Office Depot

Office Depot
	Office Depot logo
Company type	Public (NYSE: ODP)
Industry	Retail
Founded	1986
Headquarters	Delray Beach, Florida
Products	Office supplies
Revenue	$15.0 billion USD (2006)
Website	http://www.officedepot.com/

Office Depot (NYSE: ODP) is one of the world's leading suppliers of office products and services. The Company's selection of brand name office supplies includes business machines, computers, computer software and office furniture, while its business services encompass copying, printing, document reproduction, mailing and shipping. Office Depot's customers include small office/home office, medium-sized and large businesses located in the U.S. and in 41 other countries around the globe.

The Company sells its products through multiple distribution channels, including over 1,000 office supply stores, direct mail, Internet websites, business-to-business e-commerce, and sales forces. Office Depot operates under the Office Depot, Viking Office Products, Viking Direct, Guilbert, TechDepot and 4sure.com brand names. An S&P 500 company, Office Depot generates revenues of over US $15 billion annually and has 52,000 employees worldwide. It is headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida.

History

Office Depot was founded in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida (near Fort Lauderdale) in 1986 by three partners: Pat Sher, Stephen Dougherty, and Jack Kopkin. Sher, the company's first CEO, died the next year from leukemia. Sher's estate donated the proceed of his life insurance policy to the help the fledgling company meet its payroll. ^[1] The company retained professional executive recruiters (so-called "headhunters") to find a replacement for Sher. The new Chairman and CEO turned out to be a Sherwin-Williams executive named David Fuente.

Fuente immediately launched an aggressive nationwide expansion program. To finance it, he arranged for an initial public offering of stock in 1988. In 1991, Office Depot expanded to the West Coast region with the purchase of competitor Office Club. By 1993, it was operating over 350 stores in the U.S. and Canada. This acquisition moved Office Depot onto the national stage. ^[2] Mark Begelman, founder and president of Office Club, joined Office Depot as President and Chief Operating Officer.

Office Clubs store were slated to continued operations under the Office Club brand and operate as a subsidiary of Office Depot. This was because Office Club operated under a "Membership format" (Similar to what is employed by Costco and Sam's Club) and the company was at first reluctant to part with that. Within a year of the merger, Office Club stores dropped the membership format and became fully assimilated with Office Depot.^[3]

The company began to run into problems in the late 1990s when many key North American markets became saturated with too many of the big three office supply chains: Office Depot, OfficeMax, and Staples.

Later expansion and acquistions

In search of new opportunities, Office Depot began to expand overseas to many more countries. In 1998, it launched its public Web site and merged with the catalog company Viking Office Products.

In June 2003, Office Depot Inc. acquired Guilbert, formerly part of the Pinault-Printemps Redoute Group (PPR). With this strategic acquisition, Office Depot has doubled its presence in Europe to around 3 billion Euros and with this move confirms its European market leadership (Office Depot European headquarter is located in the Netherlands - Venlo).

During the dot-com collapse in late 2000, the company's sales took a dive. Over 70 stores were closed and Fuente was reportedly forced out of his job as CEO; he was replaced by the head of the company's international operations, Bruce Nelson. On October 4, 2004, Office Depot announced that Neil R. Austrian, former President of the National Football League, was succeeding Nelson as Interim Chairman and CEO. Succeeding Austrian was Steve Odland, formerly CEO of Autozone.

Design, Print, and Ship Depot

Other than just supplying the tools for business, Office Depot also offers a Copy and Print Center for high volume copying, faxing, ordering business cards, stamps and engraved products as well as binding and assembling presentations. Most stores include a UPS shipping center with UPS rates.

Private Brands

In addition to selling many nationally recognized name brands, Office Depot sells products under several "home" brands, including:

Ativa, for shredders, telephones and certain computer hardware components such as floppy drives and USB drives
Break Escape, for coffee, snacks, and other break room supplies
Castlebridge, for executive briefcases and portfolios
Christopher Lowell, for office furniture, in association with the television personality
Foray, for pens, pencils, highlighters, correction tape, and other writing instruments, as well as CD cases. *Furniture at Work, for office furniture
Niceday, for most standard office supplies
Office Depot brand, for most standard office supplies such as staples, binders, file folders, remanufactured ink & toner, etc.
TUG, for school backpacks
Worklife, for higher-quality presentation and resume papers

Customer Incentive Programs

Ink Cartridge Recycling

Similar to other office supply chains, Office Depot has a program set up to encourage customers to recycle their used ink cartridges. Once per day, a customer has the opportunity to drop off empty cartridges for a discount on their purchase. Previously, a $2.50 discount was available towards the purchase of a new ink cartridge. Since February 12, 2006, the discount was increased to $3.00 and can be used towards any purchase over $3.00. As of May 27, 2007 you may redeem up to twenty-five cartridges a day for any amount totaling more than the dollar amount per purchase (up to a $75 purchase).

Only inkjet cartridges that contain an internal printhead qualify for the program. This includes the majority of HP and Lexmark produced cartridges as well as the Office Depot remanufactured brand version of those cartridges. It also includes a very limited number of newer Canon cartridges. Cartridges that do not contain printheads do not qualify. Some cartridges contain electrical contacts that may be confused as being a printhead, but these contacts are only to allow communication with the printer for purposes of measuring ink levels or to determine whether or not the cartridge has expired. Most toner and toner/drum units can be recycled, but not those that are simply plastic toner containers such as many fax machine ink produced by Brother Industries and Panasonic. This program excludes ink tanks, such as almost all Epson brand inks.

Office Depot Worklife Rewards

On June 1, 2006, Office Depot launched the Worklife Rewards program which combined several benefits of the former "Advantage Reward" and current Star Teacher program. It offers 5% rewards on the total amount spent past $200 (excluding computers, monitors, UPS shipping and postage stamp purchases) in a three-month period, with no cap on the amount of rewards that can be earned. Office Depot brand ink qualify for a double credit 10% reward. Theoretically, if an individual spent $50,000 in a three-month period, they would earn $2,500 in rewards credits. The credits are issued on a store gift card. For Copy.Print.Ship services, 15% rewards are given on all purchases past $35.

Worklife members also receive exclusive coupons through postal mail and email as well in store savings on select items.

STAR Teacher Program

The STAR Teacher Program is specifically for educators and school administrators, and incorporates the benefits of the Office Depot Worklife Program. In addition to Worklife benefits, the STAR program also carries a 5% at-register discount on purchases, as well as a 15% discount on copy center purchases in addition to the 15% reward for copy center purchases past $35. There are also many events at the Office Depot stores for the teachers, including bi-annual Teacher Appreciation Breakfasts that offer free breakfast and giveaways for teachers.

5% Back To School Program

The 5% Back To School Program contributes a portion of a purchase to a local school as a store credit that the school may use to purchase Office Depot merchandise. Schools must register with the program to receive the store credit. Some merchandise does not qualify for the program. Store credits granted to schools expire 120 days after issue and may be revoked under certain conditions.

This web form on the Office Depot web site may be used to apply an online order to the store credit tally of a particular school:

http://www.officedepot.com/promo/backtoschool/input.do

An ID number identifying the school to receive the store credit should be included in the form. ID numbers for local schools are recorded at each Office Depot retail location and may be obtained by telephone.