This 108-Year-Old Pasadena Business Identifies Opportunities and Continuously Evolves to Thrive

One of a fleeting few Pasadena businesses that have been around for more than a century, Anderson Business Technology has continued to thrive by remembering there is really only one constant in the fight for survival in the dog-eat-dog corporate world, and that is things change.

In the world of communications, technology underwent not only change but a revolution, leading society into the cyber age, and “We just kind of adapted to whatever the latest office equipment was for our customers,” said company President David Anderson, grandson of the company’s founder. 

“When we started out in 1912,” Anderson said in a recent interview, back when his grandfather C. Elmer Anderson started the business and the clack-clack-clack of typewriters was the daily soundtrack of the typical office workplace, “we sold typewriters, and that had a long history as part of our company, and the company was called Anderson Typewriters,” he explained.

But, as time went on, “Even typewriters evolved from manuals to electric, to electronic, to even word processing typewriters,” Anderson said.

 

Today, the sounds of people typing on keyboards has been replaced by the soft hums of computers and home and office printers, allowing the company to stay relevant, and profitable, for 108 years.

David said his grandfather, vacationing in Pasadena from Michigan in 1912, discovered that the city had few typewriter mechanics.  At that point, the typewriter was a common technology, having been invented in 1829.

Knowing an opportunity when it presented itself, he established the Anderson Typewriter Co., setting up shop in what Elmer’s grandson called a “tin-roof loft of a stationery shop” at 49 E. Colorado Blvd.

Elmer took on the coveted line of Royal and Smith Corona typewriters and was soon awarded the Southern California territory from San Luis Obispo County to San Diego County.  The business thrived during World War I.

Later that year, the company moved to a location in Pasadena on the corner of Raymond Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. In a brilliant bit of marketing, Anderson introduced and sponsored speed typing contests at the Los Angeles County Fair, a first-of-its-kind event for the industry.

In 1942, the company moved to 120 E. Colorado Blvd., and Elmer’s son, Donald, 14, began working at the shop after school.

Following the end of World War II, when sales of typewriters were regulated by the government, many American and foreign manufacturers introduced a successful electric typewriter.  Anderson added those as well as photocopy machines to their sales line. 

Son Donald and daughter Barbara became co-owners of the company in 1966, following their father’s death.  When electronic typewriters rapidly began to replace manual typewriters in the 1970s, Anderson became one of the leaders in the sales and service of the new technology.

And then it was fax machines, said David.

“In the eighties,” he explained, “as maybe typewriters were starting to slow down, that was the boom of the fax machine. We got very heavily into fax machines, and had actually become at the time one of Xerox’s largest dealers in the nation, as far as our sales of fax machines.” 

David also remembered with a chuckle that in those days, “You couldn’t sell one fax, you had to sell two, because their locations needed to talk to each other.”

Pretty soon, everyone had a fax machine in their office. In fact, Xerox fax machines became an office staple in the 1980s, replacing expensive telex machines. Once again, the Andersons were riding shotgun on the new technology bandwagon. 

Along with fax machines, copiers became another core product for Anderson in the 1990s, and the company eventually took  on other manufacturers to support sales and service to their growing customer base.

In 1995, the company became Anderson Business Technology to better represent its line of new technologies, and connectivity became the new business buzzword.

As David explained, that means managing an office’s print operations, from daily output to maintenance.

“For example,” he said, “We have software that reads toner levels and things for all the equipment and literally ships out toner, when it’s needed.”

He continued, “Technology can basically manage an office’s entire fleet and manage it in the most efficient way,  to make sure that the more cost-effective devices are printing the greatest volume, and things like that.”

David added, “That goes along with taking care of the copiers and the printers, and  really supporting the whole operation.” 

Whereas Vroman’s Bookstore, another local store that’s been around forever (actually 126 years) and only in recent times included fine stationery and even a  wine bar, it still mainly sells paper-and-ink books printed on a press, and today on the internet as well. Throughout its existence, Anderson Business Technology quickly and continuously embraced as many new technologies in its industry as practical. 

“The need is still there,” Anderson said of typewriters, explaining that one Japanese company, Nakajima, may be the world’s last typewriter manufacturer, and is likely producing most of the once ingenuous but now largely archaic devices sold in the U.S. under various names.

Despite all the changes in the industry, remnants of the past remain.

Prior to the pandemic, the company would still sell a typewriter “once or twice a month,” Anderson said.