Larry White, the new chief executive at Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS), says the business environment is seeing a dramatic improvement this year, though challenges remain, including the worldwide chip shortage.
White, a veteran employee of the Lake Forest-based domestic unit of Japan’s Toshiba, moved into the new role as of July 1, succeeding longtime CEO and President Scott Maccabe, who has retired.
White said the printer- and copier-oriented company will operate in a way that’s “not much different than what we’ve been doing,” and added that “the ship has been going in a really good direction for a long time,” as he praised his predecessor in a joint interview with the Business Journal on June 24.
“As an organization, we do face challenges right now,” White said. “The worldwide semiconductor shortage is certainly having an impact on our business, as well as some of the logistics issues we’re facing getting products out of China.”
White joined the company in 1996 and had been serving as chief operating officer, overseeing strategic planning across Toshiba’s business operations throughout North and South America. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Texas Tech University.
Toshiba’s lineup includes multifunction printers, label and receipt printers, digital signage, and what the company calls “cloud document solutions.”
TABS is among the OC area’s top tech employers, with some 2,100 employees across the United States, Mexico, and Central and South America; 287 of them are in Orange County.
‘Dramatic Rebound’
“We’ve seen a dramatic rebound in the business environment,” White said of the current climate. TABS had been reaching record annual profit and profit levels in the pre-pandemic era.
The just-retired Maccabe said 2020 revenue was “a little bit shy of our billon-dollar goal.”
White, who is also the new TABS president, says a lot of businesses put off decisions in the pandemic-stricken year 2020, leading to “pent-up demand.”
“A lot of that pent-up demand over the last 14-to-16 months is really starting to build up now and there’s a lot of momentum going on on the printer side of the business.”
He added that “on that printer side with the hardware, we are very, very close” to what the company achieved in 2019 and “in fact some channels actually are overachieving” that year’s levels.
He said one area really growing is bar code printers so common in shipping goods.
“Because of e-commerce, that business truly is exploding for us,” according to White.
UCI Work, Travel
Maccable says his retirement “was a planned event for me.”
He will devote more time to community and civic activities, and will be serving on the University of California, Irvine Chief Executive Roundtable.
Travel is also on the list, probably including time in Germany and in the Lake District of Italy at the top.
“We love Lago Maggiore,” he said of himself and his wife. “That would be a particularly nice place to be able to spend a little bit of time to unwind and then set my sights on what we’re going to do next.”
Maccabe, who retired on June 30, will continue to serve as an adviser to TABS’ Japan-based parent company, Toshiba Tec Corp.
Maccabe had led TABS since accepting the organization’s top job in July 2013.
“Considering Larry’s shared mindset and elite revenue development background, Toshiba’s future is extremely bright,” Maccabe said.
