Hi—I'm Mike Patriarca, the new President of Quill.  I’m writing to you today while looking out my office window at the turning leaves on a beautiful autumn afternoon.  The scene reminds me very much of where I grew up in New England.  While I still miss the beaches of Rhode Island, I’ve also come to really appreciate the Midwest.  There are great people here and the suburbs of Chicago are an ideal place to live and work.

Since this is my first attempt at “blogging”, I thought I’d start off by telling you just a little bit about myself.  After working in various companies and positions in corporate finance, I started here at Quill more than 8 years ago as the Controller and Vice President of Finance.  Since then, I’ve been fortunate to manage several Quill departments including Human Resources, Operations and Merchandising. 

I know Quill intimately now, and have learned a lot over the years.  My most valuable lesson has been learning what it takes to provide quality service to all of our customers.  When you do business with Quill, you can trust that there are over 2,000 associates with your satisfaction at the top of their minds.  Many companies say they have great service, but I think we’re different because we have the customer satisfaction survey scores and customer service awards to back up our claims. 

I think the key to our company is really quite simple—if we treat you with respect and provide you with value, you'll come back.  And that's what being in business is all about, right?

I think our emphasis on service and value will serve us well during these difficult economic times.  What we are now experiencing in the economy and stock markets can be very frightening,  but as we learned with the dot.com bust at the beginning of this century as well as the economic downturns of the early 90's and 80's, the business cycle goes on and on.  The reasons behind our economic slowdowns may be different every time, but you can usually count on one to happen every 10 years plus or minus a couple of years.  

I am telling all of our Quill associates to hang in there during these difficult times, and continue to do the best job they can, especially when it comes to taking great care of you.  Times like these require all of us to refocus on the basics, remain committed to our core business and execute like crazy.  I know this philosophy has worked well for Quill in the past, and I’m confident it will again this time.

Well, thanks for "listening"! I’m glad you decided to visit our new community page at Quill.com, and I hope to hear from you soon. Send me an e-mail when you have a minute and let me know how I’m doing!

Mike

mpatriarca@quill.com