A Printing we will go…

Blog 6 of 30

Getting the first client is one thing… doing a good job and keeping that client happy is a completely different story altogether. In the excitement of looking for clients and finally finding one, I had forgotten a lot of little things. I could compile the information and lay it out on the computer, but how would I show it to the client?

Sitting here today, in the era of email and WhatsApp and smart phones and collaborative tools like Teams and Zoom, it seems incongruous that there was no way to get the file to my client from my computer unless I printed it.

That led to the next big question… how would I print it? Printers were a rare and special commodity those days. I could not afford a printer. A 600-dpi laser printer cost more than a lakh of rupees. Compare this to a similar printer today, with a scanner and copier which costs barely Rs. 20,000/-

But back in the 1990s I could not afford one lakh for the printer and was unwilling to take the risk of investing with barely one client. So, I decided to use a printing service and the one closest to my home was a good six kilometres away.  So, I would take one son by hand, and put the other in the car seat and load them into the car and drive all the way each time I needed a printout.

It was situated on a narrow cul-de-sac and parking was a nightmare. They knew I was a young mother and more often than not would give me priority in printing. The kids would wait in the locked car with the windows cracked open for a few minutes while I ran up and got the printout and the security guard kept an eye on the car. The challenge was that sometimes I did not find parking, I had to keep circling till I did, as it was unsafe to leave the children alone in the car at a distance from the office.  All this became easier when I had Sundararajan come on to drive me around.  

Another huge challenge I faced is that they never had the latest software. So, no matter what I did, when I gave it to them, there would always be glitches in the printout. Now I knew these would not be a problem when it went to the press which did have the latest software, but clients never understood that.

So, every file had two versions – one corrected for the older software at the printer for client approval and a final version in the latest software for the press. I would often have to go home, correct the file for this software version, proofread it and come back again, each time painstakingly moving the children in and out of the car.

I did eventually invest in a laser printer after getting a few clients. In addition to the price of the printer I spent Rs. ₹25,000 for its warranty. I remember the pain of having to invest so much of money to get printouts. It made life easier as I did not have to run around so much, but every rupee of it hurt.

The worst was that barely a month after the warranty ended my printer failed. The cost of repair was more than it was worth, and I had to invest in another one again.  Those were tough times financially. I remember being heartbroken and crying myself to sleep, wondering if I would just have to shut down my fledgling business because investing another one lakh was such a struggle True, income was coming in,  but no matter, in those times it was a lot of money.

How simple some of these things are today… and how much we take for granted. And yet, in small challenges, I learned so much.