70 years in the making
Les Rose and Bill Motre, Romo’s founders, combined their last names to form “Romo,” and began their pursuit of the American dream. They had a passion for bringing art to life in places that others considered mundane. They created eye-catching logos, decals, and advertisements for car dealerships, retail stores, and businesses all over Green Bay, Wisconsin. All of the art was drawn freehand, and carefully crafted with screens, ink, and quality materials. Each piece was lovingly created and treated as a real work of art.
Les and Bill created all kinds of artwork, some of them big and some small. The process took a long time, often several weeks from start to finish. Creating the artwork required intense collaboration with clients, and because everything was so manual, it was difficult to do business over long distances.
Developing One of the World’s Most Recognized Logos
Green Bay is home to one of the greatest sports franchises in history, the Green Bay Packers. And it just so happens that Romo used to be located about one block away from the team’s headquarters. When Romo had its offices at the corner of Washington and Doty streets in downtown Green Bay, Les and Bill would run into members of the Packers organization all the time. They developed a good relationship with Gerald “Dad” Braisher, the team trainer and equipment manager. Dad used wooden placards to label each player’s locker, and Les hand lettered each and every one of those placards for him. Romo was also printing promotional bumper stickers for the Packers.
In the early 60’s, Vince Lombardi wanted a logo for the side of the Packers helmet. Together with a St. Norbert University intern named John Gordon, they created a mock up of a “G” in the shape of a football. Then he handed the idea over to Romo developed the art for the Packer “G” known around the world today. The logo first appeared as a “bumper sticker” on the side of the Packer helmets.
Fred Darling and Turner Harshaw saw an opportunity to build upon Romo’s great reputation in the industry and acquired Romo in 1983. The Darling family took on sole ownership of Romo in the mid 90’s when Turner retired.
Around that same time, artwork went digital, which had immediate and far-reaching effects on how business was done. Digital artwork not only improved workflow, but also made the process of creating and editing art transportable. You didn’t have to be located close to your customer anymore, and gradually graphics producers started aligning around markets instead of geographic territories.
The company’s focus became the graphic, not the equipment used to produce it. Gradually, Romo shifted from an “inside out” to an “outside in” approach. The goal was, and is, to find ways to design and engineer a durable graphic that delivers value from the client’s perspective, then figure out how to produce it.
Romo developed an internal R&D group and made additional investments in training and equipment. The company’s first internally developed innovation, an in-mold graphic, rolled off the line in the late 90’s. The objective was to help customers eliminate the need to manually apply graphics. Romo sells that product throughout the United States and around the globe.
