WHERE ARE THEY NOW?R
40 under 40 AMEE ZETZMAN, CO-OWNER, ALL MAKES
ALL IN THE family
AMEE ZETZMAN ADVANCES MULTI-GENERATIONAL ALL MAKES Amee Zetzman has made a career out of coming home. The fourthgeneration co-owner of All Makes started her career in public accounting before joining the erstwhile family firm, for example. And, truth be told, serving many of the firm’s clients — to say nothing of the company’s 80-plus employees — feels a lot like visiting relatives, too. “I know it sounds so cliché, but we are a family business and we treat our team and our customers like they’re family,” she said. “If you call our main number, a human is going to answer the phone. And that human is going to find another human to help you with whatever challenge you may be experiencing. “It’s our name and reputation on the line. We not only are going to sell a quality product at a good price, but we are going to service it if there is a challenge.”
FAMILY legacy
The fingerprints of the previous generations — dating back to 1918 when Russian immigrant Harry Ferer founded All Makes Typewriter Co. — can be found throughout All Makes today. But just as the periodic name changes suggest (to All
Makes Office Equipment Co. in 1960, today colloquially known as All Makes), the company didn’t survive without adaptation. That includes the present generation of ownership, Zetzman and her brother Jeff Kavich, who are as much about the company’s future as it’s storied past. “Since my brother and I have officially taken over, we have several new locations — Kearney, Columbus and we have representation in North Platte now,” Zetzman said. “Our reach in the state of Nebraska has increased in combination with our ability to do projects in other markets. We have a client who we just did a hundred locations for around the United States.” The product line has also multiplied under current leadership, an extension of the firm’s oldest operating principles. When Ferer founded the company — later to be passed to son-in-law Lazier Kavich, Zetzman’s grandfather — one of his products was an Ediphone, a state-of-the-art dictating machine invented by Thomas Edison. This focus on office technology waned for a time, lately to become a focal point, to great success. “Our company started selling typewriters and I think we went through
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