A quick print of Pacific success

“It has to grow. Business is supposed to grow. It’s like a tree—it’s supposed to keep on growing.”

At age 22, Scott Hagen, adept to his father’s business tutelage on Guam, came to Saipan tasked to carry out the handiwork of putting up a new business venture that would install him as one of the youngest – yet successful – entrepreneur on-island.

In just a span of four years after putting up the business, he managed to sustain the rapid growth of the Pacific Quick Print and Post, establishing a name for himself beyond the Pacific Galleries and the Pacific Pest Control companies established by his parents on Guam and on Saipan.

“Always going up. Even if the other businesses are down, it seems that we have a service that everybody wants and everybody needs; and when times are slow, we work hard and spend longer hours to bring the customers back in, adding small services at no extra fee [and] better quality,” Hagen said.

Scion of business couple William and Terry, Hagen established the Pacific Quick Print and Post, which is mainly a copy shop and a private mailbox company, along Middle Road in Garapan in June 1998.

“My father had an idea, but he needed something to put his details together. That was it,” he recalled. “I came here in 1998 to put all the details together [and] find out who’s going to be our suppliers, and everything like that – business license, tax, and everything – and we were ready. June 1998 – we opened up the doors, starting the business.”

Success was not attained overnight, though. His is the entrepreneurship that was honed through the years, starting at age 14.

Since his parents were so tied up with the family business on Guam, he had to stay with them at the work place after school, where he became part of the business operation.

“We cut the frames, assemble the frames, put together pictures, those kind of things,” he said. “There are employees working there. They taught us.”

A few years later, he studied college at the Seattle University in the United States mainland. While there, Hagen worked for a picture framing company, similar to the family’s Pacific Galleries.

“I moved back to Guam and started working for pest control,” he said, referring to his parent’s Pacific Pest Control. When he did this in 1996, he was “doing everything from technical work up to administrative filing and all the office work.”

But a turning point in his business career came two years later, when he was tasked to put up a new venture – the Pacific Quick Print and Post – on Saipan, a place where his parents were not very familiar with.

“We have a lot of services, but mainly, we’re labeled as a copy shop. We do lots of high-speed of non-offset. It’s all high-speed digital copying and printing… and a lot of the finishing services – binding, just quick binding and lamination,” Hagen said.

“We do what like the other printing shops do, they do business cards, invitations, posters, [but] the only difference is we’re not offset. We’re all digital and we cater to those people who procrastinate. Maybe, somebody has a birthday party this weekend, they wait until Thursday to do the invitation, and so they come to us. We can have it done in 24 hours,” he said.

Basically, he said his company can do different kinds of printing jobs on paper and on banner. The company can also do graphics and logo design.

“We also have postal services. We have mailboxes for rent. We accept letters and things that need to be mailed out,” he added. The company maintains P.O. Box 10001, a commercial mailbox.

Running a business takes a lot of patience. “It’s quite confusing at first. But [things can be done] just one step at a time,” he said. “[The] basic concept of how to start a business, I would have to ask them [parents] or look in a book.”

When he just opened the business, he started the day at 6:30am, working for at least 13 hours a day. With the success his business has reached now, his schedule has become more flexible.

Besides hard work, Hagen said he believes that “happy employees will make happy customers.” He not only exercises leniency in granting employees’ requests if they do not derail the company’s operations.

“Once they’re doing good, they get free movie tickets, free massage at Madera spa, free tickets to eat at Tony Roma’s, little incentives. I don’t yell at them. I’m not mean to them. There’s a clear, open line of communication,” he said.

“Some managers or some bosses, they hide behind a desk and behind a wall; you have to make an appointment to see them. They can come [and] see me anytime. They’re pretty happy,” he continued.

Hagen takes pride in the collective effort he and his employees have exerted in driving Pacific Quick Print and Post to success.

As he was saying this, he could not help but recall that when the business started, it only relies on one each of black-and-white and colored copying machine, and another for blueprint.

“Today, we have two of the fastest colored [Xerox] machines on Saipan — and the largest; we have three black-and-white Xerox machines; we have four engineering black-and-white copying machines; we have a blueprint machine; we have four lamination machines; we have two binders; we started really small and worked hard seven days a week and just grew,” he said.

To illustrate the company’s success further, he said: “If you want to open a business… and compete with us today, you probably have to spend like $3-5 million. You have to throw that money down, and then you can open up like what we are today.”