The About Us page on our website starts with a slightly tongue-in-cheek statement about feeling like an oasis in a sea of mediocrity. It sounds a little arrogant, and I've thought of taking it off, but I left it because that's always felt like the case to me. I never really understood why until recently. When I thought about it, I realized that the printer manufacturers have been pushing us to be mediocre over time, as the quality of the equipment itself has gone downhill over the years. We've been in business since 1987, and some, but certainly not all, of the earliest digital printing equipment produced great results and was incredibly reliable. As time has gone on, we've seen  improvements in resolution and ink technology, and convenience features added, but the consistency of the print quality and the reliability of the printers themselves has not gotten better. It's actually gotten worse in most cases. Even though we purchase the equipment that produces the best quality, it's a daily struggle to ensure the prints we produce are of the high quality we demand. Intermittent problems and print defects are treated as nothing important by tech support and we're typically told that whatever the problem is, we're the only ones who are having it, as if that would make it OK even if it were true. We're left to discover how to make these printers produce the quality of which they are capable, even when the companies that made them don't seem to know how. There are so many printers on the market that are not capable of a level of quality that I would be comfortable selling to a customer, and yet there are thousands and thousands of these being used by printing companies all over the world, so obviously these companies have accepted mediocrity as standard and are OK with it. This in turn reinforces the idea that it's OK to produce mediocre printing equipment because shops are OK offering mediocre quality to their customers. The material manufacturers are guilty of trying to make everyone mediocre as well. There is a lot of junk on the market and most of it sells really well because it's cheap. It's so difficult to find materials that perform well and print well, and do so consistently, and the manufacturers of these materials don't seem terribly concerned when their materials don't print well from one batch to the next, or have defects that we refuse to pass on to our customers. But, since apparently everyone else is OK with these problems, the manufacturers have no incentive to provide quality printing materials that are consistent from one batch to the next. Even our own employees could contribute to this decline into mediocrity if we allowed it. When we were a smaller company, it was very easy to maintain a high standard of quality as I was involved with every job to some degree. But, as we grew and I had to relinquish some of that involvement, it became more critical to make sure that everyone we hired understood the standards we demanded. People with previous experience in large format digital printing tended to be the worst, as they had already worked for competitors and learned that being mediocre was just fine. Those people didn't last. We have a great team of employees at this point who understand the quality we are trying to achieve, and we got them by hiring people without experience in this industry and training them, so our standards are all they know, and I'm happy to say that they don't settle for mediocrity either. What I realized recently was that the customer is actually the biggest factor in pushing the industry toward mediocrity. All the printing businesses who purchase the equipment, buy the materials, and hire the employees that ultimately produce mediocre results would not be in business if they didn't have customers who accepted this and gladly paid for it. It's easy to make an argument that it's not worth battling mediocrity in this industry, or any other, when the majority of consumers clearly don't care, or don't realize they have a choice. I was reading 5 star ratings from customers on a competitors web site the other day, and the glowing reviews included information about splotches on the prints, creases in the graphics, and displays that showed up broken. Since they received products with these problems and still gave a 5 star rating, and their pledge to return for their future print needs, it would be hard to convince that printing company that they need to do better and not accept being mediocre. After all, their customers seem perfectly happy with mediocre quality, so why go to all the trouble to fight through all the factors I've mentioned with equipment and materials and employees to try to be exceptional? Ultimately, customers demanding higher quality and speaking with their wallets is the only thing that can transform the industry, but that doesn't seem very likely to happen. As for us, we'll continue to provide the very best quality we can. We know we have customers who appreciate that about us, and are loyal to us for that reason, but there are many more who don't even notice. For example, we have the largest selection of quality options for custom floor decals so that we can produce floor graphics for virtually any application and any flooring surface because obviously not everyone has the same needs when it comes to this type of floor advertising. We research all of them and only offer products that work for their intended purpose, are certified slip resistant for safety, won't harm the floors they are used on, etc. Some customers appreciate that, but others complain that there are too many options to choose from or that they are too expensive. While we have some really inexpensive options, there is always a cheaper way to do things if you disregard safety or risk harming the floor, which we won't do, but those options are certainly out there. The battles with suppliers and manufacturers over these issues are draining and frustrating, especially knowing that many customers are not aware or don't appreciate what goes on behind the scenes that allows us to produce a quality product. However, we'll continue to battle mediocrity because it makes us feel good to know we have given our best to our customers, even if that's not the industry standard business model. I like to think that we are training our customers to expect a higher level of quality and a better product so they will come to expect that from whatever company they purchase their printing from, and in that way we are doing our small part to improve the quality of products and printing throughout the industry.