When a 30 year old company goes out of business

When Wybron announced three years ago it was ceasing operations, how many owners of Wybron equipment had the sinking feeling that their equipment had suddenly become obsolete? Wybron maintained a policy of providing parts and service for products for 10 years after they went out of production. So, with no Wybron, how could users get help?

Fortunately, 4 Wybron employees were interested in two pieces of the business. Gel strings and parts were identified as a possible ongoing business that had a ready market and enough dollar volume to support a small dedicated crew. Gel Services Inc. became the business and for 2 years provided Gelstrings for all scrollers and parts and service for Wybron products.  

After two years, and some down-sizing, the owners decided that maybe just gelstrings would be viable for the 2 remaining owners. The parts ended up going back to Wybron's founder, Keny Whitright.

As I had announced my retirement 3 years ago to pursue fishing, traveling, and driving my cars (FTD), how could a business be organized to allow all those activities plus support the clients who needed parts? The answer came in the form of an internet store, www.wybron-scroller-parts.com  Now all available parts can be purchased in our online store by all users of Wybron products. Purchase is via credit card or Pay Pal and shipping is typically the same day.

Genuine Wybron Parts

Wybron, like many manufacturers, did not do all the manufacturing in-house. Sheet metal, machinging, painting, and assembly were internal to make sure delivery times could be kept as low as possible. For proprietary electonics we used outside vendors to assemble and test the circuit cards. Purchased parts were custom designed as needed and purchased in relatively high volumes. 

The assembly operation is gone, but the metal parts machines were purchased by local contract manufacturers and they hired most of the employees  to operate them. As a result many of the components are still available and made locally, but in smaller volumes.

We still maintain  business relationships with nearly all the vendors that made the electronics and supplied the purchased parts. These vendors supply a variety of parts like fans, motors, circuit boards, etc. 

A broad range of parts

Wybron made many products over the 30 years in business. We have some parts for the original Colormax and some parts for the last products that Wybron made, the InfoTrace series. Between those periods, the Coloram II became the most popular scroller ever, with more than 80,000 delivered all over the world. We have lots of parts for Coloram IIs and are continuing to manufacture circuit boards and rollers for those models.

Owners Manuals

We have owners manuals for nearly all  of the products manufactured over the years. They can be found in the support category under manuals or in the case of products we supply parts for, the manual can be found in that respective category. For example here is the manual for a 7.5 inch Coloram II.

How to use the store

The store is organized by product categories. Across the top of every page is the list of categories. They lead to a set of drop-down menus that allow selecting the product you are looking for. If a particular size is desired, then look deeper into the menus. The shopping cart is standard, requiring a credit card or Pay Pal for payment and choices of shipping are priced on the checkout page.

A Unique Resource

In addition to the online parts and manuals, soon we will add service tutorials for the most popular models. The most necessary tool is a #1 philips screwdriver. With service tutorials will come the need for schematics for the products. Watch this space for that announcement!

Also long overdue is a living history of scrollers. We will have a look at the evolution of scrollers from our point of view and many of the users.