Datasheets for Less wasn’t always a print/design center. The company started out as Los Gatos Sewing Machine Co. in 1948 on Main Street, on the east side of the Main Street Bridge. Ray Robertson bought the firm in 1953, but soon found that he couldn’t support his family with just sewing machines, so he added business machines and a full line of office supplies.

An opportunity came up in 1957 to buy the building at 111 N. Santa Cruz Avenue (next to Sharper Image), so the company was moved and renamed Los Gatos Office Equipment and Supply. The company did well during the 50’s and 60’s, partly because Ray Robertson sold quality products and people wanted local service and support. We became one of the largest Olympia dealerships at that time.

Olympia typewriters were manufactured in West Germany and featured German spring steel typebars, which, when clashed together by inept typists, always sprang back to their original shape and position (unlike IBM and Smith Corona typewriters, whose print quality suffered from the “pot metal” quality of their typebars). Of course in 1964, IBM brought out the Remington Rand “golf-ball” invention, renamed it the IBM Selectric.

As technology changed, our firm changed with it. During the 60’s, Jon Robertson started working in the store; straightening shelves for pocket money. His father soon taught him more than enough about typewriters, and customers were bemused to find themselves purchasing rather expensive equipment from a 15 year old boy who seemed to know a great deal about business machines.

In the early 70's, Jon took over daily operations. At about this same time, the firm started selling copy machines. The early models were slow, and used a wet process with light-sensitive paper. People would sometimes ask to make one or more personal copies on the demo equipment, and we obliged them (there were no "copy centers" at that time). And then one of our customers told us about a machine that made dry, “plain paper” copies. We called the Haloid Corporation up, ordered one of their machines, and were soon selling high speed copies in the middle of our office equipment and supply store

This service became very popular, and word of mouth spread the news. Plus, every time we found our new “copy center” making a profit, we either lowered the price per copy, or added more equipment (often a faster or better model), and the department kept growing, changing with the times. Los Gatos Office Equipment & Supply was doing well, and it had a division - Los Gatos Copy Center - that was also doing well.

We traded-in our building for the one next door, on the corner of Bean and North Santa Cruz Avenues - where The Sharper Image stands today.

And everything went swimmingly, until the Price Club opened up in San Jose. Price Club foreshadowed Costco, Office Depot, and Staples… and changed the retail landscape forever - even more so than IBM had with Remington’s "Selectric". Our wholesale price was higher than their retail price, so something had to give. Eventually we rethought our business plan, and sold everything but the copy center to McWhorters, an office supply firm specializing in gift items.

So now we had a copy center in downtown Los Gatos and we’d been there practically forever and everybody loved us. It lasted about five years before the black and white copy business degenerated into a commodity. But (having seen the movie before), we stepped sideways, investing heavily in state of the art digital color equipment—and renamed the company 1-800 ProColor to reflect our new focus. We hired a designer to coach us through the first two years, and became a color design and printing center in the process.

Which we still are, but we've added a bit of a twist, in that we've found a way to print datasheets with a lower overhead than anyone else — making us a bit of a specialist, especially with high tech firms.

Today Jon Robertson operates the firm as a full color print/design/datasheet company with help from his talented wife Alicia, his detail oriented sister Sheri, and an entire network of printers, designers, illustrators, and specially trained production rabbits.

What we haven't known we learned. What we couldn't do, we outsourced. And when we made a mistake, we fixed it. Our word is our bond, quality our watchword, as it was all those years ago. It isn't really magic, just experience and a commitment to excellence!