So not boring

Even though his company has gone from selling typewriters to providing IT services, Dean Boring will correct you if you suggest Boring Business Systems keeps reinventing itself.

“We've always been in the technology business,” says Boring, the third family member to run the business, founded 91 years ago as Lakeland Typewriter and Supply Co. “In 1924, typewriters were a big deal. It's a long way from a quill pen to a typewriter.”

Over the decades, the business machines Boring Business Systems sells and services have changed from manual to electric to computerized and networked devices. The newest technology wrinkle came in 2012. That's when Dean Boring acquired a small IT company, a deal he believes will keep the business prospering even as the number of copies and prints people make continues to drop.

The four-person IT division grew 150% last year and Boring projects it will be a $1 million operation in 2016. That makes it a significant contributor to the company's overall growth: Sales increased 14.3% in 2014, from $7 million in 2013 to $8 million.

One of the company's competitive advantages, Boring says, is quick response to problems. Unlike competitors, says Boring, “I don't have to check with (an out-of-town) vice president. If the customer is not happy, I do whatever it takes to make them happy. I don't care what it costs me.”

Another advantage: It's the only locally owned business machine company in Polk County, where 90% of its customers are located. Clients include most of the largest businesses and government agencies in the county. Competitors include four Polk-based branches of out-of-town companies and a host of Tampa business-machine companies.

With business so strong in its home base, Boring Business Systems, seeking more opportunities, recently expanded into Tampa. It hired two technicians and a full-time sales representative there, and a second sales rep is planned for later this year.

The company's name, counterintuitively, provides one more competitive edge. A company motto says it all: “Wouldn't you rather be boring?”

The decision to use the family's name for the business in the early 1970s caused a young Dean Boring — he's 66 now — to resign for one day. Says Boring: “I said, 'Dad, that's the stupidest damn thing I ever heard in my life. What's that have to do with what we do?' And we had a huge fight. And I threw my keys on the desk and quit.”

Boring adds that he grew tired of being teased about his Boring name growing up.

The younger Boring apologized the next day and returned to work. “I thought it was stupid for a long time,” he says, “but it was brilliant, because you want people to remember your name ... Most people think it's ridiculous, but they remember it.”

Boring started at the company as a delivery person when he was 19, choosing work over college. For years he followed his father's advice that as the boss' son, he should be the first one in and the last one to leave.

More than four decades later, he admits, he comes in at 8:30 a.m. instead of 8 and leaves early on Fridays to get to his family's beach house on Anna Maria Island for the weekend. But he has no plans to retire.

“Buying the IT company reinvigorated me for years,” says Boring. “It's so exciting. And hiring millennials and seeing them grow and develop is very motivating. I'm as excited about this business as any time in my career.”

- Barry Friedman