2023 marks the 20th year that Jon Upton has been selling Year of Manufacture licence plates in Ontario. Jon is the proprietor behind this business: He paints the plates, designs the web site, answers the mail, buys the supplies, and does the accounting. Occasionally, he writes articles about himself in the third-person.
The first pair of Ontario plates that Jon sold specifically for Year of Manufacture registration was a mint pair of 1969 plates, back on September 3, 2003. Back then, no one knew about the YOM program, so business was very slow. Jon sold YOM pairs from his long-standing hobby website, The Back Bumper. There were no online pictures at first—just a list of plate years and numbers. As business picked up, Jon added images to the website, and made additions to the YOM stock more frequently.
Eventually, competitors surfaced, and it made sense for Jon to give his YOM sales a brand of its own. “OntarioPlates” wasn’t available as a web domain, and it was too long of a name. So Jon chose the domain “Ontplates,” registered his business under the name Ontplates.com, and weirdly started referring to himself as “we,” so he could say things like “We at Ontplates.com believe in client satisfaction.” Jon—the guy typing these words—takes a lot of care to project professionalism through this small business.
Jon set out to design a memorable logo for Ontplates.com. He didn’t want to hire an art company; doing so would cost as much as a year’s business revenue. He went without a logo for a few months (above) while creating and rejecting a few self-made drafts (below):
Eventually, he settled on a blue rectangle. It made sense, since Ontplates.com would sell many blue rectangles over the years. Jon learned how to use WordPress, built a unified website, and unveiled the new brand in late 2013.
Operating costs have ballooned over the past couple of years, but Ontplates.com is still chugging along at its ideal pace. As businesses go, we’re really the smallest of the small. Jon is our only employee; he’s a CEO who also has to sweep the floor. He paints in the summer when the shop is warm enough, and he stops in the winter when it’s too cold. There’s no doubt that our seasonal nature puts the brakes on the volume of business we can conduct. But if we were any more busy, we’d have to hire more employees!
Here’s to twenty years of proud service to classic car owners of Ontario!