Site in View

Paramount has secured and is in the process of purchasing of a new state of the art 17,000 square foot production facility. This newer building is also in Phoenix and will provide Paramount with an additional 8,000 square feet of workspace. Paramount expects to have its Phoenix production capabilities fully up and running at this new facility within the next month or two. 

Let this be a cautionary tale for the sign community, to ultimately learn from the experiences of Paramount Promotions to take precautionary measures. Even though there is nothing that could have been done to prevent the fire and the cause is still unknown, there are other actions that can be taken to ease the difficulties that may stem from an unfortunate event.

Moving Forward

At the time of the fire, Paramount Promotions was in the process of building a new website so that all orders could be processed online, in the cloud, instead of in-house. With this type of system, a business, from day one, can immediately process orders and if needed -- as with Paramount Promotions -- send projects to another production facility with minimal effort.

The fire motivated Paramount to speed up the rollout of the website, and it showed the need to implement a cloud-based system sooner than later. The system was fully up and running within days of the fire. The timing of this transition was impeccable for Paramount and allowed for orders to be processed without interruption.

“We are now more streamlined than we ever were before,” Bergamo says. “Within a few days after the fire, to improve efficiency, we finished revamping our entire website, which has enabled all of our customers to seamlessly complete their orders online.”

Some Preparedness Tips

Many companies prepare themselves for hard drive failures, or failure of network drivers, which are fairly common. But what most companies do not plan on is the full and total destruction that is caused by an unfortunate event such as a fire or flood. 

“The main thing I would have done differently, and will do from here on out is to keep weekly full data back-ups off-site,” says Bergamo. “No one ever plans on or can even imagine the worst-case scenario—complete and total loss due to a fire. In hindsight, everyone should take precautionary measures.”

• Review and update your insurance policy every year 
  Bergamo's suggestion regarding insurance policies for any business is to take a look at the insurance policy and update it every year. Within all realms of business, owners get busy with production, sales and marketing activities and the last thing on their mind is insurance. It is typical for companies to push this type of paperwork aside and simply renew without updating.
• List equipment in the building section of your policy
  When setting your insurance policy, pay close attention to the amount listed under contents for your building coverage section. In an effort to save money with your insurance, you can move certain pieces of equipment into your building coverage section.
  These pieces can either be attached to the building, or they may weigh thousands of pounds and cannot be easily moved. It’s up to your insurance company to approve what can be classified in the building category.  Paramount Promotions now has four pieces of equipment weighing more than 5,000 pounds that are listed under building and is saving thousands of dollars in insurance per year.

For additional information about Paramount Promotions, please visit www.paramountpromotions.com, or call 602-306-1300.