"Businesses often diversify to stay competitive," SeacoastOnline.com noted in featuring Tom Holbrook of Riverrun Bookstore in Portsmouth, N.H., whose diversification strategy includes "typewriters sold, repaired and bought.... It's not a big part of the business--maybe 5% of annual revenues, according to Holbrook--but the typewriter display in the window often gets customers inside, something he discovered when he first offered them for sale about five years ago."
"I love the idea of something that works the way it was meant to work this many years later," he said. "Not only did they sell almost immediately, but they stopped people in their tracks walking by on the sidewalk. You could stand there and watch people just stop and look, and then they would come in the store. It was great advertising."
Holbrook, who has between 30 and 40 typewriters in his basement, sets aside a few hours each Friday for restorations: "I basically learned how to do half a dozen basic things--make sure the keys work, replace the carriage band. Because I'm either going to be able to fix a typewriter in an hour, or it's not going to be worth it. If I spend six hours on a machine and charge the person $200, we could have found another machine for the same price."
He added that the holiday season is still a big one for typewriters: "For Christmas I'm going to want to get as many in shape as possible because I sell five times more than the rest of the year. I will generally sell out every Christmas of manual typewriters."