“I’m going to fax in an order. Are you near the fax room? I want to make sure you get it.”
We get a question similar to this approximately once a week. And we confirm to the good customer on the line that we’re close to the fax machine and assure them that we’ll get the fax. And we do. But in addition to getting the fax, we also get a little chuckle. We ditched our big noisy fax machine about five years ago in favour of an web-based solution. When we still had it, it sat on our one and only desk.
Some people are under the impression that we’re a big company with dozens of employees and shipping departments and printing presses and receptionists and boardrooms. I don’t know where that comes from. I guess it’s just an assumption people make. We certainly have never tried to present ourselves as such. I know of other similarly-sized companies that go out of their way to pretend that they’re much larger than they are. But I’ll proudly tell you that the “Theatrefolk Head Office” is just two people – myself and Lindsay.
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A business like ours is unique to the digital era. The internet makes things so efficient. The majority of our sales are digital so we don’t need much warehousing space for scripts, nor do we need a dedicated shipper to send scripts out in the mail.
When I say that Theatrefolk is two people, I’m sort of fudging the truth. It’s kind of like the Verizon ad, the one where the lone man stands in front of the hundreds that make everything run smoothly.
Behind us stand dozens of authors that fill our pages, our print shop that prints the scripts, our web host that keeps our site online, the good folks at the post office that get your scripts to you, the internet-based phone system that makes sure we get your calls and your faxes no matter where we physically happen to be, et cetera, et cetera.
A lot of people are needed for us to stay this small. But as far as the office is concerned, if you call us and get a man’s voice, you’re talking to me. If you get a woman’s voice, you’ve reached Lindsay.
