Ruggles Sign Company is truly a family owned and operated business.  John F. Ruggles, Jr.-founder of Ruggles Sign Company-grew up in Corbin, Kentucky, where his father operated a paint and wallpaper store.  John, Jr. studied at the University of Kentucky and held aspirations of one day becoming an attorney.  However, when a nearby neon sign shop went on the market (in Corbin), John, Sr. purchased the business.  His son, John, Jr., was put to work in the shop to learn the trade of neon tube bending.  

Shortly thereafter, John, Jr. went to work for three months without pay to learn more about the neon trade at a business in Asheville, North Carolina.  Upon his return to his hometown, he discovered a large hailstorm had wrought extensive damages to signs all over Corbin.  He recalled at this point, “I got busy and learned the trade the hard way.”

Ester Ruggles vividly remembers watching his older brother, John, Jr., carefully shaping the neon tubes and filling them with gas.  As a high school student, Ester dabbled with neon tube bending alongside his brother, in their father’s sign shop.   

This was the birth of Ruggles Sign Company.  When Ester got out of the service, he went to work in his brother’s modest neon shop.  Ester has been tube bending regularly since that time. 

All those items were done in red neon along with some menu items that were done in green neon.  At the time the sign was built, it sold for $10,000.00; but the same sign today would sell for around $75,000.00 to $100,000.00. 

Another early Ruggles job was to paint a sixty-foot globe that eventually wound up at the Brussels World Fair! 

From modest beginnings, Mr. Ruggles eventually established a full-service sign company.  Once the full-service business was firmly established, Mr. Ruggles retired from neon tube bending.  He turned almost all the neon work over to his brother, Ester. 

Around 1975, Ruggles bought out another local sign company, the Jim Ramsey Sign Company, which was one of the few sign shops that was in business when Ruggles Sign was first established.  While the Jim Ramsey Sign Company specialized in commercial or hand-painted signs, Ruggles’ focus had been neon and electric signs.  The combined businesses complimented one another nicely. 

John Ruggles relocated the Ruggles Sign Company plant, around 1977, to 304 North Upper Street in Lexington.  Around this time, Mr. Ruggles thought seriously about selling the business or merging with another sign company.  After all, he had no prospects of passing the business on to a family member.  Succession continued to be a problem until 1985, when his granddaughter, Anna, came to work for the company.  Slowly, after a few years of sign shop experience, she and her husband, Tim, began assuming the daily operations and management of the business.   

Ruggles Sign Company continued manufacturing signage at their North Upper Street plant for the next seventeen years.  The Ruggles Sign property was located adjacent to the Transylvania University.  Finally in 1994, the University purchased the Ruggles Sign building and others nearby.  The former sign shop building has since been razed to make way for an athletic field, which is a beautiful compliment to the Northside Neighborhood.  It was at this time that Ruggles Sign Company purchased the former Keebler Company facility and relocated to Versailles, Kentucky. 

Granddaughter, Anna, and grandson-in-law, Tim, purchased Ruggles Sign Company in 2000. Granddaughter, Elizabeth, works as National Sales & Marketing Coordinator. After over 40 years, Ester is still a neon tube bender for the company. Ester is understandably proud of his craft, which only a few in the country have truly mastered. Ester, speaking of his neon work, says, “An artist gets a great deal of satisfaction from his work and I get a great deal of satisfaction from mine. When I put up a piece of neon, I know it’s going to last a long time.” 

After 50 years in the industry, Mr. Ruggles continued to stop by almost daily to check on operations until his death in 2001. Mr. John F. Ruggles, Jr., once reflected back on his career in the sign business in this way: “I have enjoyed the sign business; I don’t know if I would have been a good lawyer.”