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My name is Cindy Hadfield and I became a print distributor in 1998. When I started, I knew nothing about printing. I learned everything by trial & error and by quite a few costly mistakes. I went from owning a small press in my garage to the Quikproof.com system that I have today. After I quickly learned how sophisticated the printing world can be, I started sending my printing orders to print manufacturers. There was still a learning curve with sending orders out to be printed. Getting so caught up in all the administrative work that had to be done, sales suffered due to lack of time.
In 2002, I went on vacation. 3 days into the vacation I received a phone call from a company that was looking for a quote on a small order of checks. We went through all the normal steps. I gave them a price and once approved, they faxed me a copy of the check to be printed. They informed me that they changed banks so all the MICR information was going to be different. They faxed it to me and I couldn't read it so they had to mock it up and refax it. Every time they faxed something I had to go to an office supply store to receive the fax. After receiving a clear copy of the check, I faxed the order to my print manufacturer. My printer called and said they needed a spec sheet from the bank so they knew how the MICR line needed to be spaced out. I called the customer and they had their bank fax the spec sheet to me. I turned around and faxed it to the printer. By this time, it had cost me probably $10.00 in faxes and 6 days of my time for a simple set of checks. Of course, this could have all taken place in one day, but when you play phone tag and the person you are dealing with is out of the office and in meetings, it becomes a long process. When all said and done, it cost me 6 days of my vacation and running back and forth for the faxes, I probably made about $12. What is your vacation time worth? After this very frustrating experience during the first half of my vacation, it prompted me to spend the rest of my vacation coming up with a solution for this to never happen again. After several programmers, thousands of dollars, and sleepless nights, Quikproof.com was born.
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