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| Living on the Edge |
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| Ice Shards and Paddle |
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| Rock and Ice, Phelps Bay |
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Water and Ice
Had a really great day on the water. The lake has been mostly frozen the last week and a half, so I thought that paddling season was over. Imagine my delight when I woke up to find that the center of the lake had iced out, with just the ring of ice around the shore. I was able to break through the shore ice, and get my boat out onto the open water. Weather was overcast with a temp of 35 degree's and a 5 mph breeze.
Monday, November 04, 2019
Thank you Quad
After 35 years working for this amazing company, it is time for me to call it a career. Words cannot express the love that I have for this company and all it has allowed me to accomplish. More than anything, Quad is all of you. To all the people that have mentored me and all the people that have in a small way allowed me to help you, I give you a heartfelt thank you. You are all part of what makes me who I am.
My first day at Quad, March 12 1984 was as a press room new hire. Back then we had classes of 60 new hires start on the same day for 2 weeks of morning lecture on the basics of print taught by Harry Quadracci and Ed Kelly and afternoons of lab, jogging books on M-11 and M-12 which a the time in the Sussex plant where the only presses in the single pressroom, as well as presses in Pewaukee. Next to that building was the finishing room with UB-1 as the only other machine in the plant. Upon graduation, there was a receiving line with HVQ and the end, shaking our hand, handing us our uniform and daring us to dream big! My dream was prepress, and at the end of my first year, I moved into Enterprise Graphics our prep department.
After six years working on various capacities such as process cameraman, stripper (not the kind you're thinking), proofing and project coordinator I had the opportunity to transfer to Anaheim CA to help start up our first remote pre-press location in September of 1984. This new location allowed us to better serve our west coast clients such as Cousteau Society, NFL Properties, Architectural Digest and Peterson Publishing. I'll never forget my 2 hour interview in Harry's office with him grilling me on what a stupid idea it was for me to move my family to CA. In the end I wore him down and with a smile he said, OK you need to be in Anaheim on Monday. This meeting was on Thursday, so 4 days notice!
The move to CA was all that I could have hoped for. Together with future plant Dir Ken Eazell, who was still in his early 20's we helped build the Anaheim site into a 24 x 7 operation with 100 pre-press technicians at its peak. We still have some great people from that team including Ken, Robert Bradvica, Manny Diaz, Greta Berry-Trickle and Brett Mullienaux. Together we taught the team the core values of Quad.
In 1994, Tom Frankowski asked me to join a small pre-press sales team he was building and I gladly accepted! In this new role I worked hand in hand with our sales offices in LA, San Francisco and Seattle. This was just when desktop publishing was taking off. Our tag line: Quad, from Desktop to Doorstep
In 1998, Joel Quadracci was still early in his role of VP of Sales. He was in the process of building the initial sales leadership team to run each of the 12 sales offices. Joel asked me to lead the LA team which at the time had 4 sales reps including the legend Herb Siderman. In the 8 years I was fortunate to work with the office to grow our team and our sales revenue to more than double with clients such as Weider Publications, GB Data, NFL properties
In 2002 my world was changed forever with the passing of Harry Quadracci. HVQ as we called him was like a second father to me. He created a company where a shy kid like me could have opportunities to learn and grow and become more that I ever dreamed I could be. I will be forever grateful for the love and support he showed my young family in our early days in California.
2006 saw me move from LA to Minneapolis where Dave Blais had asked me to come and help grow our pre-press client roster. Working with Stu Moore on the sales side and Sharon Meister in operations I was introduced to Catalog sales, a new world for me. Early in my time in MN Sharon introduced me to Dave Moffat who had developed a content driven page building tool called Product Center, which ultimately became Marketers Studio. This was to be the foundation to much of our success in the market which customers like Gaiam, Rockler and Bluestem seeing the benefits of a single source of truth data driven workflow.
2007 Scott Ingram who was at the time running our Denver office reached out for help introducing his market to Quads media solutions offering. It was fun to work with Scott in growing his business and his sales team. We did lots of work infusing Quad culture into his growing team and it was a blast.
In 2008, Shawn Pye joined Scotts team in Denver and he introduced me to the world of Associations. The biggest and most complex being the Olympic sports National Governing Bodies (NGB). Using our bundling of digital and print solutions we grew that client base over the next 8 years to over 16 sports including US Figure Skating, USA Triathlon and USA Wrestling. The NGB's also allowed me to be a small part of the Olympic Dream team of Shawn, Amber Forge and Lisa Votapek. If you want a fun story, ask Shawn to tell you about the first sales call he and I went on together!
July 2010, the day we bought World Color and went public on the same day was a day of foundational change. Our office in Minneapolis grew by more than double. With this growth there was lots of new opportunity.
End of year 2011, we signed a contract extension with Bluestem securing the print and awarding Quad with onsite page building, all photo, image retouching, vendor image management and implementation of Marketers Studio, Asset Manager, Softproof Manager and Photo Track. This deal also meant the expansion of photo into our new Bloomington, MN location.
January 2013 brought the Vertis acquisition, and with it, my introduction to retail and grocery. Another new world. Data driven workflow would continue to be an advantage for us. The day after Vertis joined out company, I was introduced to Eric Keuth. With Eric we sold the first instance of Retail Studio along with an onsite team to the then start up Fresh Thyme Farmers Market. Lucky's Market soon followed.
In 2015 what used to be known as Media Solutions (our pre-press offering) became BlueSoHo, our initial push into the agency world. BlueSoHo combined Media Solutions, Media Planning & Placement and Nellymoser digital (with the Brown Printing Co acquisition) into a stand alone division of Quad/Graphics. At this time we also started to the lay the early groundwork for transitioning Sales to Business Development and Account Management.
2016 was a big year for us with Bluestem. In January we were awarded the Mobile App development contract for both Fingerhut and Gettington brands on both iOS and Android platforms. Later in the year we negotiated a contract extension for the existing Fingerhut and Gettington work as well as all of the Orchard brands part of the portfolio, making it the largest catalog deal in our history! The team of Christine Lloyd, Kathy Lund, Sharon Meister, Sam Zeidler and others made this deal possible.
2018 was a big grocery year for the team. We added onsite page production and Retail studio to 5 banners of Ahold Delhaize as well as onsite page production and account management at Lucky's markets in Colorado. These were the first accounts to adopt the Client services model that was the foundation of Ivie, and is now a normal part of the new Quad 3.0.
2019 and the rebrand of Quad, the culmination of all the ground work we had been laying since 2015. A new marketing solutions partner mindset and with it a true agency model of Business Development andClient Services. We were awarded additional on-figure apparel photo from Bluestem which created the opportunity to put a 5,000 square foot studio on site. That now makes our Twin Cities photo presence with onsite’s at Northern Tool, Sportsman's Guide, Bluestem and our corporate studio in Bloomington.
There you go, 35 years and 7 months. What a ride. The list of people I owe my career to is long. Please know that each person who helped me left a profound impression on me. I have done my best over the years to pay that help forward as often as I could. There are a few people I want to say a personal thank you to.
Harry Quadracci: Made me believe in myself, helped me learn to build teams and provided me with constant inspiration.
Herb Siderman: Taught me how helping customers is much more importation than "Selling" to customers.
Tom Frankowski: Taught me to think and act like an owner.
Joel Quadracci: Saw more in me, than I did in myself. Thank You.
Dave Blais: Don't do business with people you can't trust.
Renee Badura: Showed me that the team can be stronger than the individual parts.
Greta Berry-Trickle: The work we did early in the development of Anaheim was a career highlight!
Tim Ohnmacht: Showed me the importance of not folding like a deck chair on the Titanic.
Andrea St Thomas: I learned that working 13 days in a row can be fun!
Sharon Meister: Helped me understand I'm in sales because I suck at math.
Stu Moore: Don't drive, shave and eat soup at the same time.
Dave Moffat: Your genius in workflow changed my career.
Ken Eazell: There is no one I rather face a challenge with than you.
Scott Ingram: Building the Denver team with you was a career highlight.
Shawn Pye: Selling 3.0 before it existed. Our work with associations in general and NGB's in particular. Man, we kicked some serious butt!
Amber Forge: The future of Quad is in your capable hands.
Jeff Gerber: Thank you for being foundational in my success at Quad.
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| Can you find me in this photo? |
My first day at Quad, March 12 1984 was as a press room new hire. Back then we had classes of 60 new hires start on the same day for 2 weeks of morning lecture on the basics of print taught by Harry Quadracci and Ed Kelly and afternoons of lab, jogging books on M-11 and M-12 which a the time in the Sussex plant where the only presses in the single pressroom, as well as presses in Pewaukee. Next to that building was the finishing room with UB-1 as the only other machine in the plant. Upon graduation, there was a receiving line with HVQ and the end, shaking our hand, handing us our uniform and daring us to dream big! My dream was prepress, and at the end of my first year, I moved into Enterprise Graphics our prep department.
After six years working on various capacities such as process cameraman, stripper (not the kind you're thinking), proofing and project coordinator I had the opportunity to transfer to Anaheim CA to help start up our first remote pre-press location in September of 1984. This new location allowed us to better serve our west coast clients such as Cousteau Society, NFL Properties, Architectural Digest and Peterson Publishing. I'll never forget my 2 hour interview in Harry's office with him grilling me on what a stupid idea it was for me to move my family to CA. In the end I wore him down and with a smile he said, OK you need to be in Anaheim on Monday. This meeting was on Thursday, so 4 days notice!
The move to CA was all that I could have hoped for. Together with future plant Dir Ken Eazell, who was still in his early 20's we helped build the Anaheim site into a 24 x 7 operation with 100 pre-press technicians at its peak. We still have some great people from that team including Ken, Robert Bradvica, Manny Diaz, Greta Berry-Trickle and Brett Mullienaux. Together we taught the team the core values of Quad.
In 1994, Tom Frankowski asked me to join a small pre-press sales team he was building and I gladly accepted! In this new role I worked hand in hand with our sales offices in LA, San Francisco and Seattle. This was just when desktop publishing was taking off. Our tag line: Quad, from Desktop to Doorstep
In 1998, Joel Quadracci was still early in his role of VP of Sales. He was in the process of building the initial sales leadership team to run each of the 12 sales offices. Joel asked me to lead the LA team which at the time had 4 sales reps including the legend Herb Siderman. In the 8 years I was fortunate to work with the office to grow our team and our sales revenue to more than double with clients such as Weider Publications, GB Data, NFL properties
In 2002 my world was changed forever with the passing of Harry Quadracci. HVQ as we called him was like a second father to me. He created a company where a shy kid like me could have opportunities to learn and grow and become more that I ever dreamed I could be. I will be forever grateful for the love and support he showed my young family in our early days in California.
2006 saw me move from LA to Minneapolis where Dave Blais had asked me to come and help grow our pre-press client roster. Working with Stu Moore on the sales side and Sharon Meister in operations I was introduced to Catalog sales, a new world for me. Early in my time in MN Sharon introduced me to Dave Moffat who had developed a content driven page building tool called Product Center, which ultimately became Marketers Studio. This was to be the foundation to much of our success in the market which customers like Gaiam, Rockler and Bluestem seeing the benefits of a single source of truth data driven workflow.
2007 Scott Ingram who was at the time running our Denver office reached out for help introducing his market to Quads media solutions offering. It was fun to work with Scott in growing his business and his sales team. We did lots of work infusing Quad culture into his growing team and it was a blast.
In 2008, Shawn Pye joined Scotts team in Denver and he introduced me to the world of Associations. The biggest and most complex being the Olympic sports National Governing Bodies (NGB). Using our bundling of digital and print solutions we grew that client base over the next 8 years to over 16 sports including US Figure Skating, USA Triathlon and USA Wrestling. The NGB's also allowed me to be a small part of the Olympic Dream team of Shawn, Amber Forge and Lisa Votapek. If you want a fun story, ask Shawn to tell you about the first sales call he and I went on together!
July 2010, the day we bought World Color and went public on the same day was a day of foundational change. Our office in Minneapolis grew by more than double. With this growth there was lots of new opportunity.
End of year 2011, we signed a contract extension with Bluestem securing the print and awarding Quad with onsite page building, all photo, image retouching, vendor image management and implementation of Marketers Studio, Asset Manager, Softproof Manager and Photo Track. This deal also meant the expansion of photo into our new Bloomington, MN location.
January 2013 brought the Vertis acquisition, and with it, my introduction to retail and grocery. Another new world. Data driven workflow would continue to be an advantage for us. The day after Vertis joined out company, I was introduced to Eric Keuth. With Eric we sold the first instance of Retail Studio along with an onsite team to the then start up Fresh Thyme Farmers Market. Lucky's Market soon followed.
In 2015 what used to be known as Media Solutions (our pre-press offering) became BlueSoHo, our initial push into the agency world. BlueSoHo combined Media Solutions, Media Planning & Placement and Nellymoser digital (with the Brown Printing Co acquisition) into a stand alone division of Quad/Graphics. At this time we also started to the lay the early groundwork for transitioning Sales to Business Development and Account Management.
2016 was a big year for us with Bluestem. In January we were awarded the Mobile App development contract for both Fingerhut and Gettington brands on both iOS and Android platforms. Later in the year we negotiated a contract extension for the existing Fingerhut and Gettington work as well as all of the Orchard brands part of the portfolio, making it the largest catalog deal in our history! The team of Christine Lloyd, Kathy Lund, Sharon Meister, Sam Zeidler and others made this deal possible.
2018 was a big grocery year for the team. We added onsite page production and Retail studio to 5 banners of Ahold Delhaize as well as onsite page production and account management at Lucky's markets in Colorado. These were the first accounts to adopt the Client services model that was the foundation of Ivie, and is now a normal part of the new Quad 3.0.
2019 and the rebrand of Quad, the culmination of all the ground work we had been laying since 2015. A new marketing solutions partner mindset and with it a true agency model of Business Development andClient Services. We were awarded additional on-figure apparel photo from Bluestem which created the opportunity to put a 5,000 square foot studio on site. That now makes our Twin Cities photo presence with onsite’s at Northern Tool, Sportsman's Guide, Bluestem and our corporate studio in Bloomington.
There you go, 35 years and 7 months. What a ride. The list of people I owe my career to is long. Please know that each person who helped me left a profound impression on me. I have done my best over the years to pay that help forward as often as I could. There are a few people I want to say a personal thank you to.
Harry Quadracci: Made me believe in myself, helped me learn to build teams and provided me with constant inspiration.
Herb Siderman: Taught me how helping customers is much more importation than "Selling" to customers.
Tom Frankowski: Taught me to think and act like an owner.
Joel Quadracci: Saw more in me, than I did in myself. Thank You.
Dave Blais: Don't do business with people you can't trust.
Renee Badura: Showed me that the team can be stronger than the individual parts.
Greta Berry-Trickle: The work we did early in the development of Anaheim was a career highlight!
Tim Ohnmacht: Showed me the importance of not folding like a deck chair on the Titanic.
Andrea St Thomas: I learned that working 13 days in a row can be fun!
Sharon Meister: Helped me understand I'm in sales because I suck at math.
Stu Moore: Don't drive, shave and eat soup at the same time.
Dave Moffat: Your genius in workflow changed my career.
Ken Eazell: There is no one I rather face a challenge with than you.
Scott Ingram: Building the Denver team with you was a career highlight.
Shawn Pye: Selling 3.0 before it existed. Our work with associations in general and NGB's in particular. Man, we kicked some serious butt!
Amber Forge: The future of Quad is in your capable hands.
Jeff Gerber: Thank you for being foundational in my success at Quad.
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