A: For very brief overviews of who we are, please see our "About Quick Machinery" and "Why QUICK?" pages.

Q: Your name seems familiar to me. Haven't I met you at a trade show or something, or maybe it was your dad? Or, maybe you visited my company not too long ago?

A: I've been intimately involved with edge-gluing machinery for the past 20 years (27 years as of the year 2010). Yes, you've probably seen or met me at a trade show, and you may have met my dad as well (actually, my entire family has about 80 years of history in the edge-gluing field). And yes, there's a good chance I've visited your company sometime in the past 20 years. Since the Quicks have been involved in edge-gluing machinery for three generations now, perhaps a little family history will help put our current enterprise into perspective:

Beginning in the 1940's, my grandfather, Lloyd Quick, Sr., a mechanical engineer, was instrumental in developing the industry-standard high-production gluing machines of his day. He helped develop the continuous-flow steam-heated edge-gluer, as well as the steam-heated batch press. He was active in the industry for 25 years, and many of the machines that he helped develop are still in operation today. If you're a real old-timer, you may remember my grandfather.

From the early 1970's to the late 1980's, my father, Lloyd S Quick, also a mechanical engineer, helped bring the manual and semi-automatic room-temperature gluing machines (clamp carriers) up to their current levels of productivity. He was active in the industry for 19 years, and is now retired (and doing well, thank you for asking). There's a good chance you've met my dad; he was well known, well-liked and well-respected in the industry.

I began working for my dad in 1984, four years after graduating from Clarkson University (with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, of course). You could say I've been walking in my dad's and grandfather's footsteps since then, developing, perfecting and selling edge-gluing machines for the past two decades.

Q: What kinds of machines do you have experience with?

A: I've helped spearhead, develop, build, sell, maintain and troubleshoot most of the current generation of high-production edge-gluing machines. This includes steam-heated continuous-flow machines, steam-heated batch presses, radio-freqency continuous-flow machines, clamp carriers (manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic), clamp racks, conveyorized glue applicators, roller coater glue spreaders, glue pumps and glue mixers. I've also written user manuals for most of these machines.

Q: What kind of sales experience do you have?

A: I've been immersed in the sales end of things since 1984, when I began covering the western U.S. for my dad. I've written sales literature, managed trade show participation, organized machinery dealers, and made many hundreds of personal visits to customers' and prospective customers' facilities. I am very grateful to be able to say that I was quite successful in my sales endeavors, and I have enjoyed maintaining a solid reputation among my dealers and customers for my low-key, "helpful" sales approach, as well as for my personal honesty and integrity.

Q: What other experience do you have in the industry?

A: I was pleased to serve on the WMMA's (Woodworking Machinery Manufacturers of America's) Industry Marketing Committee for a number of years in the 1990's. There, I was privileged to get to know a fair number of the industry's "movers and shakers" on a more intimate basis.

Q: How did your company, Quick Machinery, get started?

A: In the spring of 2001, I learned that there was a small, family-owned company in Taiwan that had been quietly manufacturing their own line of clamp carriers and glue spreaders for the past 30 years. Even though they had been manufacturing edge-gluing equipment for the Asian market for this considerable period of time, they were still unknown to the U.S. market. Sensing an opportunity, I approached them with the idea of my working with them on developing a line of equipment for woodworkers in the U.S., and distributing their equipment in North America. Thankfully, they were very interested. In fact, they had already been preparing to enter the U.S. market with their clamp carriers and glue spreaders, and all they needed was some very minor tweaking of their equipment and a bit of marketing savvy on our end.

My wife Kathleen and I flew to Taiwan, and to be perfectly honest, we were just blown away by the quality of their equipment. We learned that for the past three decades they had been supplying their Clamp Carriers to customers in Malaysia, Thailand, mainland China and the Phillipines, where the equipment had to withstand very harsh ambient conditions (high heat and humidity) as well as brutal treatment by the equipment operators (that's why the machine frames, main shafts, chains, sprockets, legs and clamps are so heavy-duty, and the clamps are plated with corrosion-resistant zinc). We found the overall design of the machines to be elegant, fit and finish excellent, and the attention to detail just amazing. I suggested a few very minor design updates to the machines, all of which were accepted and implemented immediately. We had already discussed pricing, so we were able to finalize a manufacturer/distributor agreement during our visit.

Upon our return from Taiwan, I wrote the sales literature and web site, and rewrote the operator's manuals. We sent press releases to the trade magazines, sent out a dealer mailing, and exhibited at the August 2001 AWFS Woodworking Fair in Anaheim, CA and at the November 2001 Midwest Woodworking Expo in Grand Rapids, MI.

Responses to our dealer mailing and at the shows were very positive: We quickly signed up over 40 reputable machinery dealers (now over 200 as of the year 2010), and we received a good-sized Hydraulic Clamp Carrier and Conveyorized Glue Applicator order at the Anaheim show. We were off and running!

Our press releases and advertisements in Wood & Wood Products, CWB, FDM, Wood Digest and Modern Woodworking have been circulating since August , 2001, and since the Anaheim show, we are pleased to have received several more orders for Pneumatic and Hydraulic Clamp Carriers, Conveyorized Glue Applicators, and Roller-Coater Glue Spreaders.

This is where we are as of this writing (February 22, 2002). Please stay tuned; there's much more to come!

Update August 15, 2002:

One year in business...two dozen machines sold...two dozen happy customers! We're on our way this week to the IWF 2002 Show in Atlanta, Georgia (booth #7157). Kathleen is 9 weeks pregnant...our first!. Thank you, our customers and distributors...we treasure you!

One more note:

We are very thankful to have had such a smooth start to our new enterprise, especially considering the difficulties that our U.S. economy has been facing over the past couple of years. We attribute our successful launch to the kindness, responsiveness, engineering prowess and enviable work ethic of our partners in Taiwan, as well as the technical aptitude and value-consciousness of our dealers and customers in the U.S. In our rapidly-changing global marketplace, we believe that those who will be prospering in the coming years are those who are determined to provide the world's best overall value to their customers, and hence enable them to provide the same to their customers. We at Quick Machinery Company wish to thank our manufacturer, our dealers and our customers for helping us with our ongoing mission of providing to the North American woodworking industry the world's highest-quality, lowest-cost, best-value edge-gluing equipment.