Building QCI Direct, sharing her success

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To Jane Glazer, the late founder of QCI Direct, the best part of being in business for 30 years was helping the women who joined her company grow and progress throughout their careers.

Glazer, 68, died Sept. 5 in a plane accident with her husband, Rochester developer Laurence Glazer.

“There are so many intelligent women out there who have no idea how capable they are. They come here and they realize there is no glass ceiling and they can move up,” said Glazer, then CEO, in a July interview.

The idea for QCI Direct, formerly Microwave Magic/Quick Cook Inc. and Home Trends, came out of Glazer’s desire to do something new.

QCI Direct is a distributor of unique and hard-to-find products through online and print catalogs. The company carries three catalogs: Picket Fence, Home Trends and Sleep Solutions.

When she started the business in 1983, Glazer was a middle school math teacher. The venture was supposed to be part-time, but it took off almost immediately. Her success in business surprised her. Today the company has more than 4,000 products—including its own cleaning supply line—and sends out 2.5 million catalogs a month. It ships scores of items daily from a 250,000-square-foot warehouse in Churchville and employs 110 people in the area.

QCI’s catalog sales are augmented by a fast-growing online business that accounts for 25 percent of its sales.

Glazer built her company from a black-and-white catalog into an online distributor with a “Sure, no problem” style of doing business. Every product QCI Direct sells has a 100 percent lifetime guarantee. In 2012, the company was a winner of the Rochester Business Ethics Award for firms with 50 to 150 employees.

Glazer also cared about her employees and was particularly delighted to see women succeed in business. Ninety percent of QCI Direct’s managers are women.

Born in Rochester, Glazer was the second-oldest of Andrew and June Lovenheim’s three children.

“Our father, (the) co-founder and vice president of Great Lakes Press, was a huge influence on her, both in terms of approach to business, sales, concern for employees and involvement in the community,” said her younger brother, author Peter Lovenheim, in a recent interview.

The press provided a comfortable living for the families of Andrew Lovenheim and his brothers Cliff and Earl, early 20th-century immigrants who rose from poverty on the fortunes of the printing company they founded in 1939.

The firm “was an anchor for the whole family,” Lovenheim said.

Partners in business, the three Lovenheim brothers eventually moved to adjacent streets in Brighton. Each had three children. The nine Lovenheim cousins and their parents formed a tight-knit clan.

A 1963 graduate of Brighton High School, Glazer attended Ohio State University. After meeting her future husband, she transferred to the University of Buffalo. They married soon after graduation.

Glazer and her husband were generous with both their time and money. The couple supported WXXI, Jewish Senior Life and the Jewish Community Center, among other local charitable causes. She also took the time to speak and mentor.

“I have always taken the time to talk to anybody who feels they have an idea and they want somebody they can talk to and find out if I think it’s doable,” Glazer said.

“I think mostly I’m a woman. There aren’t that many that succeed as entrepreneurs, especially in Rochester.”

Taylor Barker was a Rochester Business Journal summer intern. Includes reporting by Will Astor.