All signs pointed to John Hall Jr. excelling in his field.
As president of AG Wraps, a Chesapeake-based custom vehicle wrap and graphics shop, Hall works as the third generation of his family in the sign industry. And his modern take on old-school marketing is a recipe for expansion.
Since he came on board, Hall said AG Wraps has maintained 15-30% annual growth. The business probably outgrew its old 6,000-square-foot building, where it was comfortable for 14 years in Great Bridge, about three years ago, he said.
To achieve the business’s goal of 30% growth within the next three years to reach the $5 million mark, Hall said he and his team realized they needed a bigger production and installation facility.
After a year of searching, the ideal industrial building at 913 Business Park Drive off Military Highway in Chesapeake became available. Hall purchased the 11,200-square-foot building for $1.4 million in April for AG Wraps’ new headquarters and put $220,000 in for renovations and new equipment.
A second location, opened six years ago at 4760 Virginia Beach Blvd. in Virginia Beach, operates as the sales showroom and was purely derived from a marketing need, Hall said. With a low marketing budget, the building itself is a type of organic branding.
“It’s turned out to be a really lucrative investment for us,” Hall said. “We get a lot of walk-ins there because it’s right in the heart of Town Center.”
And their work has spread throughout Hampton Roads and beyond — even nationwide.
“We have a lot of local companies that are franchises that are based here, so we ship graphics all over the country,” he said.
He named Chesapeake-based Silbar Security and Virginia Beach-based Zoomin Groomin as two of his vehicle wrap clients, equally locally grown and expanding businesses.
Nowadays, AG Wraps can wrap just about anything, including cars, food and box trucks, trailers, buses and RVs, boats, commercial vehicles, interior and exterior walls and storefronts.
“Because of our quality, our name, our designers and things like that, we garner a good bit of the area and people drive two to three to four hours to come to do business with us,” he said.
Aaron Lawyer, owner of Lawyer Garage in Virginia Beach, has been a regular customer of AG Wraps since its founding.
He said Hall has made him signs and fun custom vehicle wraps featuring Scooby-Doo’s 4×4 Mystery Machine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a Batmobile and DeLorean time machine.
“I come to him with these crazy requests and he gets it from a vision standpoint to full execution,” Lawyer said. “It’s been really exciting to watch John really grow that business.”
Hall’s career began when he was just 15 years old. Milton McKinney, Hall’s maternal grandfather, had owned Archbell Signs, a Norfolk-based business dating back to 1963.
Pete Archbell, a true craftsman of his time, had created the business focused on hand-drawn and hand-painted lettering. McKinney brought his talent to the team in the early 1970s and was quickly elevated to Archbell’s business partner. A decade later, the business made another shift when McKinney bought out Archbell and concentrated on screenprinting for larger runs of decals, signs and other wide-format advertising.
After Hall graduated from Oscar Smith High School in 2004, he left Archbell Signs and went to work for his uncle, Mike McKinney, who started Action Graphics and Signs the year before. Then in 2006, at just 19 years old, Hall bought the business.
“We were definitely like the small guys; we weren’t doing a lot of volume of work,” Hall said of the early days.
Two years later, he renamed it AG Wraps and pivoted the focus to vehicle wraps.
“It was the newest and latest and greatest trend in the sign industry,” he said.
Hall honed his skills and went on to maintain large local contracts, including Hampton Roads Transit, The Tide light rail, Old Dominion and Norfolk State universities and a variety of service-related businesses.
In 2018, Hall also became the owner of Archbell Signs, which keeps its focus on residential and commercial real estate signage needs, fabricated and monument signs, channel letters, lighted and box signs.
Today, Hall employs four workers at Archbell and 19 people at AG Wraps. He wants to expand the team with another graphic designer, junior sales associate and integrator.
Although Hall recollects his earlier dreams to become a real estate investor when buying his first home at 18, he has no qualms about the path he took.
“It’s been a fun ride,” Hall said. “We’re one of the bigger companies in the area that’s the go-to for vehicle wraps, storefronts and wall murals.”
Sandra J. Pennecke, 757-652-5836, [email protected]
