Here’s a question I received via e-mail the other day.
“Hi Art,
I’ve had a couple of folks here asking about the origins of your name p4p hotel. I thought I had read it somewhere a couple of years back, but cannot remember where it was. Can you please cut and paste a couple of lines explaining how and why you use P4PHotel name on your website and blog?”
Ah, yes, many have asked about the origin of the name. Many moons ago at the dawning of the digital copier age, there was a web-based application that Ricoh used for configuration of their digital copiers. That site was called “Connectivity Café.”
At or around 2003, I posted a thread that bashed Ricoh in their Aficio League (they had a forum then) in reference to the first of one of the first 80 ppm production copiers that was a real dog. The system could not reproduce halftones very well; I was okay with that, what I was not okay was that Ricoh knew that system would not do halftones well and still brought it to market. Ricoh was not happy with that thread and banned me from the forums for my statement. And all that time I thought there was freedom of the press.
Back in ‘02 and before you knew what you knew from the people in your organization and you believed in the manufacturer and that they weren’t telling you little white lies. There was no forum on the web for sales people and dealer principals to share information—like what works and what doesn’t work.
Eventually the dealer owner lobbied for me to get back on the site, however, with a covenant that I couldn’t post anything bad about Ricoh products. That did not sit well with me because of my experience with a bad system, and I really never wanted to lose a sale because I did not have enough knowledge.
That was the start of the Print4Pay Hotel (P4PHotel is the abbreviated version). I figured I could do it better than Ricoh and would give sales people and dealer owners the forum to express, share, and collaborate with others without any censorship from a manufacturer. Guess I did a great job.
When thinking of the name for the site, I wanted something catchy. I liked the Connectivity Café web app and wanted something similar.
Question: In order to print or copy businesses and people have to do what?
Answer: You have to “Pay.” Pay for paper, pay for hardware, and pay for supplies; you can’t print without paying for something. Thus, I had the first part of the name, Print4Pay. I thought of the Hotel piece due to the fact that people were coming to the site to share information, ask questions, and give feedback. We all go to conferences to share information, glean information, and collaborate with others, and most of these events are held in Hotels. Thus, I’m providing an online web forum where imaging sales professionals gather. The Print4Pay Hotel sounded like an awesome fit for a cool name.
There are still many Legacy members on the site and I’d like to thank all of them for their support over the years. I could not have done this without their commitment to share their knowledge and believe in the value of the site.
Kudos!
Good selling!
