ANTIGO — Dalton Gallus might be the first to admit: when he started Wisco Sign LLC in March 2023, he was taking a major leap of faith.
He had sunk most of his money into the company, which would install signs — indoor and outdoor, for businesses and municipalities. But he didn’t have a single client. Nor, really, any employees — except his girlfriend, Alyssa Shilts.
Though she had worked in customer service for businesses her entire life, when it came to getting a business off the ground, “clueless” was the word she used to describe herself.
“When we started out, it honestly was just going through a list of businesses in the community and going for late-night drives and looking at all the signage that needed work done,” Shilts said.
“The next day, I’d be calling like 60 different businesses, big or small, and telling them what we could offer. We didn’t have anything to look at from us, so we didn’t have too much to really show people to convince them to go with us.”
Gallus shook his head as he remembered those early days of wandering around cold-calling with Shilts.
“She was with me right from the beginning,” he laughed. “We drove around Antigo, Wausau, Rhinelander, Appleton, Green Bay, and just started calling people that needed sign work. It was crazy. For the first month, we didn’t really get anything. Then we started having people calling us back, and we went from there.”
Now, just over a year on, Gallus’ business is in quite a different position.
After those first months during which he essentially did all the installation work himself, occasionally calling his father or friends when a few extra hands were needed, Gallus now has seven full-time employees. He maintains two spaces for fabricating the signs — the makeshift garage just west of Antigo where he launched the business, and a larger shop in Merrill — and is eying a manufacturing site in Antigo to consolidate in. This is all needed to keep up with demand, which he says has become substantial.
“We have contracts in Tennessee now potentially. We’re looking at another one in Oconto. I believe there’s one in Missouri. Another one’s in Florida. That one would be a national rebrand from that company. So we’re out of state quite a bit now. Even just decal jobs in Chicago we’ve done. And we’re down in Milwaukee all the time. I don’t take days off anymore,” he said, laughing again. “We’ve installed signs of 80, 90 feet at truck stops. We do trenching — we can’t run the actual main power, but we will trench out, from the sign to the building or wherever is needed so the electrician can run the power. From design, to working with the cities on permits, to augering and setting footings, to putting up the signs — every last detail, we do.”
A Northcentral Technical College graduate with degrees related to auto body work and welding, Gallus worked in construction most of his life, including for a company that erected steel beams in manufacturing facilities around the country. More recently, two years with a Wausau-based sign company inspired him to begin Wisco Sign.
“I saw how they went about doing stuff and I thought, ‘I mean, I can do better than this,’” Gallus said. “The owner didn’t know how to actually do the construction. I was brought on, given a truck in a week and a half, and told to just go figure it out. So I kind of figured it out by myself, had my own ways of doing it, and with my construction and fabrication background, everything kind of clicked.”
Shilts said the company’s attention to detail and emphasis on communication with customers have made it successful thus far.
“We try to communicate about everything with everyone we work with. Even if something takes a little bit longer, that line of communication is always top priority,” she said. “Also, our work is never low-quality. Even if it comes to people on a budget or anything like that, we always work with them. We always have a way to get around the hard parts of sales and getting customers, so that’s one thing that people always appreciate from us as a company.”
Mosaic Massage and Float Center and Bolen Realty, two local businesses where Gallus’ company recently completed installation projects, complimented these aspects of their experiences with Wisco Sign as well.
“He spent days here making sure everything was secure and stable,” said Mosaic owner Gina Losser of work Gallus did on an outdoor sign on her building. “There were two delays when they laid the ‘Mosaic’ over the top of the plexiglass because there were little bubbles. Then he reordered a whole new thing at no cost to us to make sure everything was perfect. He kept in contact with us and let us know play-by-play what was going on — I mean, he did a fabulous job.”
“The sign that I have inside my office, it doesn’t sit flat on the wall. It almost looks like a 3-D image — it looks fantastic,” said Bolen Realty owner Nick Bolen, who said he has known Gallus for years. “The new sign he put out front has about 500 LED bulbs in it, so it’s bright as can be. When you’re driving by at night, you can’t miss it. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s any different than any of the other sign companies’, but I know that so far, the service has been phenomenal, and I don’t think you get that with a bigger company. And to have somebody local like Dalton doing this and making a career out of it with his services so far, I can’t imagine that he’s not going to do big things.”
Shilts expressed admiration for Gallus’ positive approach to running the business.
“Never in my life have I had the chance to meet or even know someone that holds so much passion and motivation to create something — not just for himself, but for others,” Shilts said. “He is always thinking of how to be better; he never settles with ‘what works’ to get the paycheck...he is always trying to be the best that he can be with his business.”
Gallus, who has lived in Antigo since he was four years old, said local jobs like those at Mosaic and Bolen Realty have been by far his favorites. And despite his company’s growing load of contracts, he’s anxious to do more, including possibly for the City of Antigo. He already has designed potential signs that could greet visitors entering the city.
“If you’re from here, you always want to help your hometown anyway possible, and I think growing up here was a lot better than a lot of places. When I did construction and iron work, I traveled to the east and west coast and I was always happy to come back. I liked traveling and stuff like that, but once you hit Wisconsin, once you hit Antigo, it’s always a relief kind of,” Gallus said. “So I can do a sign in Milwaukee that I might see twice again in my life. But doing stuff in your hometown, you drive by that every day and it’s like, ‘Well, I did that. I’m from here.’ So it’s a little bit more rewarding.”
Note: To contact Wisco Sign LLC, call 715-350-0965 or email info@wiscosign.com.
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