About DHA — Douglas Haylock Short Bio

Management and Computer Guru

Doug Haylock has been writing software for printers for since 1980. Before that he had been involved in almost every phase of the printing business so he pretty much knows the industry outside in and inside and out.

Doug initially developed ideas for manual job tracking and job costing systems during several years managing a full service print shop. He further refined these ideas managing a turn-around for a troubled printing plant.  

He spent several years doing management training and development. He eventually bought a small graphics company and built it into a full service graphic design, production, film house, and print broker.

Doug started using computers for typesetting back in the '70s. He learned to program by reverse engineering machine language on punched paper tape. He bought a used mini-computer and wrote a text editor for editing and data conversion. When microcomputers first appeared a few years later, he started writing software to automate operations in his own printing business. 

When he mentioned what he was doing to a long-time customer-friend who had a folding and gluing company, the friend asked Doug if he would fix his payroll program. One thing led to another, and Doug ended up writing an estimating and then accounting program for him. He figured he’d polish up the whole thing and sell it to printers.

While he was working on finishing up the system, he pulled together all the mailing list stuff he had, and created a retail package called FastPak Mail. Sold a bunch of copies (in those days 250,000 was a lot). Eventually he struck a deal with a publisher who sold several million copies. About once a week we get an email from someone who is still running an old version of FastPak Mail.

Since the beginning, making modifications for customers has been a priority. At first we did it for free as an inducement to buy the system. After a few years, we had more features than anyone, and began to charge money for custom features. Now we've come full circle, and are back to offering customizing as an inducement to buy.

Doug has belonged to the PIA as long as he can remember, and served as President of the local Craftsman's Club.