When you use the Quote Magician you will notice the small details. The way the program matches how you work. The logic behind the information presented on screen. And that’s because the Quote Magician was created BY garment decorators FOR decorators. We aren’t software engineers. We aren’t coders. We are decorators. We’ve been in business for more than 40 years working at the same craft that you do - creating the best quality printed and embroidered apparel that we possibly can, day in day out.
We started as manual printers on a homemade printing press. The registration tolerances were not measured in microns or even centimeters. Try sixteenths and eighths of an inch. It was a wonder anything lined up at all. Our screens were wooden frames with rope pushed into a groove to hold the mesh in place. Emulsion was removed with bleach in the driveway (in summer) and in the back corner of the basement (in winter). How did we even survive. We had a stat camera, used rubylith and rapidograph pens for our designs. We eventually graduated to Vellum on a laser printer. Oh the stories we can tell.
On the embroidery side we had a six head, single needle, manual color change machine. That’s right - MANUAL color change. Nuff said about that.
Now we operate modern automatic printing equipment and multi-head embroidery machines. Bleach is now at home in the laundry room where it belongs. Things are better. Much better. But as you can see, we’ve paid our dues in this industry. We know what it’s like to struggle to grow. One of our greatest struggles was not in the back room but in the front room - providing pricing to customers. It just wasn’t a simple process.
When computers came into the business world (yes, we were around BEFORE computers were on every desk) we had hoped for a solution. And we looked for that solution. And looked. And looked. And we even tried a bunch of those solutions. Small ones and large ones. We worked with industry software suppliers. We hosted them at our place to explain the problem we as decorators face every day trying to give a price to a customer. We visited them, talked to them at trade shows, sent them rafts of information. We GAVE THEM the road map and they simply couldn’t do it. Or wouldn’t. So like you, being independent thinkers and just a bit too stubborn for our own good, we created our own software solution.
The idea for the Quote Magician was born more than 20 years ago. It started simple enough. First we used an old, simplistic spreadsheet program, then a very old (non-relational) database program that is no longer around. And then finally we began to work in earnest at a real solution. During that time we figured out many many ways to not create a usable software program. We failed many times over. But each time we got better and smarter and those small details began to come together. What we have now is a very serviceable software solution.
Serviceable - not a rousing endorsement, is it? Well, we’re nothing if not honest. The Quote Magician is really good at what it does. It will allow you to price any item using your decorating tables and your own profit margins. You have access to the costs and descriptions of every item in the catalogs from FIVE major wholesalers. You can price any item your way in seconds. That’s good, right? No that’s better than just good. But for now, our solution is limited to laptop and desktop computers. In the future we will give you access to all this power on your laptop and phone and on your website. Then it will be awesome!
Decorators creating software for decorators.