Spinners step up moves in a sign of the times

Hollywood Boulevard isn’t the easiest place to attract attention, with the Cinderellas trolling for pictures and Darth Vaders fighting with Transformers for a spot on the pavement.

But Matthew Doolan entranced a few dozen passersby Tuesday while promoting the nearby Virgin Megastore.As the crowd cheered, Doolan threw an arrow-shaped sign 10 feet in the air and caught it behind his back. He twirled the arrow and wheeled it around his body, creating a blur of red, then halted its revolution precisely so the Virgin Megastore logo stopped right-side up.

The 19-year-old from San Diego with a pierced lip was competing against eight other spinners -- those sign-wielding roadside marketers who advertise houses, jewelry and liquidation sales -- in the first-ever West Coast Spinning Championship, and each had different tricks up his sleeve. That’s because advanced moves don’t only help Doolan’s chances of winning the competition, sponsored by Virgin; they also help the business prospects of his employer, Aarrow Advertising.

The Los Angeles company has found that skillful spinners can help it lure new clients as the housing market implodes and advertising dollars become more scarce.

“It’s about getting attention and delivering the message -- not just being another sign,” said Mike Kenny, one of Aarrow’s co-founders. “More complicated moves attract more business.”

The moves are definitely complicated. One competitor spun a sign atop his head for 10 seconds. Another threw his high into the air, where it comes perilously close to the audience. A girl in the crowd shrieked.

The housing crisis could have been a death knell for Aarrow. About 90% of its business used to come from developers looking for help selling their properties, Kenny said.

But the company went after new businesses in early 2008 when the market started to crash, he said, and it found that advertisers liked the way its spinners grabbed attention in an advertising-saturated world.

“They see you and they see the sweat on your back and the dedication, and they know it’s not something you go out there and nonchalantly do,” said DiJon Rice, a spinner who won Aarrow’s nationwide competition in 2007.

In the last year, Aarrow has promoted luxury apartment buildings, Little Caesars Pizza and mobile phone retailers such as Go Wireless. Aarrow plans to open franchises in five cities and a handful of countries next year.

The spinners’ moves attracted a crowd at the competition. A man climbed on a traffic light to try and see over it, but he was chased away by a clown who was having trouble selling balloons because of all the attention paid to the spinners.

“If people are that dedicated to their work, whatever they’re selling must be worth it,” said Cassidy Jeslyn, a Pasadena student who stopped to watch.

Kenny said advertisers are looking for a cheap way to get that kind of attention. Aarrow charges $25 an hour and up for its spinners’ services. “With the economy slowing down, people are really starting to realize how cost-effective we are,” he said.

Other companies are eschewing sign-spinning for the more austere sign-holding. Anthony Fick, owner of Sign Sale Inc., said he considered spinning a distraction and that his San Diego company was “backing off of it.”

That’s good news for Aarrow, which has seen a 60% rise in applications from prospective spinners this year. Its website crashed a few weeks ago when too many people were trying to click on the jobs section.

For Doolan, who won the top prize at Tuesday’s event, that means more competitors, which means he’ll have to invent more moves. He has already patented the Roman Spear Toss, which requires the spinner to hurl the sign into the air and catch its point on the way back down.

Making up new moves “will never end,” he said. “I had even more tricks up my sleeve that I didn’t use.”

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alana.semuels@latimes.com