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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