A bindery built this.

Puget Bindery has been making books in the Seattle area since 1919. Saddle stitching, perfect binding, folding, coating: the trade work that happens after the press and before the reader.

I own the bindery, and I write software. For years our tools looked like a lot of shops our size: an old system that knew our records, spreadsheets around the edges, and a great deal of pricing knowledge in the heads of the people who’d been here longest.

Every quote starts from scratch. It shouldn’t.

Every job leaves a record: what we charged, what it took to make, what surprised us. When similar work comes back, that record ought to come back with it. Usually it doesn’t. Someone rebuilds the price from memory and a rate sheet.

Good work should teach the next job.

Plyworks reads the systems we already run, without changing them. It reads each request, asks when something’s missing, and prices it with an engine tuned to our job codes. The quote agent we’re proving now goes further: it starts every price from our own precedent and hands a draft to a person to approve.

Customer zero.

Everything on this site either runs in our shop today or is being proven there now, and we label which is which. Our floor is where we find out when an idea doesn’t work.

That doesn’t mean we’ve solved every shop. It means we have somewhere real to start.

A few more shops.

We’re opening Plyworks to a small number of binderies and print finishing shops. Start with one job code and an agreed sample of past work. Request a backtest and I’ll be in touch to see whether we’re a fit.