When I left the Navy in 2004, I didn’t have a grand plan for a business. I had debt, a family to support, and a borrowed S$5,000. My first venture into print was selling name cards, because even if people didn’t buy from me, at least I’d get to know them. That modest start grew bigger, serving Singapore’s fast-turnaround corporate and events market.

It was in that environment that I learned what really slows our industry down. Not the machines. Not the customers. The bottleneck was quoting.

Pricing was too often in the heads of one or two experienced staff. If they were busy, work queued up. If they were away, it stopped altogether. Customers expecting a quick answer waited days. In a city that lives on speed, silence is a revenue killer.

And yet, two decades later, too much of the industry still works this way.

Efficiency is respect

Efficiency is often discussed as though it were about cutting corners or trimming staff. But in reality, efficiency is about respect.

• Respect for customers, who deserve clarity without waiting.
• Respect for staff, who should not spend their days buried in repetitive calculations.
• Respect for the business itself, which cannot remain viable if its profitability depends on guesswork.

Without efficiency, everything else is cosmetic. A glossy website that cannot produce a price is just a brochure. A marketing campaign that funnels customers into an unanswered form is wasted money. In Singapore, I’ve seen international clients move entire projects to competitors simply because they couldn’t get a quote overnight. That isn’t misfortune. It’s neglect.

The values we’ve lost sight of

Every industry faces moments when tradition collides with new expectations. Print is in that moment now. For too long we’ve relied on loyalty and personal relationships to carry us. But loyalty is not permanent. The next generation of buyers inheriting businesses or making decisions in new roles expect speed, transparency and self-service. They won’t accept anything less.

If we want to stay relevant, the industry needs to reclaim values it once prized:

• Transparency: Pricing should not be a mystery. Customers should know what they are paying for, and staff should be able to explain it without contradiction.
• Resilience: A business should not grind to a halt because one estimator is unavailable. Knowledge must live in processes, not in a single person’s memory.
• Adaptability: New tools are not threats. They are opportunities to strengthen service. Refusing to adapt is not a mark of pride; it is an invitation to irrelevance.
• Continuity: Customer relationships are valuable, but they must evolve. The expectations of tomorrow’s buyers will be different, and businesses must prepare for them now.

These are not abstract ideas. They are practical strategies for survival.

Beyond machinery and marketing

I often hear printers talk about new presses or new marketing tactics as the way forward. Those matter, but they are not enough. The truth is simpler and more uncomfortable: no customer can buy what they cannot price.

Until quoting becomes fast, accurate and consistent, no amount of machinery or marketing will change the fundamentals. Efficiency in pricing unlocks everything else. It allows staff to focus on real conversations with customers. It ensures marketing dollars convert into actual orders. And it gives small shops a chance to compete with larger ones, not through size, but through responsiveness.

This is why I believe quoting is not just a technical challenge. It is a value challenge. It is about whether we are willing to respect customers’ time, respect our staff’s energy, and respect our businesses enough to remove the silent bottlenecks that hold us back.

Facing complacency head-on

What troubles me most is not the complexity of fixing these problems. It is complacency. Too many shop owners believe they can continue as they always have, that their loyal customers will never leave. But when those customers hand decision-making to the next generation, will loyalty still hold?

Every delay, every vague promise of “I’ll get back to you,” chips away at trust. In today’s environment, where buyers can compare options instantly, erosion is deadly.

The danger is not that print is dying; it isn’t. The danger is that parts of the industry are sleepwalking.

When I look back at my own journey, I see that the turning point wasn’t when I bought better machines or expanded my shop floor. It was when I confronted inefficiency directly. That lesson has stayed with me: the first step to modernising any print business is not more equipment or more advertising. It is fixing the bottleneck that nobody wants to talk about—quoting.

The future of print will be shaped by those who have the courage to face that truth. Not because quoting is glamorous, but because it is essential. Get it right, and everything else—operations, sales, customer trust becomes easier to build on. Ignore it, and no amount of tradition or loyalty will save us.


#PrintIndustry #QuotingAutomation #OperationalEfficiency #CustomerCentricity #BusinessModernization