Long-running office supply company started out repairing typewriters

PITTSBURGH – Jim Droney was a young college graduate aiming to build a career in sales in Boston when his father asked him to return to his hometown to help run an office supplies company.

That was 1976 and Droney and his wife, Rosemary, a fellow English major at Boston College whom he met in a poetry class, made a deal with James Droney Sr.: they would stick around for a year because his business partner was ill.

Both of them put in their 12 months at the company — then called Mt. Lebanon Office Equipment — but they never made it back to Boston.

"They were a pretty persuasive group and by that I mean Jim's father," said Rosemary Droney, 61, whose first job with the company was in customer service. She now handles major accounts for what eventually became Mt. Lebanon Office Furniture & Interiors.

Her husband, 64, is the president. A son, Chris Droney, 30, recently came on board as vice president and general manager.

Rosemary Droney eschews a title for herself. "I'll unload a truck if you need me to."

The company launched in 1960 when James Droney Sr., a regional manager for the Smith Corona typewriter company, turned down an offer to run the New York City branch of the company — a leading manufacturer of the machines that served for decades as a primary tool used by office workers and just about anyone who needed to create letters, reports and other written material.

Instead, he and a Smith Corona salesman, Mike Silvestre, opened their own typewriter sales and repair business in a tiny space in the main business district of Mount Lebanon, a township outside Pittsburgh. The place was crammed with typewriters — new, used, manuals, portable electrics — made by Smith Corona, as well as other brands such as Olympia, Adler-Royal, Hermes and retooled IBMs, said Jim Droney.

In the rear of the space was a complete repair shop. The business also carried typewriter ribbons, cartridges, covers and other office supplies including carbon paper and adding machines.

After several moves, the business now occupies a building it owns in Pittsburgh that formerly housed a burial vault manufacturer.

In the showroom, couches, chairs, desks and tables from makers such as Hon and Allsteel are stylishly grouped along bright colored walls in a space that offers no hint the company got its start selling office equipment that might now be unfamiliar to a younger generation of workers.

The company began diversifying in the late 1970s when it saw an opportunity to offer furniture to some customers in addition to the printers, calculators, dictation machines, shredders and other devices they were buying.

"Customers were already buying business machines from us," said Rosemary Droney. "Initially we went after the midsize niche of businesses for furniture."

By 1980, sales were split between office equipment and furniture. A few years later, the owners decided to focus exclusively on the furnishings side of the business — about the same time typewriters were being replaced by personal computer-based word processors.

The success they had designing interiors for small firms helped land major corporate clients, including the Jones Day law firm, Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne and Point Park universities, and the Pittsburgh Penguins — Mt. Lebanon Office furnished the team's offices, private suites and public spaces at the former CONSOL Energy Center, now PPG Paints Arena.

The company represents more than 125 furniture manufacturers and tries to meet "all budgets and tastes," said Chris Droney.

Desks, for instance, can range from a basic laminate at $250 to a custom wood creation for more than $10,000, he said.

Relationships have been a critical element of Mt. Lebanon Office's staying power, said Rosemary Droney.

"Our goal was never for the one-shot deal. We have clients large and small who have remained valued customers for 40 years. Some are very high-profile and our rule is to go in, get out, stay under the radar, get the job done and keep moving."