Our factory was founded as the Cleveland Porcelain Enameling Co., by Vern E. Messner. It was 1936, and the porcelain-coating plant where he worked closed during the Depression. He set up shop in a garage and offered porcelain enameling service for stove parts and produced porcelain advertising signs. Within six months he had the financial backing he needed to relocate the business to it's present location in the Cleveland neighborhood on East 65th Street, known as Slavic Village. The Polish & Czech immigrants who lived in the friendly enclave provided a pool of steady labor for the fledgling company. In 1941, Vern expanded his product line to include porcelain enameled safety signs. We marketed ourselves as Standard Signs from then on.

During WWII, Standard Signs turned it's production to heat treating aircraft parts. Meanwhile, to support the war effort, most of the existing porcelain enameled signs were being scrapped for their metal - a great loss for us all!

Now led by the third generation of Messners', Standard Signs is one of the nations leading manufacturers of porcelain enameled products. We continue to produce porcelain on steel in our Cleveland factory in Slavic Village.