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Abadan celebrates its 60th anniversary of serving the Mid-Columbia this year. The Abadan team works out of its central location at 79 Aaron Drive in Richland. The 32 employees are led by General Manager Tyler Best, who works in tandem with his father, Bob Best. Contributed photo.
By Audra Distifeno for TCAJOB
Black and white analog copy machines are just as much an icon of the past as typewriters; though each had a valuable place in history, both seem to have lived in the dark ages when considering the quality of copy Abadan now offers its customers.
The Richland-based company has grown leaps and bounds over the past 60 years and continues to evolve in tandem with technology. Keeping a small business thriving hasn?t always been smooth sailing, said Bob Best, who launched and managed Abadan?s Richland branch since 1975 and purchased it in 1987.
Abadan opened in Spokane in 1953 and has served the Tri-Cities area since.
?Our company was pretty much founded on Hanford,? said Best, who worked for Bonneville Blueprint prior to his start with Abadan?s Spokane office in 1974. ?Ninety percent of our business was blueprinting and engineering.?
In fact, upon opening the Richland branch, 95 percent of Abadan?s revenues were connected to Hanford. The early years saw about $500,000 in annual gross revenues and the company was ?technically bankrupt? after Energy Northwest went bankrupt, Best added.
Now Abadan now exceeds gross revenues of $5 million per year.
Abadan was a ma and pa business and Best was a young warehouse manager with an electronics degree and a dream of moving to Boulder, Colo. or Salt Lake City, Utah, which were the computer hubs in the U.S. at the time.
?I always wanted to run my own business at some point,? Bob Best said. ?Back then, one computer took up a 3,000-sq.-ft. room. I now have three phones and two iPads. It just blows me away.?
For Abadan, technological advances have been many, as its copy center, sales of office copiers and printers, and servicing those machines depends on the latest and greatest in efficiency and features.
Today, said the owner, Hanford makes up just 20 percent of Abadan?s revenues.
?I?m happy to say that, because we?re deliberately trying to diversify,? Best said.
Abadan is growing its territory north to the Canadian border and down into northeastern Oregon. The decision to diversify to copiers in the 1980s was pivotal.
?It changed my entire career,? Best said.
Though the business initially struggled after the decision, it became the lifesaver due to its previous reliance on Hanford and the need to expand and diversify into serving markets outside of the Hanford site.
Another key is that most small businesses don?t have a ?succession plan,? Best said.
His son, Tyler Best, now owns more than 11 percent of the company, and will eventually become the company?s sole owner.
Since 2005, Tyler Best has worked full-time at Abadan and he is currently the company?s vice president and general manager.
?He?s doing a fantastic job; I?m very proud of him,? Best said.
Best?s daughter, Nikki, is the company?s office manager and his other son, Chris, is an Abadan technician.
Sherry Armijo, whom Bob Best affectionately nicknamed ?The IBM Queen? for her tenacity to sell between 80 and 90 typewriters per month back in the late 1980s, now serves as Abadan?s sales and marketing director.
?Bob likes to say our focus is from the birth to the death of the document,? Armijo said. ?We help businesses efficiently create, produce and store documents.?
Abadan has consistently been in Konica Minolta?s ?Top Tier,? the top 10 percent of dealers, every year since the late 1980s. It?s also the only ?Pro Tech? dealer in Washington, which is measured by technician certification.
Konica Minolta offers certification within several benchmarks ? skills, knowledge, manufacturer training and parts on hand, Armijo said.
Ten technicians at Abadan are ?Pro Tech? certified.
?This allows us to do a superior job of serving our customers,? Armijo said.
When Abadan started, it was selling black and white analog copiers that cost about $200,000 apiece. Now, the presses in the company?s Copy Center offer crisp photography-quality color and have the ability to print on a variety of media ? waterproof banners, posters, door hangers, magnetic business cards, multi-color construction drawings, thick cardstock, specialty labels, calendars and more.
Abadan is one of just two or three businesses in Washington that has a wide-format color machine, and one of only a handful that has an 80-copy-per-minute color press.
The presses cost between $70,000 and $90,000 apiece and can be calibrated for specific jobs. Abadan?s presses can respectively run 70 and 80 pages of color copy per minute, 105 black and white pages per minute, and nine color or 12 black and white full-size drawings per minute.
?People can simply email their copy and we can deliver it back,? Armijo said. ?It?s all digital now. The copy quality is gorgeous and super crisp. You can?t tell the difference between a photograph and what?s coming off the digital presses.?
And the quality coming off the machines Abadan sells its customers is comparable, she added.
Abadan has a ?demo room,? with 24 machines ? from small desktop printers to mid-range office printers and large digital production presses ? it offers for purchase. Customers can visit the room to peruse each model?s features, efficiency and quality. Over the past two years, Abadan sales managers were hired and sales offices opened in Walla Walla and Yakima.
?Our plans are to continue growing and expanding and we?ll add more employees as needed,? Tyler Best said.
Abadan?s Tri-Cities branch started with Bob Best and a part-time employee. Within a year it had grown to 28 employees. Now the company has 32 full-time employees, many of whom have worked with Abadan for more than 30 years.
?We have the greatest team and have always worked as a team,? Best said. ?Everything is a team effort. Everyone shares and everyone contributes. Our goal is to keep the customers happy.?
Over the past two years, Abadan has pursued its goals through ?sales blitzes,? in which a team from Konica Minolta joins an Abadan team to blitz businesses within an area in order to inform them of products and services the Richland-based company offers.
For every business it reaches, a specific amount of money is donated to an organization within that community.
Through the program to date, the company has contributed an estimated $30,000 to food banks in the Tri-Cities, Moses Lake, Wenatchee, Pendleton, Umatilla and Morrow Counties; Tri-Cities and Walla Walla cancer centers; Grace Clinic and veterans? programs locally and in Yakima.
?It?s a way for us to be involved in the community and to give back,? Tyler Best said. Marketing is a constant task and many business owners and managers aren?t aware of the reciprocal services that Abadan offers, said Armijo.
The company has moved a few times over the decades ? from a small space on Lee Boulevard, to a spot on The Parkway and most notably, to its current 26,500-sq.-ft. building at 79 Aaron Drive in Richland.
Abadan fills the building well, with just 7,500 square feet available for lease or future growth.? The general manager?s goals are simple: quality customer service and helping business owners save money while managing their prints efficiently.
?We want to provide the best customer service we can,? Tyler Best said. ?We want to continue to be a lifetime supporter of businesses and take care of them like they?re our family. Without them, we can?t have a business.?
Every customer is important, Bob Best echoed. Abadan services big customers like Hanford to mid-range (banks, doctors, attorneys and churches) and sole practitioners and individuals, said Armijo.
?We don?t have a big mother corporation. Our goal and purpose is to take care of each customer as if they?re our only customers,? Armijo said. ?It?s very important that every customer feels they?re getting the best service, equipment and support.?
Abadan will offer a Customer Appreciation Open House on Sept. 19 in celebration of its 60 years in business.
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