Powder Coating Project

The days of the National Newspaper may seem to have lost its battle to the digital world but local small print papers have never been in greater demand. When the San Fernando Valley’s (CA) The Sun (el Sol) asked us to restore and refinish their newspaper stands with our advanced powder coating techniques, I was surprised. I thought that print was dead and certainly not needing to powder coat their newspaper kiosks.

The Sun (El Sol) explained to me the phenomenon that has occurred; as national brands move away from print, local coffee shops, bus stops, and the like are only offering local print. A demand that was created by lack of choice became a connection to the neighborhood. Now more and more people are picking up a local small print newspaper or weekly magazine and finding out what the Joneses are doing. This newfound interest has also encouraged small businesses to include local print in their advertising budgets and market to their neighbors.

Of course, we cannot leave the city officials out of the picture, as they saw more and more people walking around with local “free” print, they felt they needed to act. So they ‘asked’ the San Fernando Valley Sun to clean up their act and gave them one year to collect all of their boxes and have them match the new city color coordination code.

Sundial Powder Coatings was happy to help. These unassuming boxes had a lot going on with them. We needed to rebuild them with new plastic doors, all new labels, and also had to build a new shelf inside that wasn’t there before. All in all the powder coated metal newspaper and magazine kiosks look great, and the The Sun can rise again.