My Business Credit Journey to 1,000,000

Once weekly I will be breaking down one of the known, and some unknown net-30 credit vendors and rating them for our readers, on to our first . .

Company Summary: Not quite as old-fashioned as its name suggests, Quill Corporation is a distributor of office products to more than one million small and medium-sized US businesses. To compete with office supply superstores, Quill markets some 50,000 products under the Quill brand as well as other national brands (Bic, Hewlett-Packard, Mead, Papermate, Pendaflex, Xerox). It offers office supplies (binders, paper, envelopes, toner), furniture (bookcases, chairs, desks, file cabinets), and technology products (PCs, copiers, phones, software); it sells its wares through catalogs, by phone, and on the company’s Web site. Former CEO Jack Miller founded Quill in 1956; the company was acquired by office retail giant Staples in 1998.

Why should you care: Quill is always one of the first companies to give business credit, as soon as immediately after you have a DnB file showing. Quill also has one of the largest selection that I have seen in a net-30 for quite a while, and their massive catalogs don’t begin to describe the amount of inventory they have on hand, and have access to. A couple of phone calls revealed that you can have custom hats, t-shirts, and even pens created by Quill, and of course you can use your trusty net-30 account to leverage your resources. I don’t know of another starter net-30 where you can go from pens and pencils, to furniture and ipods all from the same company , all on business credit.

Reporting: The debate is pretty fierce between those who swear that Quill reports, and those who think that it’s a now “worthless” net-30. In my personal business credit experience, I have known Quill to report monthly, and lately quarterly, which may explain some frustration. (Imagine paying for your first order, only to find out that you missed the reporting cycle by a couple of days!) Unfortunately DnB has a strict policy against identifying its reporting members, I would still venture t say the Quill reports, but maybe not as often as you may like.

Final Verdict: Quill is a top 5 net-30 account whether you like it or not. I would stay under $100 for a first order, under $500 for a second, and under $1000 for a third, after that I think they give you a free reign to do as you like after you’ve proven the ability to pay within the net-30 billing period. Worst case scenario is that you may get a friendly email asking you to call in, but don’t be concerned, just answer the questions that they ask and you should be on your way with your first business credit account.

–Elijah