Fabulous Fridays

Well, it’s confirmed.  The paperless office is a myth. 

How do I know?  Because for our first Fabulous Friday Sale, we featured copy paper and we sold 400 cases!  In one day!!  Amazing!!!

Seriously though, I hope you’ve been enjoying the new programs we are offering to you, our valuable customers.  The Rewards Program (see story below), the Pen of the Month Club, and Fabulous Fridays are all just different ways for us to say “thank you” and for you to have some fun.

We’re very excited to let you know that our website is now ready for the Fabulous Friday Specials!!!   You can now place your order online!!  So when Friday arrives, click here to check out our specials.  Save this link as a favorite!!  Check back each week for the new specials!!

If you’re not signed up for these fun and fabulous programs, take a moment to visit our website at http://www.officeexpressnow.com/index.aspx.   Click on “Login” and you can see what’s in store.   While you are there, check out the other pages to see all the great stuff that has been added!! 

Don’t Forget the Furniture!

Did you know that Office Express has a talented interior designer on staff?  Did you know that we sell all types of office furniture? Did you know that our new showroom features a wonderful variety of solutions from our favorite manufacturers?   If not, then it’s time you visited our new showroom, or at least cruise the photos on our home page, at www.officeexpressnow.com. 

Our furniture sales have been growing, despite the economy, so we must be doing something right!  I hope that if you are in need of desks, chairs, files, workstations, tables, or other office furniture you will give us a call. 

Our goal is your complete satisfaction. That, by the way, includes your budget!  Give us a chance to look out for your best interests, while creating a solution that works in every way.

Rewards Program

Thank you to everyone who has signed up for our Rewards Program!  Over 150 customers have enrolled in the first month.

Just to recap (in case you missed it last month): the Rewards Program gives you points for purchases you make at Office Express.  With our Rewards Program you will get 10 points for every $50 in your order (order minimum of $50 to receive point certificate.)  You can accumulate and redeem points for various items, or you can receive $50 cash for every 250 points that you accumulate.  (That’s $1250 in purchases or 2% for you math fans.)

So of course, if we have a Rewards Program, we need a catalog for you to browse so that you can cash them in.  But this catalog will be a little different, in that we are developing it to support the things we talk about all the time; supporting local businesses and charities.  It’s very interesting to see the restaurants, sports teams, celebrities and charities that all of you have suggested for our catalog.

We are looking for items, services or charities that we can promote within this program. If your business or charity is interested, please e-mail me about your idea. As far as charities go, we will match the points that you, our valued customers, might donate to these causes. We all have to support each other and I see this as just one more way we can do so.  We are also working to find “fun” things for the office, since so many of you have requested that option.  (Let’s face it…we all spend a lot of time at work.  Anything we can do to make it more fun is worth doing.)

So if you haven’t sign up for the Rewards Program yet…what are you waiting for?  You’re buying stuff anyway. Why not get something back for your office?  Here’s the link for the sign up form. http://www.officeexpressnow.com/rewards.aspx

And once again – from my team to you – thank you for your business.

Employee Spotlight   Mark Gardner – Warehouse Manager

Mark’s legend preceded him in this company.  Before I hired him, I heard stories about his legendary service mindset.  He does crazy things, like getting out of bed to help deliver a monster conference table so that the customer could have it for a meeting in the morning! 

Fortunately for Mark, he “saw the light’ and decided that working for the Evil Empire (i.e. Corporate Express) was not for him.  We hired him shortly after he made this great decision!  And I must say it was an excellent decision all the way around.

One of the things I admire about Mark is his determination to not let his physical challenges affect the way he does his job.  A childhood bout with polio left one hand quite disabled, but you never hear him complain.  He just gets on with the job.  I frequently hear our employees and customers talk about how Mark goes out of his way to get what the customer needs. Of course, that’s what all of our jobs boil down to in the end, but Mark really personifies this attitude.  He’s the first one in the door in the morning, and the last one out the door at night.

When he does take a break from work, Mark enjoys NASCAR racing and going to Gladwin.

Thank you, Mark!

Productivity Pointers

Color Access Control From Hewlett Packard (HP)

Have you ever tried to figure out an easy way to control color printing costs?  Is your color printer located in a place where there is concern about abuse?   HP has a solution to help you.

Enable Color Access Controls

With commercial Color LaserJets and EdgeLine devices introduced 2004 and later, advanced Color Access Control is available. Rather than go into full detail here, anyone interested in this should visit the main “Color Access Control” website at this address: http://www.hp.com/sbso/productivity/color/access/index.html.

There are a number of configuration options including restricting by user, application, time-of-day, etc.  While many smaller organizations may find it preferable to use the hardware controls, there are advanced driver controls for the HP Universal Print Driver as well.  For commercial color multifunction devices, enable some form of authentication to limit color copying if desired as well as device or user pins.