Deluxe Corporation
wasted no time in adapting, and by the
early- to mid-1960s, Deluxe and its customers realized that MICR could be used
for processing many different types of
documents.
New Products opened an operation
in Roseville, Minnesota as a result of a
request to process in excess of “20 million process control documents and loan
coupon books.” In addition, Olson and his
team found ways to use MICR to process
savings and withdrawal tickets. By 1967,
New Products was selling over $1 million
in services and was increasing its commitment to research.
As a result of new postal regulations
regarding zip coding and presorting bulk
mail, Rose leveraged Deluxe’s mail order
expertise to pioneer a deal with the US
Post Office. The deal allowed Deluxe to
set up postal services inside the company
so that “mail sacks bypassed local sorting
operations, thus eliminating handling by
the post office.” This helped with postage
costs and sped up delivery to clients.
Next, Deluxe created Fashion∙Chec
covers, which catered to fashion conscious
customers who wanted colors, textures
and designs on their checkbook covers.
Pictorial “Scenic Americana” checks soon
followed. These checks increased the company’s income margin, and by 1969 sales
were over $80 million with income of
nearly $8 million.
The country was dealing with inflation, stagnation and gasoline shortages in
the 1970s, which also challenged Deluxe.
Long a “one-product” company, Deluxe
continued to stick to its knitting, opening
Southern and Western plants. With three
plants opened a year by 1979, Deluxe was
running a total of 56 plants. The company
began investing in new technology and
created a number of new initiatives, such
as Operation Easier, Project Prevalidation
and the North Star Project, which developed the Deluxe Encoder Printer (DEP).
This was an evolutionary process and
included Troy Computer Products and
Data Card Corp.
By 1976, 64-year-old Rose moved
toward retirement. Gene Olson became
Deluxe’s fourth president and, in 1978, its
CEO. Rose needed to talk Olson into taking the job, as he doubted his capability
of running the company. However, Olson
proved himself to be a good leader and
was the first CEO to diversify the company. His first innovation was pre-inked
Plateroom in the Deluxe Chicago plant.
endorsement stamps, which added $1.4
million to sales.
On April 25, 1980, Deluxe became a
public company, as it was liste