by George Szakach, Founder and President of Treehouse Software

I plan to write a few blog entries.  This is the first.  I’m into numbers, so here are a few.

As we start 2013, we’re approaching 30 years of quality service to our customers.  Some things necessarily change after so many years (70% of companies go out of business in 30 years).

We started doing our printed newsletter in 1986.  We produced 36 issues of Treetips before we renamed it Treetimes in 2003.  Then we did another 23 issues ending with the one that is currently at the printer and getting ready to mail to our customers and partners. Circulation of the hard copy version of our newsletter topped out at about 13,000 a few years ago; most recently, it is 8,000.

I remember when I was approached by an employee in 1986 about doing a newsletter.  I insisted on one thing: do not do a SINGLE newsletter and then lose interest.  You had better plan to do regular issues over many years.  I think companies that produce 20 single-issue newsletters, each one started by some dynamic young person who then leaves the company, is, well, tacky.

At our first attempt of the newsletter, the author got it all messed up.  If a sentence was added on page 2, the last words on page 2 would get lost instead of flowing onto page 3.  Drove me nuts because I had to be the one to find all these mistakes.  I realized people do not do read-check, only spell-check.

Then a new employee appeared and showed us the Mac and its ability to craft a newsletter.  All was okay with the newsletter from that point on.

After we publish the last issue of Treetimes, we will ‘go green’, using less paper, reducing mailing charges, and improving our ability to send customers information in a more steady flow on-line, via our constantly updated web site, blogs, white papers, and whatever comes next.

All the back issues of our newsletters are available electronically. If you desire some back issue and can’t find it on our web site, please call and ask for a copy. We’ll be happy to send one.

We’ve had six different logos over the years.  These are pictured here.  My favorite was the first one which cost $60 to design (by a neighbor) and print the first 500.  Green on brown, with the “S” turned backwards in TreehouSe, but frontwards in Software.  My least favorite was the steely foil stamped one we had next.  It cost $3000 to develop.  And, $9,000 to replace the copier it destroyed due to all that foil wrapping around parts.