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Matthew Scher from SAI whats the deal???????
- Thread starter PMG
- Start date
Replicator
New Member
:iamwithstupid
Oops! . . . I mean I'm not with Stupid !
Oops! . . . I mean I'm not with Stupid !
DRamm76
New Member
Matt is a solid guy and nothing more than a victim of not wanting to just pick up and rearrange his entire life to move to Utah due to some inner workings at SAI. I am sure he would never leave a customer hanging. Last I heard he had already moved on from Beacon because he got a great job closer to home. No one faults him in this situation. With all job markets as unstable as they are, EVERYONE has to do what's best for them. Wish him nothing but the best
Steve Rife
New Member
As Dan Ramm has stated in his post above mine, Matthew Scher has moved on from Beacon Graphics and the industry completely. I have had the pleasure to work for and along side Matt during the 12 years I worked at SAi... and... like him, I also did not make the move to Utah.
I am still in close contact with Matthew, and will inform him of everyone's "best wishes".
Steven Rife
I am still in close contact with Matthew, and will inform him of everyone's "best wishes".
Steven Rife
I honestly feel for Matt in this economy, not ever hearing his name in the industry before regardless. My only comment to frustrated Flexi users is this, ITS NOT THE ONLY PRODUCT OUT THERE. People quickly buy this product because of marketing and industry brand presence. Just like no one asks for "tissue" anymore, its always "Kleenex".
Find out what your local dealer sells, and if they even support it. Ask around, find out if the company has a specific tech for software or not. That person would typically have a direct link to the software company and have rapid response.
Personally, my company handles 98% of all software tech related issues and they almost never end up leaving our building. If I had a build issue upon me, I would know of it, at the dealer level.
What I'm getting at is in this industry, in this economy, dealing LOCAL always yields the best results. I hope this isnt taken the wrong way, and in closing I wish Matt all the luck in the world.
Find out what your local dealer sells, and if they even support it. Ask around, find out if the company has a specific tech for software or not. That person would typically have a direct link to the software company and have rapid response.
Personally, my company handles 98% of all software tech related issues and they almost never end up leaving our building. If I had a build issue upon me, I would know of it, at the dealer level.
What I'm getting at is in this industry, in this economy, dealing LOCAL always yields the best results. I hope this isnt taken the wrong way, and in closing I wish Matt all the luck in the world.
Matthew Scher
New Member
Alive and Well
Hi All,
The rumors are true, I no longer work at SAi. They relocated HQ to Salt Lake City from Philly. It was tough to part ways with SAi, it was my first job out of college, plus I worked there for two summers while still in school. My home town is Philly, so I am relieved that I don't have to relocate my family across the country, but I do miss working with Flexi every day, and working with you folks. I left at the end of January and haven’t had access to my work email address since, so if you were trying to contact me and got no reply it is because I never got your email. My cell number is the same, so you can contact me that way, or email me at my personal account.
I worked at Amiable, then Scanvec-Amiable, then SAi for 15 years. Back when I started, Jim and Charlie (the owners) were the support department and I was the first one hired as tech support. The third owner, Yu-Chung Chu was working from home those days to port the Mac code to PC himself over the summer. It was an amazing time to be the entire support department back when there were less than 1000 users. I could talk to each person for an hour since the average day had only 5 calls. That time was invaluable to understand the needs of a signmaker because I could take the time needed to really understand not only the "what" but the "why". Within a year we released the Windows version (FlexiSIGN 2.5) and sales took off. By the next summer we had over 10,000 users. I left the support department and was the first QA department, using my new knowledge to make sure the software worked properly before release. I grew the department to 8 people, but still an occasional bug slipped though, like the release that wouldn’t poll size. I was also the product evangelist, making sure that the new functions we added were exactly what the users wanted. On vacations I would visit customers to see how they used Flexi in unique ways, it was always a trill to see how the software was actually used, sometimes in very different ways.
It was magical to work for a software company. I would comment to Charlie about a feature that didn't seem to work right, and a day or two later the code would be changed and the feature would be fixed. In those days, we would bring a computer to each trade show with the full codeset on it, and after each day would spend the night fixing bugs, the install the new version the next morning. Charlie was a mentor to me and taught me a lot about the software development process and how to think critically.
I got to travel the world for my job. First to trade shows - AC, Vegas, Orlando, then to more exotic locations like Paris, Taipei, Seoul, Sydney, Singapore, Brussels, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada, etc. In one whirlwind tour, I left home for a 28 day trip to Asia to show off the new Flexi 8 to the world wide distributors. It was satisfying to see the reaction to the new release - after a few years with no major release and management of the opinion that Flexi reached its pinnacle, I was able to design a featureset that excited people with its productivity features and was an easy sell. That 28 day trip was also tough. I worked though 4 weekends and labor day, slept 3 nights on airplanes, plus missed my daughter’s 3rd birthday and my 10th anniversary (it is a bit of a sore topic, so don’t ask me how much time I got off upon returning home).
The best way to understand the needs of a signmaker is to be one. So I would always be working on a project in Flexi, whether to make nametags for a school play (using auto-serialization), or to print a backlit sign to put over the overhead light at my dentists office (still there, but getting faded). I experimented with each setting on each printer to see how to get the best results. I started a monthly training program at SA where I would show anyone interested how to make signs. At first the lessons were on weeding and layout, then we took field trips to a neon fabrication shop, the Franklin Institute sign ship, and visit local sign shops. Then in one of the most memorable trips, I took the department on a 4 hour trip to the Herr’s factory for a tour (they have a QA department, but the real purpose was as a team building exercise). There is nothing like eating a warm potato chip right off the fryer.
Over the years as SAi, I became the Flexi guru. Though my job was mostly behind the scenes preparing for each new release, when a real oddball issue would be called in I would come to the rescue and try to find a solution. I met some of the nicest people who called in kicking and screaming about an issue, and worked with them until I was able to resolve it. It was satisfying to turn the angriest customer into one who was a die hard Flexi fan. One of the earliest was Fred Jones outside Philly. He had a Vital Draw version for Mac with a Gerber 4b and had just upgraded to Flexi 2 Mac. The cutter didn’t behave properly and I went to visit him to resolve those issues. Later I met Nacine at Baker the Sign man in Philly. After numerous calls without anyone able to resolve her issue cutting to a Wild flatbed cutter, I was able to do my magic and get her up and running (my memory isn’t as good as it once was, but I think it ended up being a bad cable that coincidentally broke at the same time she installed an upgrade). I still am in contact with them after all these years. And I have to mention Joe Busto and Sandy Fromm, two customers with exacting standards that pushed for improvements in each new release and continuously gave me ideas for new releases. There are many more I worked with over the years that I will truly miss.
After leaving SAi, I spent 6 weeks at Beacon Graphics in Branchburg, NJ. They are 100% focused on customer service and go to great lengths to satisfy a customer. They understand that it is more important to keep an existing customer happy than to try to find new customers. I share the same opinion on customer service and it was great to work for a company that was so concerned. They are a family based business and care a lot about their employees. My role there was in technical support and training. It was fun for me to be on the front line again, talking to customers every day and helping them solve problems, but also planning new training seminars for existing clients. I learned a lot there about how to treat a customer. I was sad to leave them after only 6 weeks, but they are in good hands now with my former SAi colleague, Steven Rife leading the department. I opted to accept a suprise job offer that was in the Philly area and will definitely miss the folks at Beacon.
My new job is at a company called ASI, they are the Advertising Specialty Institute (the ones that are behind the “ASI Number”). It is a huge organization that is in the promotional products industry, and I am working on future web based functions.
I am not online as much as I used to be, but will be checking back here occasionally.
Matt Scher
Hi All,
The rumors are true, I no longer work at SAi. They relocated HQ to Salt Lake City from Philly. It was tough to part ways with SAi, it was my first job out of college, plus I worked there for two summers while still in school. My home town is Philly, so I am relieved that I don't have to relocate my family across the country, but I do miss working with Flexi every day, and working with you folks. I left at the end of January and haven’t had access to my work email address since, so if you were trying to contact me and got no reply it is because I never got your email. My cell number is the same, so you can contact me that way, or email me at my personal account.
I worked at Amiable, then Scanvec-Amiable, then SAi for 15 years. Back when I started, Jim and Charlie (the owners) were the support department and I was the first one hired as tech support. The third owner, Yu-Chung Chu was working from home those days to port the Mac code to PC himself over the summer. It was an amazing time to be the entire support department back when there were less than 1000 users. I could talk to each person for an hour since the average day had only 5 calls. That time was invaluable to understand the needs of a signmaker because I could take the time needed to really understand not only the "what" but the "why". Within a year we released the Windows version (FlexiSIGN 2.5) and sales took off. By the next summer we had over 10,000 users. I left the support department and was the first QA department, using my new knowledge to make sure the software worked properly before release. I grew the department to 8 people, but still an occasional bug slipped though, like the release that wouldn’t poll size. I was also the product evangelist, making sure that the new functions we added were exactly what the users wanted. On vacations I would visit customers to see how they used Flexi in unique ways, it was always a trill to see how the software was actually used, sometimes in very different ways.
It was magical to work for a software company. I would comment to Charlie about a feature that didn't seem to work right, and a day or two later the code would be changed and the feature would be fixed. In those days, we would bring a computer to each trade show with the full codeset on it, and after each day would spend the night fixing bugs, the install the new version the next morning. Charlie was a mentor to me and taught me a lot about the software development process and how to think critically.
I got to travel the world for my job. First to trade shows - AC, Vegas, Orlando, then to more exotic locations like Paris, Taipei, Seoul, Sydney, Singapore, Brussels, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada, etc. In one whirlwind tour, I left home for a 28 day trip to Asia to show off the new Flexi 8 to the world wide distributors. It was satisfying to see the reaction to the new release - after a few years with no major release and management of the opinion that Flexi reached its pinnacle, I was able to design a featureset that excited people with its productivity features and was an easy sell. That 28 day trip was also tough. I worked though 4 weekends and labor day, slept 3 nights on airplanes, plus missed my daughter’s 3rd birthday and my 10th anniversary (it is a bit of a sore topic, so don’t ask me how much time I got off upon returning home).
The best way to understand the needs of a signmaker is to be one. So I would always be working on a project in Flexi, whether to make nametags for a school play (using auto-serialization), or to print a backlit sign to put over the overhead light at my dentists office (still there, but getting faded). I experimented with each setting on each printer to see how to get the best results. I started a monthly training program at SA where I would show anyone interested how to make signs. At first the lessons were on weeding and layout, then we took field trips to a neon fabrication shop, the Franklin Institute sign ship, and visit local sign shops. Then in one of the most memorable trips, I took the department on a 4 hour trip to the Herr’s factory for a tour (they have a QA department, but the real purpose was as a team building exercise). There is nothing like eating a warm potato chip right off the fryer.
Over the years as SAi, I became the Flexi guru. Though my job was mostly behind the scenes preparing for each new release, when a real oddball issue would be called in I would come to the rescue and try to find a solution. I met some of the nicest people who called in kicking and screaming about an issue, and worked with them until I was able to resolve it. It was satisfying to turn the angriest customer into one who was a die hard Flexi fan. One of the earliest was Fred Jones outside Philly. He had a Vital Draw version for Mac with a Gerber 4b and had just upgraded to Flexi 2 Mac. The cutter didn’t behave properly and I went to visit him to resolve those issues. Later I met Nacine at Baker the Sign man in Philly. After numerous calls without anyone able to resolve her issue cutting to a Wild flatbed cutter, I was able to do my magic and get her up and running (my memory isn’t as good as it once was, but I think it ended up being a bad cable that coincidentally broke at the same time she installed an upgrade). I still am in contact with them after all these years. And I have to mention Joe Busto and Sandy Fromm, two customers with exacting standards that pushed for improvements in each new release and continuously gave me ideas for new releases. There are many more I worked with over the years that I will truly miss.
After leaving SAi, I spent 6 weeks at Beacon Graphics in Branchburg, NJ. They are 100% focused on customer service and go to great lengths to satisfy a customer. They understand that it is more important to keep an existing customer happy than to try to find new customers. I share the same opinion on customer service and it was great to work for a company that was so concerned. They are a family based business and care a lot about their employees. My role there was in technical support and training. It was fun for me to be on the front line again, talking to customers every day and helping them solve problems, but also planning new training seminars for existing clients. I learned a lot there about how to treat a customer. I was sad to leave them after only 6 weeks, but they are in good hands now with my former SAi colleague, Steven Rife leading the department. I opted to accept a suprise job offer that was in the Philly area and will definitely miss the folks at Beacon.
My new job is at a company called ASI, they are the Advertising Specialty Institute (the ones that are behind the “ASI Number”). It is a huge organization that is in the promotional products industry, and I am working on future web based functions.
I am not online as much as I used to be, but will be checking back here occasionally.
Matt Scher
SignosaurusRex
Active Member
Glad to see you check in here at home Matt. My best to you in your new position. Please don't be a stranger around here. I promise to try not to ask you any Flexi related questions....
....ok, not too many anyways:Big Laugh Seriously though.....
....ok, not too many anyways:Big Laugh Seriously though.....
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
I miss our email exchanges Matt and our face to face meetings. Please get in touch if you're in South Florida so Connie and I can take you to dinner.
I'm very happy for you in finding what sounds like a great position right in Philly where I know you want to be.
I'm very happy for you in finding what sounds like a great position right in Philly where I know you want to be.
iSign
New Member
thanks for dropping in to keep us up to date. It's great to have an individual that makes a seemingly large & faceless company suddenly become a genuine partner in all of our common goals in this industry. that is the kind of guy I always saw in Matthew, both here & in the handful of emails or possibly a few phone calls too (my memory is also not getting any younger)
Good luck with ASI...
and BTW... how much time off did you get after that 28 day whirlwind tour?
Good luck with ASI...
and BTW... how much time off did you get after that 28 day whirlwind tour?
