Community Highlights: Meet Michael Moog of Giant Letters of Atlanta

Michael Moog

The journey of how Giant Letters of Atlanta began is a heartwarming story of a father’s love and a daughter’s wedding. In 2018, Michael and Kim Moog’s daughter, Sarah, asked them to create 5 ft. tall, marquee letters for her wedding. Sarah, desiring to spell out the word “DANCE” for her reception, couldn’t find a local company that sold or rented letters in her budget. Michael, who had professional experience with information technology and restaurant operations, just so happened to be good at woodworking as well, and wanted to make his daughter’s big night special.

Taking action, Michael found some free wood on Craigslist, gathered tools from his garage, and started building each letter by hand. The wedding, which was a two-hour drive from Michael’s home at the time, posed the challenge of transportation. In an effort to make the letters lightweight, and easy to transport, Michael designed a retractable kick-stand for each character using a few spare hinges & scrap pieces of velcro. He then used leftover trim paint from around the house to paint the letters white, and then made his final step, and only purchase of backyard string lights to create a classic, marquee look.

Sarah had her marquee, “DANCE” letters for less than $50.00, and Michael’s project was a huge success.

The reaction from friends and family after the wedding was overwhelmingly positive, which made Michael consider starting a side hustle. With the blessing and encouragement of his family, Michael posted an ad on Facebook for people to rent out “DANCE”. Pretty quickly, he rented them out a couple of times, and soon the requests started coming in for different letters, numbers, and specialty props. As demand grew, Michael started sourcing bulk materials, and recruited the help of his youngest daughter, Savannah, and her boyfriend, Gus. Giant Letters of Atlanta was officially created, inventory multiplied, and deliveries became more and more frequent every week.

Then, COVID hit.

May 2020
To Michael’s surprise, sales continued to grow and business continued escalating, despite of the pandemic. Managing the company, moving to a new house, and operationalizing each part of the business took a lot of hard work. Gus and Savannah took over workshop operations, and became a full-time delivery team. Michael’s oldest daughter, Laura, and her friend Brittany were hired as the phones team. Kim, Michael’s wife, joined the team as well, and started helping with a little bit of everything. Eventually, the business had grown to the point of recruiting a handful of other employees including Lindsey, a social media creator, and Hayley and Jason, who round out the delivery team.

At the heart of it all is a desire to serve others and the commitment to bring joy to people’s lives. Giant Letters of Atlanta (aka ‘GLoA’) has adopted some key pillars for its success: operational excellence, second-mile service, and creating remarkable memories for their customers. Michael says they are truly blessed to help people celebrate moments and milestones, and takes pride in GLoA’s strive to be the easiest part of your event. When you get a chance to meet this family-run business, you will be impressed but not surprised to see how a loving dad took a $50.00 investment and turned it into a thriving small business.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Relatively smooth, yes! – We really got started during Covid, so our biggest struggle was learning what was normal. During Covid, things were steady and always growing, but now we’re experiencing larger, seasonal swings. We’ve learned to adapt by having a very large inventory, because one week we might need thirty number 2’s and the next week we need fourteen letter A’s. We have a great team and our culture is to do whatever it takes to meet the demands and wow our customers.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
At Giant Letters of Atlanta, our perspective is that we aren’t in the marquee letter rental business, we are in the customer service business; we just happen to rent marquee letters, numbers, characters, and props. Every aspect of our business is focused on creating a positive experience for our customers. Every phone call is answered quickly by the team, who genuinely enjoys talking to people. We try to over-communicate to our customers each step of the way. This not only creates a great experience for the customer but really helps us avoid any surprises or mistakes. We all feel like we have the best job because we get to help people celebrate important memories and major milestones in their lives. We strive to be the easiest part of your party.

One thing we want to let our potential customers know is that with 2-3 weeks notice, we can build anything custom they can dream of. We’ve done custom work for major brands like Nike, Goodwill, and BravoTV, as well as some celebrities around the Atlanta area like Future, and Spice from the show ‘Love & HipHop’.

Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
I have a circle of mentors to help me personally and professionally. I also try to join as many organizations as I can to get connected into the community. Because my business is unique, I have to find mentors who are business leaders in other industries, but I view this as positive because they provide perspectives I might not otherwise see.

I recommend business clubs, book clubs, chamber of commerce, and any other group of people trying to network, learn and grow.