NILES — When Heather Drotoz was young, most weekends she and her siblings would pile in the van with their parents and drive hundreds of miles across the Midwest. Their destination? Arts and craft shows.

Started in 1987 by Bill and Vivian Matthews, of Niles, Uniquely Crafted Signs sells a variety of customizable wooden signs ranging from RV markers to holiday decorations.

“My mom and dad started their business 30 years ago out of their house, which is still where it remains,” Drotoz said. “It’s mostly family — me, my siblings, aunts and uncles — we all pitch in.”

Unlike many craft vendors, Uniquely Crafted Signs is the Matthews’ family’s full-time business, thanks in large part to the popularity of the product. Drotoz estimated that each year the family creates at least 20,000 signs to sell at various markets.

“My sister, Holly, is the artist, and my brother [Bill Jr.] does the computer work,” Drotoz said.

Bill Sr., a retired salesman, helped his wife build a hobby into a fully operational business. Today, Vivian leads business operations and attends most craft shows, and Heather jokes that her role is to “do whatever my sister and mom tell me to do.”

“We do about 35 shows a year if you include every week in the summer my mom goes down to Shipshewana,” Drotoz said. “We market in about nine different states.”

Uniquely Crafted Signs’ inventory is so large that their display takes up two to three vendor spaces at local craft shows, and features at least 300 wooden signs of varying designs and sizes per show.

“It takes about 36 man hours to set up our display,” Drotoz said. “If they only give us six or seven hours to set up, we have to take a lot of people with us to get it up in time.”

Drotoz credits a quality product for the longevity of the family business.

“If you have a good quality product and really make a sign that lasts forever, [your customers] become repeat buyers almost year after year,” Drotoz said.

The wooden signs are designed on a computer, and certain pieces are cut out to make the markers three-dimensional. Hand-painted messages with quirky sayings or family names are added to signs, and customers can have many of the signs personalized at craft shows.

“Seasonal signs always sell well, but right now, it’s Christmas and Grinch signs [doing well],” Drotoz said. “But we always have our kids’ room signs selling the most. Team signs are popular with the guys. Unicorns are big.”

Drotoz said the family continuously updates its inventory based on trends and requests from customers, and different shows may feature different signs, because the family is constantly creating new signs.

“I think to be successful that people have to come up with new ideas and be creative, just to stay up on what people want,” she said. “We ask ourselves, ‘what movies are coming out? What do kids like these days? What teams are popular?’”

In addition to her biological family, Drotoz said she has developed an extended family throughout her many years traveling to craft shows with her parents.

“It’s almost like our crafter family,” she said. “They all get together and some of their crafter friends will help each other out, and tell us about good shows. It’s kind of just teamwork when we are at these events out of town. [Crafters] are from all over — some people from Montana or Missouri, so we’ll tell them what shows go well and what shows won’t.”

After all this time, Drotoz said the biggest hurdle in a family business — especially one that works out of its home — is being self-employed.

“It requires a certain motivation,” she said with a chuckle. “You have to be motivated and want to go to work.”

In a crafting climate that relies heavily on internet sales, the Matthews family has continued to prioritize face-to-face interaction with customers, traveling to dozens of shows per year to sell their products in person.

“I’m new to getting the relationships built on Facebook — it’s just this last year that I stared to build the page,” Drotoz said. “It helps [her parents] not go to so many shows as they get older.”

Still, Drotoz said no matter how they connect with clientele, they know customer service is key to their business’ success.

“When we travel to different shows, we build rapport all over,” she said. “You build relationships with people. They come back not just because they like your product, but because they like your service.”

Uniquely Crafted Signs, as well as information on upcoming shows, can be found online at uniquelycraftedsigns.com, etsy.com/shop/UCSign, and on Facebook.