Central to service
Hayden and Burney Carraway, from left, hold a sign used by Burney’s father, Sidney, after he started Carraway Typewriter in 1962.
Carraway Office Solutions picks Ayden to consolidate business By Donna Marie Williams
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or more than 60 years, Carraway Office Solutions has been meeting productivity needs for eastern North Carolina. Today, with its business consolidated and centrally located in Ayden, the company continues to grow and prides itself on providing exceptional products, support and customer service. It has its roots in Greenville starting 1962 as Carraway Typewriters. The business began with Sidney Carraway, who desired to provide his customers with better service than he was able to provide while working at a large office equipment and supply company.
AYDEN MAGAZINE
“He just felt like the customers were not being treated as he would want them to be treated. He talked to my mom about it, and they decided to start Carraway Typewriter,” said Sidney’s son and current owner, Burney Carraway. With his wife Bernadine in hand, Carraway Typewriter continued to prosper through the years under Sidney’s leadership. “We started off selling typewriters and then as the office equipment industry evolved it went into fax machines, computers and then copiers. We went from Carraway Typewriter to Carraway Business Machines in the late '80s. I bought the company in 1994. That’s
when we changed the name to Carraway Office Solutions,” Burney said. “I grew up in this industry. I grew up in this business. I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps and have been blessed to be able to do so.” Burney has worked for Carraway for most of his life. “I left in the late '80s and I moved to Raleigh to work for a Fortune 500 company. I learned the copy business there and worked there for a couple of years. I met my wife and then we moved back to Greenville to get married. I came back and went to work for the family business,” Burney said. The business expanded to Kinston in 2003 with the
SUMMER-FALL 2022
purchase of Daughty’s Office Equipment, which operated under said name until the consolidation of both offices to its new Ayden location in 2022. “We were very close to the Daughty family. We had worked together over the years. We wanted to keep the Daughty name alive out of respect to them,” Burney said. With the business now in Ayden, Carraway is in a better position to serve their clients. “Ayden is centered right in the heart of our eastern North Carolina territory. It was the perfect fit. With the new highways and bypasses … we’re still the same distance to Washington and a little closer to New Bern. We wanted to be able to
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