Central KY residents turn to lawn greetings to celebrate. Multiple companies benefit.

Dec. 24—You've seen them everywhere this year: Giant messages spelled out in signs sprawled across lawns all over town wishing the recipient a happy birthday or anniversary or congratulating a graduate or retiree.

The signs, also known as yard cards, have popped up outside nursing homes and hospitals to thank health care workers for their labors. And they've been set up at schools where they offered encouragement to teachers and students who could no longer go inside.

While many small business owners are hurting from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the yard card business has flourished as customers find new ways to mark milestones.

"It just took off immediately, booming business," said Kyla Wombles, who started her Sweet Southern Sayin's yard card business earlier this year.

Owners of several similar Lexington-area businesses said they've enjoyed being able to offer people a way to celebrate special moments with family and friends when they can't be physically close.

The increase in business has come at the right time for some owners, too.

Wombles and her husband, Mark Wombles, own Distilled on Jefferson in Lexington and Heirloom and Mezzo Italian Cafe in Midway.

When COVID-19 caused shutdowns, they didn't know how their restaurants would fare. They decided they needed a side hustle as "insurance."

"We didn't know how long this thing would last," Mark Wombles said.

Sweet Southern Sayin's increased the workload when Kyla Wombles already had a lot on her plate: She's a teacher at Sayre School, she handles all the bills for the restaurants, and she's a mom of four.

Now, she and the kids work together to put out about 15 signs a week, and Mark Wombles helps pick them up in the evenings when he finishes at the restaurants.

"The whole family helps out with it, and they love it," Kyla Wombles said. "I love decorating, and I love being outside."

Many customers, she said, are decorating in conjunction with a drive-by party or shower.

Karen Harvey, who has operated Sign Gypsies of Central Kentucky for about three years, said she's put up lots of signs this year welcoming new babies.

"There's a lot of grandparents that can't go into the hospitals or visit them," she said. "It brings a lot of joy."

Owning her sign business, which is part of a franchise, was a godsend when she got furloughed and then laid off from her full-time job in July, Harvey said.

"This has been kind of the saving grace for our family," she said.

More Central KY businesses pop up to meet high demand

For Quentin Starks, a misunderstanding that happened multiple times got him into the business.

In the spring, Starks made an 18-by-24-inch yard sign to celebrate his daughter's school achievements and posted a photo of it on Facebook.

As friends and family saw what he'd made and wanted signs of their own, it developed into a small business for Starks, and LEX-18 did a story about his new yard sign operation.

The only problem: Some people were a little mixed up about what kind of signs he was offering.

People who wanted a giant "Happy Birthday" or "Congratulations" greeting across their front yards began calling Starks for help.

Finally, Starks said, he decided there "must be a market for it."

So he invested some of the money he'd made creating small signs in a set of giant yard cards. He gave his new venture a name that left no doubt about what kind of signs it offered: Big Ol' Yard Letters.

Since then, he and his fiancee, Rachel Stevenson, have set up more than 250 Big Ol' Yard Letters displays, he said.

Most yard card business owners said they hadn't been hurt by increased competition as more companies have sprung up this year.

"There were so many requests, I think everybody was turning down requests in the middle of the summer," said Brenda Travis.

She and her husband, Steve Bowers, are both retired from the Lexington Fire Department. Together, they started Central Kentucky Yard Greetings three years ago.

They're part of a nationwide business group that gets its signs from Bluegrass Greetings in Paris.

"We kind of wanted to do something fun on a really part-time basis that we could do together," she said. "It's really fun. Everybody just loves it."

But when the pandemic hit, Travis said she and Bowers thought people would be out of work and not interested in paying for fun extras like lawn greetings.

"We were sitting on the couch thinking, 'What are we going to binge-watch next,'" Travis said.

They weren't on the couch long.

"The phone started to ring, and it didn't quit," Travis said. "We were doing nine or 10 (displays) a night."

Since then, she said business has returned to "normal," and they are averaging about two or three displays a night.

Randy and Carrie Satterly, who own Yard Card Barn, said life has returned to a more manageable pace since this summer, but they're still swamped.

In May alone, Randy Satterly said, they put up over 300 sign displays, more than they had done in a full year before.

"Now we're doing probably about 15 a week," he said, which is still a big increase over past years when a good month would've been about 20 signs.

COVID-19 limitations create many new customers

The Satterlys are longtime veterans of the yard sign game. They bought the business from a Northern Kentucky operator more than eight years ago.

Over the years, Randy Satterly said business had plateaued and then "started diminishing."

Then came 2020.

"This year, it's just taken off like a rocket," he said. "I was blessed with work."

From April to June, Satterly said he worked 80 to 100 hours a week.

And several business owners said getting those big cheery signs up isn't as easy as it looks.

Most of them work late at night and early in the morning to install the signs, so the recipients are surprised to see them when they wake up.

The owners return about a day later to pick the signs up again.

"Weather definitely plays a role in my outdoor decorating," said Kyla Wombles, of Sweet Southern Sayin's.

The summer months were the most difficult. Rain softens the ground and makes it easier to get the signs pushed down deep, she said.

She said she learned that durable signs are important since "some of them bend and break."

"I did a lot of research," Wombles said. "I realized really quickly certain signs weren't going to work."

"People's yards aren't always level," Starks added, so sometimes getting everything straight takes a little extra work.

"We want it to look good from the street and look good in pictures," he said.

Most businesses offer basic one-day sign rentals for a flat fee in Lexington and charge an additional fee for surrounding counties.

The business owners said the best part of the job is helping people.

Satterly said one woman had called Yard Card Barn every four to six weeks since May to set up a sign outside the nursing home where her father lives.

Since she can't visit him, she wants to brighten his mood with messages like "We Love You, Dad" and "You're Our Star."

"We definitely enjoy bringing happiness and smiles to people during 2020, when people definitely needed it," Satterly said.

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