Office furniture company stays in family for 75 years

The company opened a few months before co-founder Delbert Machabee’s son Gary was born. Gary eventually took over the business, which he later left to his son Scott.

“My payroll record says 1952, but I actually started as child labor before that,” said Gary Machabee. “We’ve seen a lot of changes over the years, but we’re still going strong.”

Delbert Machabee and Frank Morrill worked in the office supply and stationery industries before breaking out on their own, starting the business in February 1940 as Morrill and Machabee. Over the years, the focus of the company and the stock carried has changed several times. By the 1960s, the company carried business machines and office furniture.

“We were selling typewriters, microfilm readers and other things no one uses anymore,” Scott Machabee said. “In 1954, we became a Steelcase office furniture dealer. The industry was in its infancy. There was a lot of wood office furniture but not much steel. Furniture has been the core part of our business since the ’60s.”

Henderson resident Scott Machabee said the company, with a Las Vegas office at 6435 Sunset Corporate Drive, had sold steel filing cabinets to the state of Nevada 50 years ago that are still in use today.

“Steelcase has a lifetime warranty,” Scott Machabee said. “We’ve sold to all sorts of businesses and government entities, including banks, call centers, some gaming offices. We did the SLS (Las Vegas).”

Morrill decided to retire in 1970, and Gary Machabee, with help from his father, bought out Morrill and became his father’s partner. Morrill’s sons had no interest in getting into the business.

“Dick became a doctor back East, and Bob became a lawyer in the Bay Area,” Gary Machabee said. “Both were invited to the company’s anniversary party in Reno but couldn’t make it. I talked to Dick in Boston during the party. We’ve been friends for years.”

Like his father, Scott Machabee said he wasn’t on the payroll until quite a while after he’d been working unofficially.

“I started when I was 12,” he said. “I swept the floors and emptied the trash cans.”

The company retained the name until 1988, when it expanded to Las Vegas, and the owners rebranded the company as Machabee Office Environments. Scott moved to Las Vegas a few years after and has run the Southern Nevada location for 24 years. These days, the company doesn’t sell furniture as much as it sells offices.

“If a customer came in and wanted to buy an L-shaped desk, we could sell it to them at a competitive price, but that’s not really what we do here,” Scott Machabee said. “The more complex a customer’s needs are, the better fit we’d be.”

The company employs 30 people — 20 in Las Vegas and 10 in Reno. It has salespeople, installers and a space planning department.

“We help people lay out their office space,” Scott Machabee said. “We help them figure out how many workstations can fit in their space. Sometimes we’ll sell workstations, and later, the customer needs change, and we can help them reconfigure them. We have AutoCAD programs and expansions that can render a customer’s office with the furniture in it.”

Over the years, the Machabees have seen furniture and the office environment change drastically. For a while, it was all high-walled cubicles, but Scott Machabee said most businesses are trending away from that, with the cubicle walls being lowered or removed. Likewise, the furniture that was once larger in order to accommodate large, heavy computer monitors and paper document storage have become smaller and narrower as monitors have grown slimmer.

“The work surfaces have become narrower because you don’t have as much paper laying around,” Scott Machabee said. “People have really embraced the paperless office in the last five years.”

Scott Machabee bought out his father in 2000 but retained him as a consultant.

“He still comes into the office in Reno most days because he likes to,” Scott Machabee said. “He has his own business financing business machines, also.”

On March 18, the Las Vegas branch of the company was set to hold an invitation-only anniversary event with its clients and friends.

Scott and Gary Machabee see a lot of potential for the company to thrive and adapt to the changing business environment.

“Scott and I talk nearly every day, looking for trends and trying to stay ahead of them,” Gary Machabee said. “We’ve had a good 75 years, and we should have quite a few more. Maybe somewhere down the line, one of the grandkids will take it over.”

Contact East Valley View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 702-380-4532.