75 Experiences That Mattered

1. 1948: The Jim Derse Sign Company opens in his mom’s two-car garage on 1751 N 49^th Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

2. 1950: Derse moves from the two-car garage, to a small office with garage space on N 16^th Street to accommodate for the growing size and scale of projects

3. 1952: The Jim Derse Sign Company moves into outdoor advertising

4. 1953: Derse starts the exhibit division with the building of an exhibit for Wisconsin Gas

5. 1953: The company expands to a new 10,000 sq. ft. building constructed on 27^th and St. Paul

6. 1955: The company begins to sell rotating signs in Milwaukee, quickly selling 62 rotating signs in the area

7. 1956: Derse paints the prominent Miller wall for the first time in the Miller Valley of Milwaukee

8. 1960: Cutler Hammer (now part of Eaton Corporation), our longest tenured client, becomes a Derse client

9. 1963: The company expands their office space with the purchase of the two-story building next to the 27th and St. Paul location

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11. 1966: First Derse Old Timers (DOTs) celebration for Derse employees of more than 10 years

12. 1966: Opening of the Derse Old Timers credit union, which was available to DOTs and their families

13. 1966: Derse paints the biggest billboard in the city of Milwaukee (8,400 sq. ft.), The Bread Board, for Mrs. Karl’s Bakery which used over 60 gallons of paint

14. 1966: Derse creates a new product, ADA/PAC, a cost-effective, light-weight 4’ x 8’ exhibit that can be set up by one staff member

15. 1967: Derse completes the Citgo sign in Milwaukee (one of the three Citgo signs in the United States)

16. 1967: McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America at the time, burned down overnight

17. 1971: Derse forms the Display Originators Division which used the silk screen process to develop displays for point of purchase advertising

18. 1973: Derse designs and manufactures our first ten-foot self-packing exhibit product

19. 1973: To extend services into southeastern Wisconsin, Derse acquires Graves Sign & Display in Racine, Wisconsin

20. 1973: Derse builds the Milwaukee Brewers’ beer barrel, chalet, and 24-foot stein for their mascot, Bernie Brewer, at County Stadium

21. 1977: Milwaukee operations consolidate into a 70,000 sq. ft. building at 62^nd and State Street

22. 1978: Derse sells a $15,000 exhibit to General Kinematics in Barrington, Illinois. The exhibit had a circular conveyor belt with a double-deck over it

23. 1980: Derse acquires the ASI Sign Systems franchise for the state of Wisconsin. We created architectural signage for hospitals and business wayfinding.

24. 1981: Derse completes our first-ever international project, a visitor center, in Saudi Arabia

25. 1982: Derse builds and installs a retail environment for Discover Milwaukee

26. 1983: To meet the needs of a growing client base, Derse opens a full-service facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan

27. 1983: Jim Derse receives the 1983 Silver Medal of the Milwaukee Advertising Club

28. 1983: Derse begins to design and build floats for the annual City of Festivals parade in Milwaukee

29. 1984: Employees at Derse begin using mobile bag phones to be more available to clients while on the road

30. 1986: Milwaukee experiences heavy rainfall, which resulted in flooding in the Derse Milwaukee building

31. 1986: Derse opens the Wisconsin Highway Business Signs (WHBS) division as an outgrowth of Derse’s exterior signage capabilities. These are the blue highways signs at off ramps for food, lodging, gas, and attractions.

32. 1989: The Derse Company is sold to a group of senior officers and managers – Bill Haney, Dan Vander Sanden, and Bill McNamara

34. 1990: Derse’s first million dollar exhibit debuts for Rockwell Goss at a printing show

35. 1990: Derse begins to give salespeople Chevy Celebrities to drive clients around

36. 1992: Derse completes a $1 million new build for Miller with a double-deck and a 28-foot tower

37. 1994: A full-service division is established in Las Vegas, Nevada to serve clients based on the West Coast

38. 1995: Derse completes its first marketing environment for Golden Books in New York

39. 1996: To capitalize on market conditions, Derse establishes a full-service division in Dallas, Texas

40. 1997: To expand services in a major trade show city, Derse opens a full-service division in Atlanta, Georgia

41. 1997: An international department is established to support clients exhibiting overseas

42. 1998: To meet growing customer needs, Derse moves its full-service Racine operations to the Chicago suburb of Waukegan

43. 1998: Corporate departments move into a newly renovated building located on the 62^nd Street property

44. 1998: Derse event planning business segment begins

45. 1998: For the first time, Derse exhibits at ExhibitorLIVE

46. 1998: Derse plans and executes the grand opening of the Wisconsin Center in downtown Milwaukee

47. 1999: Derse acquires assets from Design South (an Atlanta-based exhibit company) and Cosmos (a system rental operation). As a result, Derse establishes the SRS division which offers rental properties.

48. 2002: Derse’s first exhibit that includes experiential marketing (a bus ride experience for a drug treating schizophrenia)

49. 2002: A full-service division opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to meet the needs of clients based in the northeast U.S.

50. 2002: For the first time, Derse exhibits at the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Association (HCEA)

51. 2004: To streamline operations, the Grand Rapids facility is reorganized by merging with Milwaukee and Waukegan

53. 2006: Derse designs and executes a 60’ x 70’, two-story exhibit for Coca-Cola

54. 2007: Derse opens a sales, design, and warehousing facility in Minneapolis, Minnesota

55. 2008: Derse consolidates its Milwaukee division and Corporate headquarters in a newly built facility in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley (moved in in 2009, Silver Level LEED-certified)

56. 2008: Derse’s first time supporting a client at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)

57. 2008: Our current president, Eric Preston, begins a career at Derse

58. 2009: Derse’s first project with LED tiles

59. 2009: Derse wins a Sizzle award for our exhibit design at ExhibitorLIVE. The exhibit, Pause, was inspired by the Spanish steps in Rome. This exhibit has since been recognized as a winner of the Best of 30 Years in Exhibitor Magazine’s 30^th Annual Exhibit Design Awards.

60. 2011: For the first time, Derse attends the Association of Briefing Program Managers (ABPM) conference

61. 2011: Derse donates the land of the 420 million year old Schoonmaker Reef to the city of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin for preservation

62. 2013: Our current CEO, Brett Haney, begins a career at Derse

63. 2013: The Las Vegas division moves to a larger location to accommodate for our growing list of clients

64. 2015: Derse’s Marketing Environments business segment officially launches

65. 2017: Bill Haney, Chairman and former CEO, wins EDPA’s prestigious Hazel Hayes Award

66. 2019: Derse Marketing Environments completes Carrier’s award-winning Center for Intelligent Buildings in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

67. 2019: Brett Haney becomes Derse’s chief executive officer

68. 2020: Eric Preston becomes Derse’s president

69. 2020: As COVID-19 swept the nation, Derse builds temporary hospital rooms within the Exposition Center at Wisconsin State Fair Park and at the Great Lakes Naval Center

70. 2021: Derse acquires Nichols Exhibits in Northbrook, Illinois and begins operations from the Northbrook office

71. 2022: Derse acquires assets from Exhibitpro, an exhibit company out of Ohio

72. 2022: Derse surpasses pre-pandemic staffing levels and reaches an all-time high sales year

73. 2022: More than thirty years after first executing GE Medical’s exhibit at RSNA, Derse executes the GE HealthCare exhibit at RSNA 2022

74. 2023: Derse executes the John Deere & Wirtgen exhibit at CONEXPO, our largest ever exhibit at CONEXPO

75. 2023: Derse celebrates 75 years of experiences that matter

The past 75 years have all been possible because of our clients, partners, and employees.

We can’t wait to see where the next 75 years take us.