Specialty Odyssey businesses go unnoticed
By Marigold Substance
| Features Reporter
There is a world of businesses that few
people notice or realize. They are the specialty businesses, which often
make only one kind of object which may sound obscure, but which is necessary
for daily life nonetheless. Many of these specialty businesses are located
in Odyssey and few people outside the companies even know they exist.
All about Buttons is an ideal example. A recent addition to the Odyssey
business community, All About Buttons makes pieces for everything from
computers to car panels.
The company won awards for their work on calculator buttons, especially
their 'equals' button and their 'square root' button. A new project that the
company just started designing was computer keyboard letters. "These have
been especially difficult for us," said president Ben Matthews. "We worked
for months on the 'W' key for laptop keyboards with gray keys. It was a
doozy."
Matthews further related that the company had spent thousands of dollars
adjusting their 'pound' key (also known as 'tic-tac-toe' key) for
telephones. "We originally had the symbol on a slant, but polls showed that
people were more interested in a straight-lined symbol. We responded to our
public and made the adjustment."
Odyssey Automotive is another seemingly neglected manufacturer. The company
produces light-bulbs for the left rear turn signal of several brands of
foreign compact automobiles. Brad Swink, a salesman for the company said
that they considered branching out a year ago. "We thought about trying the
right front turn signal for those same cars," he recalls. "Then we decided
that was not what we're all about. We wouldn't have been able to focus on
our first love-left rear turn signals."
Quanco may be a name with which Odyssey citizens are familiar. They are one
of the largest manufacturers of re-writable CD-ROMs in the country. However,
Elbatron may not be familiar, though they are just as important to the
production of discs. Elbatron designs the carrying cases for various Quanco
products.
Other specialty in Odyssey businesses include Make it Count, a manufacturer
of second hands for digital clocks (a very small market) and Cotton Isn't
Rotten, a producer of the cotton balls in the tops of medicine bottles.
This
article originally appeared in "The Odyssey Times," a
special fictional newspaper produced by Focus on the Family to promote
Adventures in Odyssey.
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