2011

Humble beginnings and
a pretty cool minivan

Toner Connect began life way back in 2011 with a single person —James Cai, a minivan and plenty of enthusiasm. These early years in the Toner Connect makeshift office were ones defined by a baffling habit — that the offices we worked with were chucking out perfectly good toners.

Then came an epiphany — our lightbulb moment — a sudden realization.

Printer technicians, IT directors, corporate workers, copier reps, office managers, administrative assistants, and anyone else who has ever dealt with copier machines and printers have one thing in common. They always discover leftover, unused, unwanted, excess and plain unloved toners lurking in their storage room, closet, or warehouse.

Feeling newly enlightened, we set about expanding our reach —speaking to more companies, governmental bodies, schools and offices. We discovered that every form of office was involved in this practice — each committing their toners to a destiny defined by landfill burial.

2012

Well, what any printing toner pioneers
would do, we guess...

We set up a buyback deal — and not just any buyback deal, a pretty awesome one at that — even if we do say so ourselves. We began by purchasing OEM brand toner at first, and then we extended our network to work with dealers, distributors, exporters, and wholesalers nationwide. Later, we expanded our product selection to include Lexmark, Xerox, Dell, Ricoh, Konica Minolta, Brother and Sharp.

Today, we're an eight strong team — individuals who are each as determined to keep our landfills toner free and send otherwise doomed toners back into offices to do what they do best. And we now work with more than a thousand resellers, distributors, and wholesalers. The minivans kaput, but hey, you can't have it all.

2017

And the rest, as they say
is history!