Our History

The First Generation

Our company began in 1956 as Desert Stationers, when purchased by Ed A. and Leona “Tiny” Freihoff.

Prior to purchasing Desert Stationers, Ed was a national account representative for Burroughs Business Machines, specializing in posting machines for banks in the days prior to computers. Ed held one of the highest sales quotas in the United States. Leona was a bookkeeper for a large accounting firm in St. Louis, Missouri, where the two met and married. Ed’s job required him to move frequently, which is how they ended up in California. Ed had always wanted to be his own boss, so he found a 700 square-foot business in Victorville, and purchased it for $5,000. As time went on, that business became a general office supply store selling to retail and commercial customers everything from art and office supplies to manual typewriters and adding machines.

The Second Generation

After Ed’s untimely passing in the early 1960’s, the second generation of the Freihoff family, Edward L. Freihoff and Rosemary F. Drake joined the business under the guidance of Leona Freihoff, until she passed at the age of 89.

The company went through a phase of growth, with new facilities and branch locations, generated by a tireless effort to seek out new products and implement new technologies and business practices. Desert Stationers was honored with many national awards for sales and service as a result of these sound business practices and good, old-fashioned, hard work.

On our 50th anniversary, Desert Stationers became Office Works, a name which better reflected our business model, as a business to business sales and service company with divisions that provided Multifunction Printer and Managed Print Services, Commercial Contract Office Supplies, and Business Interiors.

The Third Generation

The third generation of the family entered the fray in the 1980’s, in the form of Matt Drake and Tony Freihoff, and as the world continued to change, so did we.

In 2003, Office Works partnered with Top Notch Networking, and their owner, Justin Brown, became part of the Office Works ownership group. Top Notch Networking brought along the Managed Services division and began offering network, server, and workstation support in the High Desert, which became wildly successful. We have since grown this division to cover a large area of Southern California, including clients in San Bernardino, Riverside, and Los Angeles counties.

New technologies continued to be an essential part of our company’s identity, which resulted in our dive into VoIP technology in 2014. We invested a great deal of time and resources into our customized back-end hardware, so that we could offer a great amount of flexibility to our soon-to-be VoIP clients. Since then, our VoIP division has grown to be almost as large as our Managed Services division, with thousands of satisfied users daily.

In 2015, we decided that we wanted to be more focused, so we sold our office supply and furniture division; with a new identity as a technology-centric company (our three divisions being copier sales/service, managed services, and VoIP), we rebranded as TNN.

Unfortunately, 2016 brought a change to ownership, as health issues forced Matt Drake out of the company, leaving the ownership to Tony Freihoff and Justin Brown.

At the beginning of 2018, we launched a brand-new website for our copier division and with it came some revolutionary changes. We wanted to separate ourselves from the ethically questionable practices of the rest of the copier industry, so we introduced transparent and up-front pricing and redefined our compensation packages for our sales team, which included removing commission. These changes ensure that our customers get the machine that fits their exact needs, and don’t overpay for it!

“To know the strength of the anchor, we must feel the force of the storm.” TNN has not just weathered the recent economic storm, we have doubled-down on our core assets: our technology focus, our hard-working and dedicated staff, and our commitment to doing things right the first time. This has brought us to a period of consistent growth and low client turnover.

From our humble beginnings as an office furniture and supply company, to the IT, VoIP, and copier powerhouse we are now, we have been committed to providing exceptional client service through building relationships and continually working to improve our procedures. While we will always embrace traditional values, embracing emerging products and technology will be at the forefront of our business to remain a highly valued partner for all our customers.