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Sydney · Berowra · trading since 1991Zebra printers, scanners, mobile computers, labels and ribbons, sold and supported out of Berowra on the northern edge of Sydney. Thirty-five years, five addresses, and every one of them in this city.
In Sydney the person who answers the phone is the person who turns up. That is the whole of the local claim, and it is worth more than it sounds — there is no dispatcher, no ticket queue, and nobody being briefed on your problem second-hand before they get in the car.
Most of what we do travels perfectly well by courier and phone, and we would rather say that than pretend distance is a problem it is not. Three things are genuinely different here.
Sydney, and the Central Coast and Wollongong with it. Everywhere else in Australia the visit is attended by a Zebra partner technician local to you, which works perfectly well — but here it is us in the car.
Before you buy scanners rather than after. How high the top beam is, how dark the aisle gets, whether the labels are already scuffed and how far back the operator has to stand — those decide which scanner is right, and they are very hard to establish over the phone.
On something big enough to be worth the trip we bring it around Sydney rather than book a courier. Small stock ships the same way it ships to Perth, because there is no advantage in pretending otherwise.
Being local is an easy thing to write and a hard thing to prove. This is the proof, and every line of it is checkable.
It started in a bedroom in my parents’ house, and then moved downstairs into one half of the double garage. Every business says this. In this case it is literally where the first invoices were written.
Rented, for ten years. Somebody else rents it now, because we never bought it — which at the time felt like the careful decision.
Back to working out of a house, for six years. (02) 9636 5299 was connected in Toongabbie in 2006, and it has followed the business to every address since.
A granny flat over a double garage, which became the office. Three programmers and me in it, through to 2015. There is a photograph of that room on the Windows Mobile page.
Another garage turned into an office, on the northern edge of Sydney off the M1. It is where the stock is, where the six hire scanners are staged, and where the printer that prints the labels sits.
Four phone numbers, which is the same story told in digits. It began as 636 1643. That became 9636 1643 when Sydney went to eight digits, then 9676 7766 with the office in 1996, and 9636 5299 in 2006. Every one of them a Sydney number, and the last has been the same for twenty years.
Which is the only reason the claim on the front page is worth making. The same person since 1991, and the same number for twenty years is a sentence a great many businesses would like to write and very few can.
“We carry stock” is the sort of claim anybody can make, so on this site it is a photograph of the shelf with the day it was taken written underneath it.
Rolls on the shelf for the common Zebra desktop and industrial sizes, photographed on a stated date rather than borrowed from a catalogue.
The part that actually fails, for current and legacy printers, held here rather than ordered in once your machine is already down.
Staged here for a stocktake, a day up to a week, then couriered out. Six is the whole fleet, so two counts in the same week will collide.
It is not a showroom, and there is no counter to walk up to. It is an office in a converted garage with one person in it. Visits are by arrangement — ring first and there will be somebody here, which is a different and better promise than opening hours painted on a door.
And the rest of Australia loses very little. The stock goes by courier, the advice goes down the phone, and an onsite service call is attended in five capitals. What Sydney gets is the drive, and that is the honest size of it.
It is a mobile, and it is answered by the person who has been doing this since 1991. If it goes to voicemail it is because he is in somebody’s warehouse. Tell us what the equipment is and what it is doing.
