Quality Connections won the “largest-ever set-aside contract” in Arizona, and will supply remanufactured cartridges while also employing “disadvantaged and disabled people”.
Doug Arnett, Director at QCoffice (Credit: Jake Bacon/ Arizona Daily Sun)
Ticker Report reported on QCoffice – a division of Quality Connections – and its selection as a supplier to the State of Arizona for office supplies, in what it says is the “largest-ever set-aside contract” in the state. The contract also specifies “employing disadvantaged and disabled Arizonians”, and will be worth an estimated $3.5 million (€2.8 million) to the company.
The one-year contract will “expand QCoffice’s reach statewide”, with focuses at the moment on Phoenix, the Prescott region, Flagstaff, Sedona, Verde Valley and Williams. The set-aside programme – which Quality Connections has been chosen for before, last November – is a “special purchasing mandate that endeavours to set aside one percent of the state’s purchasing to certified non-profits that serve people with disabilities”, and Quality Connections added that it has been providing its remanufactured toner cartridges to the state through this programme since 2006, with a previous contract won in January earlier this year.
Quality Connections – which is a non-profit organisation – also recently partnered with two other non-profits, VALLEYLIFE and Yavapai Exceptional Industries (YEI!), which “share the mission of serving people with disabilities”. The partnerships have allowed QCoffice to begin “serving new markets in Phoenix and Prescott”, and it is currently developing “additional partnerships across the state to reach all state offices and cooperative members”.
Orders for the contract will be processed through QCoffice.org – an e-commerce site – which features a “live, real-time stock check” of 52 US distribution centres, with 95 percent of orders able to be processed and deliver in one day and 100 percent within four days.
Armando Bernasconi, CEO of Quality Connections, commented: “With our track record and the formation of key partnerships with organisations that share our values, QCoffice is eager for this major expansion. This is our biggest step yet towards developing a state-wide delivery network employing people with disabilities, allowing us to scale up our model state-wide.
“This award will accelerate QCoffice’s work, helping us to serve many more customers and putting our mission on a rising growth trajectory. In addition to fuelling growth for QCoffice, this award is the tip of the spear in a growing movement of set-aside providers in Arizona. Working together [on] this will help more and more Arizonans with disabilities enter the workforce to become productive, contributing members of our society.”
Doug Arnett, Director of QCoffice, added: “We were awarded this contract by offering the state simple, consistent and competitive pricing on a catalogue of nearly 30,000 items. Every single product on this contract is priced 32 percent below MSRP or list price. This steep discount plus an average sales tax benefit of nine percent combines for a net savings of 41 percent across the board. QCoffice does not charge sales tax due to our non-profit status.”