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Fellowes makes office equipment like paper shredders, laminators, and ergonomic accessories for homes and offices.
Fellowes is an office products company that sells the unglamorous gear that keeps workplaces running: paper shredders, laminators, and the small ergonomic accessories that make a desk less punishing on your body. It sells mostly to businesses and home offices, and its products show up in supply catalogs, office superstores, and online marketplaces. The company is headquartered in Itasca, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
The business has deep roots. It started in 1917 as a box-making operation, and the famous Bankers Box name — the sturdy cardboard storage boxes that fill basements and file rooms — came from that era. The company was long known as Fellowes Manufacturing, and for years it leaned on the simple logic that offices always need somewhere to put paper and a way to destroy it. Fellowes still sells Bankers Box storage products, and it has expanded into air purifiers as concerns about indoor air quality grew. What makes Fellowes interesting is that it sits in a mature, slow-growth category. Paper shredders and laminators are not exciting, and the long-term trend toward digital documents has nibbled at demand for paper handling. But offices still generate sensitive paper, and privacy rules like data protection laws keep shredding relevant. Fellowes competes with a mix of budget brands and larger office-supply players, and its edge comes from brand recognition, breadth of catalog, and relationships with distributors rather than from cutting-edge technology.
The company has also pushed into ergonomics — monitor arms, footrests, keyboard trays — betting that as long as people sit at desks, they will pay for comfort. It remains a private, family-influenced business, which means it does not face quarterly earnings pressure and can invest patiently. The broader risk is straightforward: the more work goes digital and paperless, the smaller the shredder market becomes, so Fellowes has to keep finding adjacent products that offices and homes still need.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026