What a shop signboard costs after the sign is up

After the sign is up, the yearly council bill looks almost polite, a hundred or two ringgit where I can find a rate. The bill that can hurt is the one where you make the sign twice, and that one never comes with a schedule.

So I'd worry about the second one. But the council's letter is where everyone starts, so I'll start there too.

The letter that comes every year

Each council runs its own by-law, and the only fee tables I could read are Petaling Jaya's and Ipoh's, both on the council's own paper. Petaling Jaya's, in a document dated June 2021, has an ordinary unlit sign up to eight square metres at RM100 a year, and RM150 if it's lit.¹

It charges by type too, and a logo-type sign costs more unlit than lit, which I can't explain and won't try to. Ipoh goes by the square metre instead: RM80 for the first and RM10 for each one after on an unlit shop sign, which is RM120 on five.³

Kuala Lumpur is the one that worries people, and I think for the wrong reason. The Edge reported in 2016 that DBKL charged RM120 a square metre, on each piece, renewed yearly.² That rate is for product advertising: a DBKL officer in the report talked about walkways, glass walls and mall escalators, and the signboard permit is treated as a separate thing.

One year's licence on a five-square-metre sign, in ringgit

If your board has a shop's name on it, you're probably on the left of that chart. If it's got a drink company's logo and a slogan, I'd ask before assuming. Even the industry sources in The Edge's report weren't sure what the rule covered.²

The money in the council's drawer

Ipoh's application form has a line I hadn't expected. It asks for a receipt for a deposit of RM500 on a signboard, and RM5,000 on a billboard.³

That's the form as amended and in force from 2017.³ Petaling Jaya asks for a deposit too, equal to the licence fee, paid once at the first approval and claimable back when the shop moves or closes, provided the board has come down.¹ I can't say whether every council does this.

But it's a good reminder that a sign has an ending. The same form says that if you don't take the board down or claim the deposit within 30 days of the licence being cancelled, the money goes to the council.³

So a shop that closes in a hurry has one more thing to forget. I'd bet plenty do, though I don't have a number for that.

How a sign goes up, going by Ipoh's form

The form also wants the name of the maker and the contractor, plus a letter from the owner of the building or land.³ A sign is one of the few things a shop buys where the supplier's name goes on a government form.

The bill that isn't on any schedule

The language rule is where a board gets sent back. Ipoh's form says Malay should be larger, better placed and brighter than any other language.³

Johor Bahru's notice is more detailed. A business can keep a registered name written in another language, but all the content needs Dewan Bahasa approval, and if the council thinks the Malay is wrong, it can order you in writing to fix the sign by a set time.⁴

So the cost of a mistake isn't a licence fee. It's the maker coming back with a ladder.

Malay Mail reported both sides of this in KL in 2024. The Malaysian Chinese Restaurant Association, in a report Malay Mail passed on from another news portal, said strict enforcement was pushing up its members' running costs. DBKL said in a statement it was only making sure premises follow by-laws, and that it had issued 31 notices at six shopping malls that year, working with Dewan Bahasa.⁵

Premises without approval, DBKL said, can get a compound and have the sign removed.⁵ I'm not taking a side on what a signboard should say. The by-law has been there a long time and the bill for meeting it is real, and both of those can be true.

What the maker gets out of it

Here's where I'd love to show you a margin, and I can't. I couldn't find a sign maker's accounts, or a Malaysian price list with a date on it. What turned up was undated marketing from firms selling signs, and I'm not building on that.

My guess, and it's only reasoning, is that the first job isn't the whole business. A maker also gets the repair when the lights go, the swap when the shop renames, and the redo when an officer writes.

Which makes the maker the one person here who needn't mind a tighter rule. I'd also guess it isn't much fun taking a shopkeeper's call about a sign you made six months ago, so I'd expect a good one to ask about the approval before cutting anything.

Lighting, cleaning and the odd dead letter belong on this bill as well. I couldn't find anybody publishing what those come to, so I'll leave them unpriced rather than invent one.