What's in a name? What does it mean? To us it means great products, great people, and great results, but technically, the word Quarasan doesn’t mean anything! It all started with our history. Our founder, Randi Brill, a calligraphic designer at heart, loved the swash of a perfectly-rendered Q. She knew long before she founded the company in 1982 that its name would start with her favorite letter.

Randi originally chose the name Quarto because a quarto is the smallest bound book that one can make. A visionary even then, Randi was willing to design anything from posters to directories. Quarto effectively encompassed this concept.

Through her research, Randi discovered there was a company in New York City with a similar name. Now, keep in mind that Randi was doing business in the basement of a little blue house in Morton Grove, Illinois! Competing with a New York firm didn’t seem too likely.

One short year later, the company was doing work in New York and Boston. Always driven to build and grow the business, Randi had trouble staying within Illinois boundaries! It was also time for the business to incorporate. To incorporate, one has to do a national name search—and the name Quarto didn’t clear!

Randi decided that the company was only a year old and that it was the least known it ever would be. (She had no idea!) Her attorney suggested, “Pick a name that doesn’t mean anything and give it your own meaning.”

Always sparked by challenge, Randi spread out the small wooden tiles from a famous word-making board game that shall remain nameless. She took the letters QUA from quarto, RA from Randi, and SAN from the name of her partner at the time, and voilà—QUARASAN!

Quarasan is pronounced QWAR-a-san as in “quart of sand.” People who hire us or join us as employees and vendors agree that we really have taken a word with no meaning and applied an amazing one to it. People mispronounce our name at times, or they just call us Q, but they do call us—again and again. That’s what counts.