Sign Maker Profile
From ‘sticker lady’ to signage savant
Having stumbled into a position as a graphics specialist in a motor factor, Clare Scammell has gone on to develop her skills and business. Acting editor, Benjamin Austin, paid a visit to the GKs Graphics owner to talk about how falling into the position altered her future to become a successful business owner.
‘
I just fell into this industry’ is a common phrase we hear from so many within the sign and graphics business. It is a profession that seems very few seek out but once you’re in it, its talons clasp tightly, most of the time never letting go.
It’s easy to see why. There are very few industries that allow such creative licence through so many different mediums, and with so many new and interesting requests being made every day, no day is the same.
And this is the exact scenario that found itself taking hold of Clare Scammell, now owner of GKs Graphics.
Having taken her first steps into the industry 10 years ago, the colloquially named ‘sticker lady’ has grown her own sign and graphics business from a humble side-hustle in a car parts high street shop into its own and growing platform.
A chance encounter GKs Graphics was not even a passing thought a decade ago, with a financial necessity forcing Clare to seek more work. She said: “I was working with animals before, and so this is a complete career change… I needed to top up some wages. “I found a local motor factors that had a sign writing department within
Clare Scammell, owner of GKs Graphics
it. Very random, and it was such a strange makeup. There was the graphics department, there was a cycle repair shop, and then there were the motor factors like car parts.
“But I'm into my cars, so I just thought, ‘oh, I like that. I'll do a bit of that’. "The person doing the sort of signage part of the business at the time left, and so I thought, 'Yeah, I'll give that a pop.' And then I fell into it that way.” At the time, the sign writing section
was just a small corner of the shop with simple equipment but Clare made this little corner her own.
"As the reins were handed over to me and as it became mine, I kind of built it and made it more business-oriented.” “I moved the customers from sort of the last minute 'I want this right now' tiny little cut vinyl sticker to starting more commercial. “I would start doing sign writing for vans, building contacts, and building relationships.”
Eventually, Clare’s little enterprise grew from its own corner to taking up a substantial section of the shop, creating a business in its own right.
Yet when taking over, Clare made a strategic decision to retain a link to the original business. She said: “The old shop was called GK Motorfactors, so I called this GKs Graphics, to keep that connection.
Clare refilling her Epson printer | 30 | May/June 2026
“People often referred to me as the ‘sticker lady from GKs'. I’d spent all that time building those relationships. I still wanted people to know I’m here. I’m still the same person.”
www.signupdate.co.uk
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