Rustic Falls Engraving—better known as RF Engraving—sits at the center of town in Grantsville, Utah. About 30 miles west of Salt Lake City, Grantsville is home to 12,000 people. While RF Engraving has done work across the country and internationally, the majority of their business is closer to home, including from nearby Salt Lake City.

Family Matters

The husband-and-wife duo behind RF Engraving has strong ties to the local community—and the industry.

By: Jason Henninger

(Originally printed in the January/February 2024 issue of Insights.)

Rustic Falls Engraving—better known as RF Engraving—sits at the center of town in Grantsville, Utah. About 30 miles west of Salt Lake City, Grantsville is home to 12,000 people. While RF Engraving has done work across the country and internationally, the majority of their business is closer to home, including from nearby Salt Lake City.

Savanna Broadbent runs RF with her husband, Brett. RF is a family affair through and through. The shop is located in a building that has been in her family for generations, and her family has lived in the town for roughly 200 years. “Ours is very much a family-owned and operated business,” Savanna says. “My parents allow us the opportunity to work here. They take care of the building maintenance, and when we’re going out of town, they’ll take care of things here.”

Brett, Savanna says, is the mechanic who ensures the machines run well, and he frequently learns how to work with new materials and design ideas. “He is the master of the programs we use and is constantly learning new ways to manipulate systems to work the way we need them to,” Savanna says. “His mental ability to see how a product will look before it is actually built is unparalleled.”

Savanna, meanwhile, is in charge of the personal relationships, advertising, checking wording, writing copy and invoicing. Their son, Marshall (age 4), who worked his “first shift” at the family business at four days old, is now old enough to help with things like taping, placing product stickers, building trophy pieces, delivering products to customers and thanking them for their business. “We love watching him work with customers,” Savanna says. Looking to the future, they hope the business will be carried on by their children and grandchildren.

Community Ties

The Broadbents' ties to their community show in many ways, including religiously, commercially and educationally. In addition to running RF Engraving, Savanna is an elementary school principal, and Brett teaches middle school history and robotics. While the multiple roles could be daunting, the Broadbents find it works well. “We have found the engraving world coincides with the school calendar well enough that we can operate both without feeling overwhelmed because our breaks from school often fall during the busiest times at the engraving shop,” Savanna says.

“When we need extra hands, we sometimes call in my father, who is a retired pharmacist, or my mother, a retired principal and former business owner,” she says. “They are also the face of our delivery team, taking items to our clients during the day. We have also called on great friends and family who are kind enough to donate their time.”

Their shop includes a small showroom and a conference room with space to display mockups. “Our showroom holds our smaller engraver because our customers often enjoy watching the process and our design computer,” Savanna says. They also have a larger engraver in the back, along with extra supplies and materials. “We also have a small toy area for both our own son and customers’ children that come with their parents.”

RF runs two Epilog engravers: an Epilog Mini18 and a Fusion Pro 24. They own multiple heat presses for commercial vinyl and a sublimation printing machine. “We also own an ‘ancient engraving artifact’ from the early days of engraving—a Wizzard XL, which is a diamond bit engraver with font cartridges that look similar to a typewriter,” she says.

Utah is culturally distinct for a few reasons, not the least of which is its high percentage of children. “We serve a lot of schools in various capacities from name tags to door plates to uniforms for teams and a lot of local children’s sports and groups,” Savanna and Brett say.

Utah is also, of course, the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. RF Engraving often creates mementos and commemorative plaques for the church’s missionary program, where young people travel abroad for a year and a half to two years. They also create commissioned items for nearby military bases and doctoral plaques for graduates of the College of Education at the University of Utah.

RF does not have quantity limits, so it’s not uncommon for a person to bring in a singular item to be engraved. “Because we do not have a quantity limit and we offer many different services, we get to serve all types of clients,” Savanna explains. “We have everything from the stay-at-home mom and crafter decorating their new baby’s room to the corporate executive opening a new firm.”

Personalized Service

Because RF relies heavily on local business, emphasizing customer service to create repeat customers, they haven't focused much on marketing or online sales. Their website, rfengravings.com, shows a small sampling of what they offer, and they are moderately active on social media, creating posts more frequently around the holidays. Their niece, Erin, is studying marketing and is helping them increase their presence.

“The glory of living in Small Town, USA, is that word of mouth matters and travels far,” Savanna and Brett say. “Our slogan is ‘Big city capabilities and products with small-town service.’ We strive to remember personal details about our clients and their businesses. When we attend the APA Expo, we take a few client accounts in mind and try to find new things we think they would enjoy. We try to get to know their families and welcome them. We strive to let them know our work wouldn’t exist without them and that we are grateful for every ounce of business we earn.” The Broadbents welcome feedback, and if a customer is unsatisfied, they do whatever they can to rectify the situation, which may include purchasing a replacement and engraving it for free.

Diligence in customer service and business in general is crucial to RF Engraving. They recommend “carrying business cards with you everywhere, not being afraid to speak up and just giving yourself time—understanding that you will frequently live ‘behind the money’ in this business as you wait for accounts to be paid in full. If you take the time to do a good job, the customers will come.”

Idea Fountain

At the 2022 Expo, RF Engraving won the Best Product award for a medallion celebrating an international ice skating competition. They are also proud of creating a tag for the first edition of “The Book of Mormon” in Danish and making awards for a Polynesian festival presented by Utah Governor Spencer Cox. “We also got to be part of a time capsule placed in the ground during COVID that will be opened again in 2120. It’s neat to know that even though we won’t physically be here when it’s opened again, we were part of that.”

One of the reasons RF Engraving joined APA is because the Broadbents love to collaborate with their fellow engravers. “When we read the Member2Member forum or work with companies we’ve met at the Expo, we know that we will receive high-quality assistance or products from someone who really knows the business we’re in,” Savanna says. 

Some of the reasons they attend the Expo is to find great deals on supplies, get new ideas, see the latest trends and get inspiration from the work of other personalization pros. “We always come away with more ideas than we could have ever asked for,” Savanna says. “I attended one of the classes where the teacher had us complete an activity where we wrote down what we loved doing and what we hated doing. She then asked, ‘Why do you keep doing what you hate?’ That was such an eye-opener for me and changed the way we focus on our advertising.”

Peak Perks

Savanna and Brett have run their business for more than a decade and stay in this line of work out of love for the profession. “The beautiful thing about this field that is unique to any other profession is that your sole purpose is to celebrate the good in the world!” she says. “Your duties include the creation of uniforms to unite teams, building trophies and medals to celebrate the culmination of hard work that paid off in triumph and achievement, designing plaques that thank or congratulate a person on a job well done, or commemorating the life of a person who changed someone’s world.”

One of the things Savanna and Brett love about working in education, especially with children, is that they get to “see the hope in the future of America as we watch each student learn to read, do difficult math problems, socialize and work through hard emotions. We get to see as they take their first step into the roles they’ll play in the world of the future.”

Engravers get to see the other end, Savanna says. These people that were once learning math under her tutelage are now grown up and “coaching little league football, retiring, saving a life: They made a difference,” Savanna says. “Someone recognized the potential that a teacher or parent once saw in them and provided a way to let them fly, and it’s now my honor, as the engraver, to encapsulate that performance in a plaque or award. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?”