OPI APP JULY/AUGUST B

30 Celebrating

thirty years

BIG INTERVIEW

Simon Drakeford, EO Group July/August 2021

INSIDE THIS ISSUE l Big-box breakup gathers pace l Douglas leaves Staples Inc l Officeworks’ bold ambitions

l Building buy local l AI as a sales tool l Furniture sector on the move l Back for 2021: NAOPA

Special Issue

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

Special Issue

CONTENTS 20 Hot Topic Buy local: here to stay post-pandemic?

38 Advertorial International Paper and its unwavering brand focus 40 Category Update What’s in store for the office furniture sector?

44 Advertorial Ninestar on a mission to become industry leader 46 Focus Spotlight on City of Hope’s Sustain Hope campaign

Big Interview: Simon Drakeford, EO Group

One of the pioneers in the e-commerce game, EO Group has been entrepreneurial and inventive over the past 22 years, in the process creating and cementing a highly technology-driven business.

CEO Simon Drakeford, well-known in the UK business supplies industry – currently also as Chairman of trade federation BOSS – is the first to admit that it hasn’t always been plain sailing, with plenty of adjustments and pivots needed, especially in recent times.

The same is true for the industry at large, he says, applauding those operators that have risen to the myriad of challenges, many of them exacerbated

by COVID-19.

Special Issue TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

HOT TOPIC: IT’S NOT ALWAYS WHAT YOU KNOW

50 Preview: NAOPA Back for the 11th time: the North American Office Products Awards

Special Issue

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS 12 Big Interview Technology at the heart of UK operator EO Group

Special Issue

24 Feature Pivots and pain points for dealers and tech providers

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

30 Case Study Bulk Office Supply 32 Opinion AI as a sales tool

Special Issue

VENDOR REGULARS SPECIAL 34 Interview E-commerce deep dive

5 Comment

Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

6 News

Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

52 5 minutes with...

Daniel Kelly 54 Final Word Jennifer Rae Stine

July/August 2021

Since March 2020, few aspects of business life have warranted a high five, but there are some minor exceptions. One of them is the goodwill and increased adoption of buying locally. While e-commerce soared to unprecedented heights, office and store closures combined also elicited sympathy and a new-found appreciation for small business owners.

Traditionally, buy local campaigns have predominantly targeted retail, but with employees sent home to work, our sector has been able to piggyback on such strategies.

There has also been renewed emphasis on lobbying to shift purchasing patterns to independently-owned businesses while seeking to curtail the dominance of online operators like Amazon.

48 Preview: Industry Week ’21 Glancing ahead at this highly awaited US event

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COMMENT The OPI team EDITORIAL Editor Heike Dieckmann +44 1462 422 143 heike.dieckmann@opi.net Deputy Editor Michelle Sturman michelle.sturman@opi.net News Editor Andy Braithwaite +33 4 32 62 71 07 andy.braithwaite@opi.net Freelance Contributor David Holes david.holes@opi.net

SALES & MARKETING Chief Commercial Officer Chris Exner +44 7973 186801 chris.exner@opi.net Head of Media Sales Chris Turness +44 7872 684746 chris.turness@opi.net Digital Marketing Manager Aurora Enghis aurora.enghis@opi.net

EVENTS Events Manager Lisa Haywood events@opi.net Event Programmer Sophie Carus sophie.carus@opi.net

PRODUCTION & FINANCE Studio Joel Mitchell joel.mitchell@opi.net Finance & Operations Kelly Hilleard kelly.hilleard@opi.net

PUBLISHERS CEO Steve Hilleard +44 7799 891000 steve.hilleard@opi.net Director Janet Bell +44 7771 658130 janet.bell@opi.net Executive Assistant Debbie Garrand +44 7718 660249 debbie.garrand@opi.net

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Technology in a post-pandemic world

very year in the July/August issue of OPI, we shine a light on technology solutions in our sector. We find out what the challenges and opportunities are, consult with tech experts and then advise our readership on how to overcome or indeed embrace them.

Deciding which specific topics to explore, I was struck by just how much there’s to talk about this year. No prizes for guessing why. If any company – or individual, in fact – needed a gentle nudge or perhaps almighty push to up its tech game, COVID-19 provided it. In spades.

So you’ll see the purple Technology Solutions sticker throughout the magazine, denoting a broad variety of features that both resellers and manufacturers can delve into and hopefully learn from.

The first one of these is our Big Interview (page 12) with Simon Drakeford. His company, EO Group, is one of the UK’s e-commerce pioneers with its direct businesses. But since 2013, it’s also been helping independent dealers with its technology and services arm Office Power – now incidentally the biggest part of the company.

If any company [...] needed a gentle nudge or perhaps almighty push to up its tech game, COVID-19 provided it Other articles include commentary from the popular software providers in our industry (page 24) and a best practice case study (page 30). In our Opinion section (page 32), meanwhile, Kevin McGirl highlights the impending importance of artificial intelligence (AI) on the sales function. Are the days of dealers personally calling on customers, going to community events with them and knowing their children’s names gone? Perhaps not, but if they want to sell business supplies too, AI and what it can do in terms of data and analytics will likely become an invaluable sales enablement tool.

On that relationship note, I would also point to this issue’s Hot Topic (page 20), where Michelle Sturman looks at the ‘buy local’ trend that has gathered pace during the pandemic and questions whether it’s here to stay. This is not a technology feature per se and as such is not marked as one, but for anyone engaged in buy local initiatives, being tech-savvy is certainly an invaluable attribute. Just think of the brand-building opportunities that social media affords, for example.

Until next time! Spoiler alert: this will be OPI’s special 30th anniversary bumper issue.

HEIKE DIECKMANN, EDITOR Don’t miss it!

Twitter: @opinews Linkedin: opi.net/linkedin Facebook: facebook.com/opimagazine Podcasts: opi.net/podcast App: opi.net/app

30 Celebrating

thirty years

Office Products International Ltd (OPI) Focus7 House, Fairclough Hall, Halls Green, Hertfordshire SG4 7DP, UK Tel: +44 20 7841 2950

No part of this magazine may be reproduced, copied, stored in an electronic retrieval system or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with provision of the copyright designs and patents act of 1988. Stringent efforts have been made by Office Products International to ensure accuracy. However, due principally to the fact that data cannot always be verified, it is possible that some errors or omissions may occur. Office Products International cannot accept responsibility for such errors or omissions. Office Products International accepts no responsibility for comments made by contributing authors or interviewees that may offend.

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NEWS

Analysis: Big-box breakup gathers pace

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The past few weeks have seen further sell-offs of Staples Solutions and Office Depot Europe assets

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As this issue of OPI went to press, an agreement had just been reached to sell the last remaining subsidiary of Staples Solutions – Staples Benelux – to Standard Investment (see ‘A new force in Northern Europe’, page 7).

When this deal closes – likely in August – it will mark the end of private equity group Cerberus’ ownership of Staples Solutions.

A few weeks earlier, on 9 June, Lyreco had closed its acquisition of the Staples Solutions businesses in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria and Poland. The transaction also included Staples Solutions’ central shared services (IT, e-commerce, customer experience, merchandising, supply chain planning and finance), primarily located in Gdansk, Poland, and the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. In total, the purchase involved around 1,600 staff being added to the approximately 9,000 Lyreco people already employed in Europe.

One consequence of the acquisition has been a reorganisation of Lyreco’s operations in the Nordics, which previously operated under the Lyreco Scandinavia umbrella based out of Denmark. Given the size of the combined businesses in Norway and Sweden, they will now be managed as individual subsidiaries, each with its own Managing Director.

These executives will report to Patrick Legro, the former Chief Commercial Officer at Staples Solutions, who has joined Lyreco as a Zone Managing Director. In addition to Norway and Sweden, Legro will oversee Lyreco’s WISE region that comprises the UK and Ireland.

Another senior executive to have made the switch to Lyreco is Isabel Ehringer, the COO of Staples Solutions who has taken on the same role at Lyreco.

Speaking to OPI, Lyreco CEO Greg Liénard declined to comment on both the annual

revenues of the Staples Solutions subsidiaries – which represent the single largest acquisition in Lyreco’s history – and the purchase price.

However, OPI estimates the 2020 sales figures of these businesses to be around €550 million ($651 million). As for the purchase price, an educated guess – based on the amount recently paid by Wulff for Staples Finland – puts this in the range of €50-€60 million.

This acquisition aligns with our ambitious growth strategy as well as our plans to expand operations throughout Europe SURPRISE IN FRANCE Elsewhere, at Office Depot (OD) Europe, there was a somewhat surprising outcome to the administration proceedings in France. Following the collapse of the rescue plan of OD France CEO Guillaume de Feydeau – due to owner Aurelius withdrawing its support – an offer by cooperative group Alkor was selected ahead of a proposal led

by ADVEO and its private equity backer, Sandton.

Although ADVEO had guaranteed more jobs would be saved initially (628), Alkor said a two-year recruitment drive across its membership would take the final number to 830. BPGI member Alkor – operator of the Majuscule brand and reseller network – had also offered a higher purchase price for the acquired assets, which included 50 out of OD France’s 60 stores.

As things stood at the beginning of July, around 1,000 OD France employees – mostly in contract, distribution and administrative positions – were facing redundancy, making it one of the largest single staff layoffs in the country since the pandemic began.

Standard Investment emerges as an OP industry consolidator

Marc-Derek Schönberger

In mid-June, NOCB, parent company of Office Centre and the retail chain that comprises the former Staples stores in Germany and the Netherlands, changed hands after being acquired by Dutch private equity firm Standard Investment.

Entrepreneurs Frans Davelaar and Goswin Fijen formed NOCB in 2018 when they bought 39 Staples Office Centre stores in the Netherlands from Staples Solutions. They followed up this move a year later by acquiring a further 57 Staples outlets in Germany, plus the related consumer-facing website staples.de. At the end of 2019, NOCB’s annual revenue was estimated to be around €220 million ($270 million).

It appears that a lack of resources, exacerbated by the COVID situation, forced Davelaar and Fijen to look for outside sources on investment, culminating in the takeover by Standard. Davelaar has now left the organisation to focus on his other business interests, while Fijen has retained a minority stake.

New NOCB CEO Marc-Derek Schönberger – who also has some ‘skin in the game’ – is a retail turnaround expert. Backed by Standard, he has big plans for Office Centre. Speaking to OPI, he recognised the need to make fundamental changes to Office Centre’s retail proposition, especially in the Netherlands. But he is thinking beyond the stores. NOCB already includes Dutch B2B dealer KantorExpert, and Schönberger is looking at vertical integrations to add scope and scale to the group.

There was another development on 5 July, when a Staples Solutions customer letter confirmed that Standard had agreed to buy Staples Benelux, with the closing expected to take place within a few weeks. The move will combine Office Centre with Staples Benelux’s B2B business – mostly in the contract space – and its wholesaling arm.

“Staples and Office Centre will be reunited as long-term partners,” the letter stated. “As a result, Staples will continue to supply the stores of Office Centre as well as online customers in the following years.”

The deal throws up some interesting questions in terms of market dynamics both in the Netherlands and Germany, in particular the relationship between NOCB and its supply and distribution partner Quantore. In addition, if Standard Investment wants to take vertical integrations a step further, then it surely must be eyeing Office Depot Europe’s Viking business.

Read the full interview with Marc-Derek Schönberger on opi.net

July/August 2021

PARAGON FLEXES ITS MUSCLES Meanwhile, on the other side of the English Channel, Paragon-owned OT Group – which runs B2B reseller OfficeTeam – bought the larger mid-market, major and public sector contract customers of OD in the UK and Ireland.

The deal also includes OD’s distribution centre in Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester, and Vital Communications, its print, marketing and communications business.

Immediately after the conclusion of compulsory employee consultations, OT Group announced it would leave its main distribution centre in Smethwick, near Birmingham, and consolidate operations at the Ashton site.

“This acquisition aligns with our ambitious growth strategy as well as our plans to expand operations throughout Europe,” said OT Group CEO Andrew Jones. The second part of that statement will no doubt raise eyebrows, especially given Paragon’s scale in markets such as France, Germany, Benelux and Eastern Europe.

As for OD Europe, it claimed the sale would help accelerate its strategic transformation to “an e-commerce focused, omnichannel business trading solely as Viking”. That poses questions about contract operations in its other markets of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Benelux.

When the Viking+ strategy was announced last year, the official line was that larger contracts were part of this “process of simplification”.

This does not now appear to be the case, so further divestments can probably be expected. It would leave Aurelius looking for an exit strategy for Viking, although it remains to be seen whether there would be a buyer for the whole of that business, especially following Brexit.

There were no qualms about selling Viking in Spain and Italy, so why not other individual countries? Assuming it’s still worth something, of course. A case in point is France where, after years of underinvestment, Viking’s sales in 2020 had shrunk to just €15 million.

Look out for a feature in our special 30th anniversary issue – September/October OPI – which charts the rise and fall of the big boxes as international office products powerhouses.

Analysis: A new force in Northern Europe

NEWS

Another consequence was that OD France ceased operations in its Contract division immediately following the administrators’ decision on 3 June. Clients – including some of France’s largest corporations – were only informed on the day itself that they would no longer be able to place or receive orders.

This example of shocking customer service left organisations scrambling for new sources of supply. Despite recent declines at OD France’s Contract division, it is estimated that there was still between €80-€100 million in annual business available. Fiducial Office Solutions and Lyreco would appear to be in the driving seat to scoop up a large part of that, while RAJA has also stated its ambitions to develop its office products contract operations.

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NEWS

Officeworks looking to double addressable market Leading Australian office supplies player Officeworks wants to double its addressable market, and is not ruling out making acquisitions to achieve this goal.

At a Strategy Briefing Day run by parent company Wesfarmers in June, Officeworks Managing Director Sarah Hunter said the retailer had a 10% share of a market – including office supplies, furniture, technology and print/create – which is worth around A$28 billion (US$22 billion). However, it is looking to expand current categories and into adjacencies that will extend its potential market to A$56 billion.

Areas it is targeting include more print/ create services, and a wider products and services proposition in categories such as technology and furniture. It has already introduced a self-serve copy and print offering, while its mega Mentone store near Melbourne – which opened a couple of years ago – is being used as a test bed for higher-end commercial products.

Officeworks is also looking to make a serious push into the SMB B2B segment as well as the professional educational space. During the day, Hunter said Officeworks was underrepresented in central business districts and with B2B clients and that it would “do something quite material in this segment”.

On the education side, Officeworks already has a strong consumer presence. For example, in the most recent back-to-school season, it prepared more than 700,000 school lists for parents. It now wants to gain share as a B2B supplier directly to educational establishments. “Schools have told us they want us to be part of their supply base,” said Hunter.

While it is unlikely Officeworks will dip its toe into the enterprise contract market, Hunter did say that large corporations were the “sweet spot” for selling flexible working and work-from-home solutions – something she described as a multibillion dollar market. Amazon Business has demonstrated in the past few years that

www.opi.net

Douglas leaves Staples Inc

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Staples Inc is still searching for a permanent CEO after Sandy Douglas left abruptly in the middle of June. In a press release, Staples said it and Douglas had “mutually agreed” that he would “step down”, effective 18 June, and OPI understands it was Douglas’ decision to leave.

The former Coca-Cola executive joined Staples in April 2018 – shortly after it had been acquired by Sycamore Partners.

As CEO of the Staples Inc entity, he was in charge of all B2B operations – which include the staples.com website – but not the US Retail division that is attempting to buy Office Depot’s stores nor Staples Canada.

Staples Inc Executive Chairman John Lederer is now interim CEO while the hunt for a permanent successor takes place.

It was a role he also occupied for a few weeks following the departure of Shira Goodman at the beginning of 2018.

you don’t have to go down the contract route to pick up share of customer wallet in the corporate space.

As Officeworks widens its target customer base (larger SMBs, blue chip corporates and education), it will be coming up against established B2B operators such as Winc, Complete Office Supplies and local dealers.

Hunter suggested Officeworks could build out its new capabilities organically as well as via acquisitions. It has done both before, and has the support of the huge Wesfarmers conglomerate to be able to do either. We’ll therefore be keeping an eye out for interesting developments in the Australian OP market in the near future.

Office Snax expands product portfolio

US breakroom supplier Office Snax has purchased the snack and candy business of Florida-based Advantus for an undisclosed sum. Office Snax said the deal would facilitate its ability to buy products from other key snack manufacturers, enabling it to grow and provide an improved customer experience.

Advantus – which recently acquired certain assets of Victory Light – has traditionally offered breakroom items as part of its Office Products division, selling brands such as Kars and Nature Valley.

“It is an important time to provide convenience and options to the workplace as we see more employees returning to the office,” said Office Snax CEO Todd Elmers.

“This acquisition allows us to expand our product offering in order to meet increasing customer demands. We also believe it will provide efficiencies to the industry, as we will be able to consolidate these new items with our normal Office Snax shipments.”

COVID-19 caused the bottom to fall out of the breakroom market (see Category Update, OPI May/ June 2021, page 43), but it is now set to rebound as many US employees return to the office, at least for a few days a week.

US dealer group Independent Suppliers Group (ISG) has made an important change to its Regional Distribution Center (RDC) direct purchasing programme. The RDC initiative started in 2004 and Essendant (then United Stationers) had been the exclusive distribution partner for the programme since 2009. In June, ISG announced a new relationship with S.P. Richards (SPR).

“By uniting with SPR for this next chapter of the RDC, we believe this new agreement will help reduce some of the market disruptive challenges we continue to encounter,” commented ISG Chairman Jordan Kudler. “The combination of our merged groups (TriMega, ISG and Pinnacle) and SPR’s extensive distribution network will provide our membership with the tools they need to effectively compete and continue moving forward in their respective marketplace.”

At the same time, Essendant announced an initiative for ISG members called the Essendant Carton Program (ECP). Described as its “latest entry into the arena of direct buy alternatives”, Essendant launched ECP on 1 July.

“With over 7,500 SKUs at low net prices, this programme offers the products that comprised over 96% of existing ISG programme sales and adds an additional 1,000 SKUs in new and emerging categories,” the wholesaler said in a press release.

Essendant President Harry Dochelli noted: “We have heard our customers’ requests for lower net pricing which stands up to the transparency offered by the online sellers they compete with most. ECP provides all of that [in addition to] the programme enhancements we have introduced over the past 18 months, in conjunction with the convenience of ISG’s central billing platform.”

Pen Company of America acquires

NEWS

ISG announces new RDC wholesaler

Pen Company of America (PCA), a purely domestic writing instruments manufacturer, has announced two acquisitions. The New Jersey-based, family-run business has purchased Garland Writing Instruments and Ben-Art Manufacturing in two separate business transactions, effective 28 June 2021.

PCA, formerly known as Rotary Pen, is the largest producer of USA-made plastic ballpoint pens, manufacturing over 40 million pens, pencils and markers annually. Established in 1928, PCA is run by the fourth-generation Shea family which continues to injection mould, assemble, imprint and package writing instruments in its Garwood factory in New Jersey.

Garland Writing Instruments, based in Coventry (RI), has been a leading manufacturer of US-made metal writing instruments since 1927. Ben-Art Manufacturing, meanwhile, has been making metal accent pieces for ballpoint pens, such as clips, tips and bands, in Prospect (CT) since 1954. PCA will be relocating both companies to its New Jersey production facility.

“The three companies’ histories, in terms of dedication to USA manufacturing, product lines and customer base, are very similar,” said Colleen Shea, VP of Sales and great-granddaughter of PCA’s original founder. “The ability to bring all three together in one location, and under one umbrella, will give customers a single source for USA-made writing instruments, from economical plastic pens to high-end metal pens.”

Bunzl buys again From left: Colleen, Greg and Matt Shea of Pen Company of America

South African stationery retailer goes into administration

July/August 2021

Distribution company Bunzl has confirmed two more acquisitions – one in Europe, the other in Australia.

The group has purchased Comax, a distributor to the leisure, janitorial, care home and foodservice sectors in the UK. It supplies an array of cleaning and hygiene products, as well as catering and kitchen supplies. Comax generated revenue of £14 million ($19.5 million) in 2020.

Bunzl also completed the acquisition of Harvey Distributors, a cleaning and hygiene distributor in Australia, with customers in the healthcare, education, foodservice and facilities management sectors. In 2020, Harvey Distributors achieved sales of $A7 million (US$5.3 million).

South African books and stationery chain CNA was placed into business rescue in June. Business rescue is a South African form of administration or Chapter 11. There had been speculation for several weeks that CNA would be forced to take this course of action as it struggled to pay suppliers and landlords.

Business rescue practitioners have now taken management control of the retailer – which has more than 150 stores – to try and come up with a turnaround package.

In the meantime, CNA shareholders are reportedly locked in an ownership battle, with three directors controlling 70% of its shares facing a legal challenge from former CEO Benjamin Trisk, who holds the remaining 30%.

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NEWS

IN BRIEF

Staples Canada rebrands B2B unit The Staples Business Advantage arm in Canada is now called Staples Professional. It has a new website – staplesprofessional.ca – and a new logo.

opi.net poll

What cost of goods inflation are you expecting for the rest of 2021? n >10% n 6-10% n 1-5% n No increase 0%

15% 60% 25%

600,000

NZ$420 million School backd packs sold by Amazon uring Prime Day 202 1 (US$300 million)

Estimated total sales of the newly awarded, seven-year New Zealand all-of-government business supplies contract

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Insights-X cancelled German stationery and back-to-school trade show Insights-X will not be held this year. Citing continued COVID concerns, the organisers confirmed the next Insights-X will take place in Nuremberg from 6-8 October 2022.

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As leaders build their postpandemic workplace strategy, their biggest challenge is hesitation.

But, based on our data, not acting, or reverting back to the ‘old way’, may have serious implications for your business Future Forum research, June 2021

PICTURE OF THE MONTH Martin Weedall, recently named as Group Operations Director at EVO Group of Companies’ Banner reseller business, gets to grips with a Harris hawk in conjunction with the company’s pest control efforts.

114%

E-commerce growth at the Dixons Carphone UK & Ireland Electricals division in the 12 m onths to 1 May 2021

BIG INTERVIEW

CRISIS:

the mother of

Special Issue

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

REINVENTION

O

Already challenged as an industry, coronavirus has tipped the scales for many in terms of addressing some latent as well as glaring issues in their organisations. But there’s much to be proud of, says EO Group’s Simon Drakeford, and the only way is up

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ne of the pioneers in the e-commerce game, EO Group has been entrepreneurial and inventive over the past 22 years, in the process creating and cementing a highly technology-driven business. CEO Simon Drakeford, well-known in the UK business supplies industry, currently also as Chairman of trade federation BOSS, is the first to admit that it hasn’t always been plain sailing, with plenty of adjustments and pivots needed.

He’s immensely proud not only of what his company has achieved and, importantly, how it’s positioned itself for the future, particularly with the Office Power technology and services business, but also of how our industry has rallied in these most recent, difficult times. As he told OPI CEO Steve Hilleard in this interview, coronavirus may have given some operators the much needed impetus to align, restructure and reinvent.

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OPI: Could you give a brief synopsis of EO Group as it currently stands?

Simon Drakeford: Sure. As you know, the first company in the group was Euroffice, our e-commerce business, which started in 1999. In 2013, we launched a new entity called Office Power – a combination of technology we have built in-house with services that we offer to support dealers in our industry. As the company grew and our offering diversified, around five years ago we introduced EO Group which serves as an umbrella brand for all our businesses.

We now have three divisions in the group. One is our direct business, currently comprising our e-commerce operators Euroffice and UK Office Direct. They’re two different brands, but are both online, stockless resellers. Then we have Office Power which is our technology and services provider that supports traditional dealers in our sector.

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VENDOR SPECIAL

Finally, we have a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business with our bespoke proprietary technology platform at the centre of it. This platform is used by our direct businesses, Office Power dealers as well as individual independent licensees.

OPI: You also had some interests in continental Europe at some stage I believe.

SD: That’s correct. We went into Italy with Euroffice in 2009 and then into Germany in 2013.

Italy worked well for a while, but we sold that business at the end of 2019 to enable us to focus on our UK and technology businesses.

With regards to Germany, we didn’t stay in that market very long. We are still a small agile operator and we didn’t have the bandwidth to manage both Office Power and the German operation at the same time, so we needed to prioritise and focus our efforts.

These were some of the key company milestones over the years.

OPI: The Euroffice MBO that you headed 11 years ago was a big personal milestone for you I would expect?

SD: Definitely. I hadn’t necessarily anticipated being in the industry for this long. I joined the company in 2007 and about three and a half years

BIG INTERVIEW Simon Drakeford

I joined the company in 2007 and about three and a half years later, we swapped our investors to PE firm Darwin.

It seemed the right time for an MBO and Darwin backed me to lead it later, we swapped our investors to PE firm Darwin.

It seemed the right time for an MBO and Darwin backed me to lead it.

It was an exciting time and I still feel very well supported by a strong board and growth-orientated PE investors. They’ve been great partners for me and my leadership team over the past decade.

OPI: Is Euroffice’s founder George Karibian still involved in the company?

SD: He’s still a major shareholder, highly influential and available on the end of the phone.

OPI: OK, let’s get to the crux of it and talk about finances. You’re a privately-held business, so I’m not sure what you’re willing to share.

SD: In 2020, we were about £43 million ($59 million) as a group. EBITDA at the time had dropped to roughly £800,000. Then we hit the skids, as everyone did. We’re growing nicely again now but overall, for the financial year, revenues were approximately £30 million – that’s about 30% down or 25% excluding the impact of the Italy sale.

We made some very difficult decisions early on in the pandemic. It was the right thing to do, I have no doubt, but it was very painful. We didn’t want to leave any stone unturned, and decided to act quickly and deeply.

So we did that and our profit actually increased, with EBITDA up 43% to £1.2 million.

July/August 2021

OPI: That support over the past year or two has been vital I should think.

SD: Yes. It’s been very challenging and when things are difficult, you really rely on your support network. There’s a huge amount of experience on that board and also coming directly from the Chairman, John Browett.

John is well known in business circles, having worked for a broad range of companies including

Dixons Carphone, Apple, Monsoon and Dunelm.

He now does consultancy work and supports small to medium-sized businesses he likes. An incredibly clever and emotionally intelligent man – you don’t always get that together.

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Simon Drakeford BIG INTERVIEW

OPI: Where did you make cuts?

SD: We pretty much chopped everything. One expense was Google advertising spend. We also cut about 30% of our fixed overheads which was sad, because we’re a relatively small business with a strong culture. We had built strong relationships with our people, so that was intensely difficult.

We have a young, dynamic workforce which is in high demand. As such, we had some natural attrition and that made it a little easier. We also put a hiring freeze in place, so the pain was twofold: in the first instance, having the difficult conversations with people you really don’t want to let go; and then the extra bandwidth the remaining staff in the business had to take on because there were just fewer people to do those tasks. It’s been a pretty tough year for everyone and we were no exception.

OPI: What was the rationale behind cutting advertising spend? Isn’t that counterintuitive given the work-from-home (WFH) situation and the space you occupy in the e-commerce arena – arguably one of the more resilient channels in our industry right now?

SD: Perhaps. But we’re a B2B business – we don’t make money on consumers. We want to sell into offices. Average order size and gross margin are two of our KPIs. All these people working from home presents two key challenges: the first one is they consume about 60% less traditional stationery when doing that, so order sizes are smaller; secondly, the cost of distribution is higher for obvious reasons.

It’s more difficult servicing WFH customers with our business model. Targeting consumers purely for the top line is dangerous; if you don’t have a strong brand, you do not make any money.

During the first lockdown, our traffic went up dramatically and we saw a spike in orders. But it was lower-quality traffic which impacted the bottom line. Cutting advertising spend was an obvious decision.

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OPI: You’re referring to your direct online businesses here I’m sure. What about Office Power – how important is that in terms of the overall top line you mentioned?

SD: It’s the largest part of our business right now based on run rate. In total, Office Power makes up about 40% of revenues.

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OPI: Last time we did a Big Interview with you, about six years ago, you referred to a lack of awareness as the biggest stumbling block for Office Power’s progression. You seem to be motoring along quite nicely now with the platform. How many Office Power dealers are there currently?

SD: We work with about 65 dealer partners of various sizes – compared to 15 back in 2015. We have good awareness of the brand now, and have enhanced that through building a very strong community before, but especially throughout, the pandemic. We opened up our content and support networks to all dealers, not just our current partners, and this was received very well.

Having said that, unfortunately there are still some significant misperceptions as to what Office Power actually is.

OPI: We can clear these misconceptions up right here. What is Office Power?

SD: Let me start with what it is not. People perceive Office Power to be a one-stop, one-size-fits-all solution whereby dealers outsource all of the functions of their business to us. That’s not it.

Office Power is a highly flexible technology and services provider that allows dealers to tailor the overall solution to their specific needs. There are many options available to them as to how they want to configure their partnership with us.

This gives dealers complete control of how they want to run their business: where they buy from, what products they sell, what prices they sell at and how they do the fulfilment. They can just use our best-in-class technology and configure their service model around it.

To make our proposition extra relevant and versatile, we’ve spent the past 18 months building a whole new, even more flexible product we’ve launched this July. Power Select typically enables larger dealers that may want no services.

Power Full, which is what the majority of dealers are using at the moment, is where we partner with businesses to give them our technology and a full range of services, typically operational ones, but some commercial and marketing solutions as well.

With Power Select, dealers can choose exactly which services they want. As such, it’s a much more configurable solution, particularly for those that might want our technology but don’t want the myriad of operational options because they have their own scale and it doesn’t make sense for them.

OPI: You’re frequently compared to Nectere…

SD: We are and it’s unfortunate. There are some similarities between our businesses, but I don’t like being compared to Nectere and I’m sure Paul

My perception is that the fear of not changing for the first time is greater than the fear of change OPI: Has Office Power grown during COVID? SD: Yes, both in terms of the top line and number of dealers using the platform. The business model is definitely more relevant than ever. COVID has extrapolated e-commerce and pushed many companies to re-assess whether they have the best systems and processes in place to be able to compete successfully in the future.

OPI: How have dealers fared overall during this difficult period? I remember you saying in a blog post earlier this year that most dealer businesses which have got this far will likely survive and come out of the situation intact. Do you stand by that comment?

SD: I do. What the blog said is that the traditional dealer channel is quite resilient by the nature of its agility. Yes, we will see some fallout, but it’ll be a slow death rather than a dramatic one.

Businesses die all the time, especially in a sector like ours which is massively challenged.

This conversation comes around every so often when a crisis hits, like the financial one in 2008.

The expectation then was that the reserves of independents would run out and we would see a massive decline. Well, it didn’t happen.

To be frank, I see more challenges in the bigger, more leveraged businesses, not for dealers which can afford to be agile.

OPI: Anyone you have in mind in particular?

SD: No, I’m not talking about a specific business.

OPI: Going back to dealers, it seems you’re fairly confident about the future of this channel.

OPI: One industry casualty at the top of the supply chain – and not a coronavirus victim – was Spicers. You were a substantial, long-term partner of that wholesaler. How has its demise impacted EO Group? Beforehand even, when did alarm bells first start ringing?

SD: Well, alarm bells ring the whole time when you rely heavily on a significant partner or at least they should be, because when you have a high dependency on another provider, it’s something you always have to keep a close eye on.

We were aware Spicers was challenged pre-pandemic. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that when you combine huge declines in turnover with highly-leveraged, asset-based lending businesses, there’s going to be a problem.

We had taken a significant percentage of our spend and outsourced it to other suppliers as early as 2019. As such, we were technologically and operationally plugged in, had competitive commercial terms and could then – when we had to – move considerable volume very quickly when Spicers collapsed. VOW was one of these suppliers obviously, and it was very supportive during that period and continues to be so.

Was there an impact? Absolutely – there was a huge amount of disruption and plenty of firefighting. Could we optimise a different sourcing strategy quickly? Yes, we could. Were we supported by VOW? 100%. All in all, it could have been horrendous, but we had planned this scenario out as best we could.

OPI: What about Exertis Supplies which, I believe, has been a real benefactor. Has that operator become an important partner for you?

SD: Everyone’s important, but no, we don’t put a substantial amount of volume through Exertis. The majority of our spend is with VOW now and we’re

July/August 2021

OPI: But there are several obvious ones…

SD: Obviously, Staples and Office Depot were highly leveraged if they are the ones you’re referring to. Their turnaround PE companies were unlikely to ever get an exciting exit, particularly given COVID, so they’ve been divesting these operators bit by bit.

They won’t necessarily disappear, but they will be dramatically different to what they once were.

That’s all I would say.

SD: I am. My perception is that the fear of not changing for the first time is greater than the fear of change. What COVID has done is become the catalyst for change which addressed some of the inertia which existed in our sector.

Everybody knew we had to change, but there wasn’t a really compelling reason to do so. Coronavirus and all the distress it caused businesses became that reason.

I now see a lot of dealers engaging in agile strategic planning and possibly restructuring some areas of their business which either aren’t efficient or are preventing them from successfully meeting their customer needs. Outsourcing is one of the models to achieve this – I would say that because it’s what I do in my business, of course, but I also believe it’s very true.

By the same token and while I’m broadly optimistic, I believe much of the distress our industry faces isn’t actually being seen yet because everything is being propped up by government funding and the support schemes out there. As such, the need to change will ramp up dramatically once that funding support disappears, rather than right now.

BIG INTERVIEW Simon Drakeford

(Musgrove) feels the same about Office Power.

We are very different enterprises with different models in terms of technology, purchasing and distribution. We’re also, in essence and unlike Nectere – not about financial restructuring.

In a complicated, commoditised and margin-tight supply chain, it makes sense for dealers to partner with an expert and outsource their technology and some services – we are that specialist. This is a very common trend in other industries too, and they are changing at the rapid pace we are.

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Simon Drakeford BIG INTERVIEW

loyal to this wholesaler. We work with hundreds of other suppliers and have always done that. And our Office Power dealer partners can buy from wherever they want to help drive their growth.

OPI: Is it also a case of once bitten, twice shy, as in not falling into the trap again of being too dependent on one supplier?

SD: It’s fine to be reliant on one entity as long as that supplier is dependable, and there is no reason why I anticipate VOW to not be dependable.

The reason for us adjusting our spend or sourcing some product elsewhere is because our and our dealers partners’ suppliers need to best fit the type of demand. This helps fuel growth.

OPI: You’ve already briefly touched on the larger contract players. We’re starting to see the endgame for Staples now, while Depot is embarking on a slightly different strategy.

Speaking about the UK market specifically, how do you see that landscape panning out for players occupying the contract, government and big business space?

SD: I’m not an expert here because it’s not something we do, so I’ll be very generic. The contract space is tough because I think Amazon Business is making good headway. It’s also hard as margins are thin and volumes depressed.

In the past, you could still turn a profit, even on thin margins because of the volume. In these recent COVID times, however, I would imagine this has been a particularly difficult space.

Probably propped up by emerging categories related to COVID though.

www.opi.net

OPI: Talking of Amazon – this company is obviously right in your path and a formidable competitor, as are other businesses like eBay or OnBuy. Is that hampering your direct resellers’ – Euroffice and UK Office Direct – ability to compete?

SD: I think Amazon is formidable, to use your words. But I don’t believe it’s too dominating in Euroffice’s space yet. We are servicing small businesses with credit accounts which are highly

16

configured and specific to our sector in terms of product range, customer experience and digital sales and marketing tools.

Amazon Business is eating more and more lunch in our space, don’t get me wrong, but not as much as it is doing so in the contract segment. And obviously, it completely cleans up in the consumer demographic, but that’s not our game either as we can’t profitably service consumers.

Euroffice is still a big, successful and profitable business and it’s growing once again.

OPI: But could you foresee a day when you might decide to focus more on Office Power and less on the legacy businesses?

SD: (laughs) Yes, I can see that day because forecasting every conceivable scenario is my job.

Office Power is very relevant with an incredible technology stack and business model, particularly with the new Power Select product where you can configure what services you want.

I genuinely believe there is no better positioned business model in our sector, and we’re only scratching the surface, just being in the UK. So overall, Office Power is small with plenty of potential while Euroffice is very established with headwinds.

OPI: Another component of our industry are dealer groups and in the UK there are quite a few of them. You’ve been fairly critical in the past and were quoted as saying they were “the ugly warts on the side of the wholesaler”. What are your views now?

SD: Yes, I did say that about 12 years ago and slightly regret the resonance of this quote. But while I may not use quite the same words, I think the logic still stands. The purpose of a dealer group – or actually buying group is a better term – is to add value to the supply chain. If that same value is what the wholesalers are trying to add, you get this dynamic – the ugly wart I so unfortunately referred to – on the side that the wholesaler struggles to control.

The concept of grouping together to address some of the issues in our industry is a positive one if it adds value. But you really need to interrogate if

A technology brainstorming session at EO Group

OPI: Buying groups largely exist because of the relationships they have with the vendor community – and all they entail, including rebate programmes and so on. We haven’t spoken yet about this particular segment.

Some manufacturers have had a pretty torrid time, with resellers constantly being urged to get out of traditional supplies and into other products and services. What’s your view?

SD: I think as an industry we do talk ourselves down quite a lot, saying our products aren’t very sexy, for instance. Maybe they’re not, but I do believe that relationships people have with their work tools are actually very deep, perhaps second only to the relationships they have with their mobile devices. And these work tools include stationery and all manner of business supplies.

Yes, it’s a sector in chronic decline because of changing working behaviours and patterns, but it’s still a massive market. The problem with declining industries is that they get labelled as dogs, but they’re not. They just need some restructuring.

I’ve really enjoyed seeing examples of how vendors have pivoted during COVID-19, in the same way dealers have moved into areas such as PPE. It shows the entrepreneurship and the dynamism that exists in our industry. They’ve evolved what and how they manufacture to address the change in the market.

Our industry stacks up really well if you look at what it’s done. I’m going to put my BOSS hat on for a moment and very passionately and with great conviction and fervour talk up some of the success stories of how dynamic our sector has been. I am very much rooted in the supplies and stationery industry, and I will vehemently rally against those who categorise it as being dull, small and insignificant. It’s not.

OPI: I completely agree, but we’re hugely immersed in this industry – outsiders aren’t.

How do we change the narrative, redefine what we are and portray that to a wider audience?

SD: Good question. Our sector is very culturally pleasant compared with other industries I’ve worked in. We should be more bullish about what we do. Forget the product for a minute, because that product sometimes creates confusion.

We supply businesses. And what we’ve seen during COVID is that despite the fact these businesses have done different things or gone to different places, we’ve still supplied them. So the business supplies label is a good one.

No, we’re not sexy, that’d be a stretch, but what we do is impressive and important.

OPI: You used the word ‘bullish’ earlier.

To wrap up, how bullish are you, post-coronavirus, about the future of the industry? What do you think we will be reflecting on in five years’ time – if you’re still around then, of course?

SD: (laughs) I hope I will be! I’m getting a bit traditional – something I’ve never been accused of in the past. But I do believe offices will return to more like what they were before the pandemic than we currently think. The initial experiment of homeworking had everyone giddy and excited but, despite the upsides, I don’t think we fully understand the negative implications of that yet.

Our industry stacks up really well if you look at what it’s done I don’t believe staff will return to the office 100% of the time, but for operational, hands-on roles, I would be surprised if it was less than 60%.

It’s also a generational and a social thing.

Yes, of course, everyone likes a better work-life balance and we’ve now seen what is possible.

However, ultimately business is done by people, with people and through people.

Communication is what knits it all together and you don’t get this in the same way through Zoom because you’re only using two senses – your eyes and your ears, and in a quite often limited way. There’s a lot more to it, including body language, emotional intelligence and influencing. As a result of all that, I’m convinced what we’re offering will continue to be in high demand going forward. It’ll just look different.

Overall, I feel optimistic about our sector. It needs restructuring and a bit of correction in the supply chain. But never forget how relevant our product is and what an amazing job we have done in terms of pivoting in recent times.

July/August 2021

OPI: You’ve briefly mentioned BOSS already.

I don’t imagine you expected, when you took on the mantle of Chairman of the federation in 2019, that your tenure would include dealing with a global pandemic. What have been the priorities at BOSS?

SD: It’s been a challenge. But our amazing CEO Amy Hutchinson has made my job as Chairman more successful and immeasurably easier. In this type of role, you have to delegate, but a fundamental requirement of doing so is confidence and quality in who you delegate to. I have an abundance of confidence in Amy. I think BOSS has become so much more relevant during COVID, not only as a result of the services, but also the networking and the knowledge that we provide.

Strange as this may sound, the pandemic has been a positive for the federation. It needed change and – I’m probably going to get told off for saying this – there was a danger of it suffering the same inertia the rest of the industry is sometimes being accused of.

Before COVID, we were already trying to inject a change agenda and hiring Amy was part of it, but the pandemic has given us a vehicle to really drive that change. I believe BOSS is incredibly relevant now and I really like some of the stuff we’re doing.

BIG INTERVIEW Simon Drakeford

and where the value is being added and what the true cost of ownership is on that. I don’t think this is always clear, possibly by design.

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HOT TOPIC

IT’S NOT ALWAYS

what you know…

The notion of buying locally has been embraced over the past year. But what happens when pandemic restrictions are lifted, and that warm and cuddly feeling subsides?

S

– by Michelle Sturman

www.opi.net

ince March 2020, few aspects of business life have warranted a high five, but there are some minor exceptions. One of them is the goodwill and increased adoption of buying locally. While e-commerce soared to unprecedented heights, office and store closures combined also elicited sympathy and a new-found appreciation for small business owners.

Traditionally, buy local campaigns have predominantly targeted retail, but with employees sent home to work, our sector has been able to piggyback on such strategies. There has also been renewed emphasis on lobbying to shift purchasing patterns to independently-owned businesses while seeking to curtail the dominance of online operators like Amazon.

The definition of ‘local’ is as ambiguous as ever, with the waters muddied by corporations muscling in with ‘local-washing’ campaigns – their argument being that they employ people from the neighbourhoods. It also throws up a link – some may argue a tenuous one – to the concept of ‘made in’, especially in the US under the Trump Administration and in the UK following Brexit.

Be that as it may, on the back of stimulating local economies, growing environmental concerns, and with supply chains currently stretched to the max, ‘made in’ is definitely gaining traction globally.

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opi.net poll

Does being actively involved in a buy local campaign help to increase sales? n Yes

ON THE WANE? n Not sure Local purchasing activity ramped up during the n No pandemic, but as we gradually emerge from over a year of restrictions, is ‘buy local’ on the wane? OPI spoke to several executives in our industry who are heavily involved in campaigning for community businesses 29% and believe the sentiment for ‘buy local’ or ‘made in’ will remain strong.

In the US, Kansas City, Missouri-based independent dealer Office Products Alliance (OPA), has had the buy local point entrenched in everything it does; it has been its 32% overriding brand strategy for years.

39%

Owner/President Mark Whitlow says the issue has never been more critical to the independent dealer community (IDC) than now as we emerge from the pandemic. “While office staff were working from home, many jumped online to purchase products. As they head back to the workplace, we want to break that habit and remind them why they were purchasing from us 18 months ago.”

In some ways, COVID-19 has reinforced OPA’s status, becoming a ‘local hero’ as the company turned on a dime to provide critical products.

Marketing Director Amie Stinson explains: “We were effective in sourcing scarce items for our customers as well as promoting them to those who were in need.”

Over the past year, getting the message out to existing clientele and potential purchasers hasn’t always been easy, but OPA has used social media to great effect. Stinson says it’s involved on different platforms with as many Kansas City companies as possible in the hope they share the love. “Overall, I do get a hefty response and it’s constantly trending up,” she adds.

OPENING DOORS While social media bears some of the heavy lifting in terms of brand awareness, OPA’s sales team messaging is based on creating a difference in the community by buying local. Says Whitlow: “If we convince customers to spend a few extra minutes to look at our history, our offering, and the fact their dollars stay local, they realise it makes perfect sense to work with us. Once the door is opened, we are usually very successful.”

Moving forward, Stinson’s focus is on building the company’s ‘personality’, and highlighting the benefits of working with a local independent dealer versus the big boxes. Advancing the local notion further, OPA’s website showcases team members with short video biographies. “This is a campaign in itself,” adds Whitlow. “Customers see the human face of OPA, literally, and realise our team is based right here in Kansas City.”

Against the onslaught of e-commerce, COVID, and industry consolidation, it’s no surprise Whitlow issues a rallying cry for a more cohesive effort from dealers. “Decision-makers in government need to listen to what we have to offer because we can serve anyone at any level. There are so few of us left in the IDC, we need to band together and work collectively on a countrywide ‘local’ campaign – not as competitors but as partners.”

ALL ABOUT ENGAGEMENT To drum up as much engagement as possible, Nemo Office Club offers a complete marketing support package to members. This includes template letters to send to MPs to support the initiative and gain visibility within town councils.

Says Marketing Manager Alan Calder: “When the pandemic arrived, everyone became a little friendlier towards each other, accelerating the ‘keeping it local’ sentiment. To promote the visibility of dealers in the wider community, we also provided template articles they could use to send to the press, for example.

“One dealer featured in his community magazine for being proactively involved in the Keep It Local campaign. This has led to the opportunity to bid on a local tender – something he has been trying to achieve for 20 years!”

We need to band together and work collectively on a countrywide ‘local’ campaign – not as competitors but as partners

MAKING LOCAL WORK DOWN UNDER Many miles away in Australia and due to intermittent lockdowns since March last year, local – in a country with few densely populated areas – has become hyperlocal, as a result of a severely restricted travel radius.

Boosted by a national Making Local Work campaign by Office Choice, its members have also been reaping the benefits. Explaining the concept, the dealer group’s National Marketing Manager Cameron Osborne says the initiative was originally due to be launched in August 2020 after spending months building the strategy in response to customer feedback – they like using Office Choice because of the local service and community participation.

COVID accelerated the group’s response and Making Local Work was launched a few months earlier in June. “I turned the campaign around in lockdown in about six weeks, from my living room.

The timing played into our hands and we got really lucky. Since then, the initiative has continued to grow legs as members have climbed on board and customers have got behind supporting local businesses,” he notes.

When the pandemic started, Office Choice had also produced a work-from-home strategy with heavy promotion through digital videos, Facebook and Google AdWords. “As a result, there was an instant increase in web traffic because our message resonated with people as they hunted for home office furniture, PPE, etc,” says Osborne.

Capitalising on the steep rise in website enquiries, the group swiftly launched a national e-commerce platform to coincide with the Making Local Work campaign.

While many members wryly told Office Choice they had always been ‘doing local’, the whole initiative not only solidified the concept in the eyes of their customers but provided a full brand strategy and tools for dealers to utilise. “We’ve done the marketing for them, including a range of videos, broadcasts on on-demand TV, online advertising through Facebook and Google, promotions, and so on,” Osborne explains.

Making Local Work is now incorporated in every touchpoint – website, brochures, catalogue, email signatures – and will run as a multi-year strategy. Currently, the team is readying phase two for launch which, Osborne says, will focus on community-related programmes. “I see ‘buy local’ expanding to include ‘support local’. It’s more than merely being a supplier; it’s about being an active participant in the community you serve.”

As mentioned before, and broadening the view of buy local further, ‘made in’ products have also been gaining in popularity. After launching its first-ever catalogue solely dedicated to business supplies products made in France, OPI spoke with Laurent Bertrand, Managing Director of

July/August 2021

Building on the momentum, the group launched the Office Circle e-commerce platform in February this year to establish a national network of business supplies firms offering local delivery from one central website.

“While the concept is not new, the website offers over 30,000 SKUs and 70% of orders are from businesses. It generates over 120 leads a month for our members,” says Calder. He adds: “It’s an opportunity for dealers to convert orders into customers when they deliver the products and introduce themselves as the local supplier.”

Engagement represents the key ingredient for a successful buy local campaign, according to

Calder. “While we didn’t have to sell the concept to members, we had to make them want to be a part of it and see the benefits. We were effective by providing the tools necessary to enable them to create their own success stories.”

HOT TOPIC Buy Local

Getting their dealers together under one cohesive buy local strategy is exactly what combined UK-based dealer groups Nemo and Office Club have been doing over the past year.

Pre-pandemic, they were already in the throes of a B2B National Office Products Keep It Local Campaign, prompted by feedback from members that were being denied the chance to bid for large government tenders.

Spurred on by an announcement that one-third of public sector spend was going to be allocated to local companies by 2022, the groups wanted to ensure their 330 or so members were offered a fair shot.

As COVID took hold, the campaign evolved and a website was launched in June 2020 – www. keep-it-local.co.uk – detailing all the benefits of buying local. Gaining traction, ‘find a store’ was added which became a positive lead generator for dealers. Currently, the website receives an average of around 6,000 visitors a month, with almost 80% using the store finder to locate the nearest supplier for office products.

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Buy Local HOT TOPIC

France-based reseller Lacoste Dactyl Bureau & École (LDBE) about the reasons behind the move.

At the time, the new catalogue had been in circulation for around three months. But what drove the company to introduce it in the first place?

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY Bertrand believes we all have to take responsibility for optimising the supply chain and how business, in general, is conducted.

COVID, he explains, brought this realisation to the fore. “The current craziness surrounding container prices, coupled with the fact that most products ship from Asia, brought about the realisation that we have to promote European goods, both in terms of economics and the environmental impact.”

The response so far to the catalogue has been positive, with just under 2,000 products from well-known brands including BIC, Hamelin, Exacompta Clairefontaine, CEP, Pentel and Pilot Corporation. “We’ve received a great response from customers. They have been even keener on local purchasing and buying French products since the onset of the pandemic. The option to select only items made in France is also available on our website,” he adds.

The aim is to make dealers and customers proud that profits stay in the community they serve and help

www.opi.net

The constant battle over price is one which dealers must overcome, Bertrand says, but he believes that although it will take time, building different arguments based on sustainability, product life cycle and buying local will lead to change. “I truly believe the ‘Made in France’ catalogue is the first step in the right direction.”

While he acknowledges there can be difficulties with manufacturing in France due to complicated and strict employment laws, he is pleased with the support from local vendors towards the catalogue.

Further down the line, the hope is to enlarge the offering in categories such as health and hygiene, packaging and breakroom, to service the needs of all its customers.

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STAND UP AND FIGHT Banding together, providing a great brand strategy and locally manufactured products might not be enough to fight against the rising tide of ‘Big Tech’, however, especially in the e-commerce arena.

Governments need to be lobbied to support and protect small, independent businesses.

This is why people such as Independent Office Products and Furniture Dealer Association (IOPFDA) Executive Director Mike Tucker are renowned and revered in the industry – for always standing up and fighting for the IDC. A significant part of the battle is raising awareness and advocating for SMBs, which resulted in the introduction of the National Small Business Workplace Solutions Week (NSBWSW)

in the US. Starting on 28 March, the week-long virtual Capitol Hill fly-in focused on educating Congress on the needs of small businesses and sharing solutions on policies that provide opportunities to cut red tape in the fight against large corporate competitors.

“It’s undoubtedly put a positive light on, not just our industry, but small business in general. Office supplies dealers were considered essential during the pandemic and their work really demonstrated their spirit and backbone. Most have been recognised as heroes in their community, especially for doing things to support something other than their bottom line,” comments Tucker.

He’s pleased with the outcome of the NSBWSW in terms of pushing congressional activity, especially involving Big Tech and federal and local government. However, subsequent annual events will shift the focus to acknowledging the role of independent dealers.

“Advocacy will remain the core of the week and ensuring government leaders are doing the right things to support us, but it will become more of a celebration of who we are, what we do. The aim is to make dealers and customers proud that profits stay in the community they serve and help,” Tucker elaborates.

He plans to use NSBWSW as a foundation for promoting our industry and dealers by creating a PR campaign building up to the event, which will take place in the last week of March. “We’ll call attention to the ‘noble job of distribution’; there are so many incredible stories to tell which I think will inspire people further.”

THE RISE OF SMALL BUSINESS IOPFDA is also part of a coalition of 25 independent business organisations, representing more than 150,000 companies that are involved in the Small Business Rising campaign. Spearheaded by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the group has been lobbying Congress to curb the power of Big Tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.

Here, Tucker says, IOPFDA is leading the charge in terms of what’s happening in the federal space. Recently, the House Judiciary Committee voted to approve a six-bill package of antitrust legislation to rein in Big Tech, including one to block some of Amazon’s practices against third-party sellers. Says Tucker: “We’re pretty excited about it, but as Yogi Berra said: ‘It ain’t over till it’s over’.”

FEATURE

Special Issue

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

The YEAR of

TECHNOLOGY Window of opportunity or missed chance? For independent dealers, COVID-19 has presented both pivots and pain points

E

arly last year, with little warning, our industry – the world at large, in fact – was catapulted into a global pandemic. A few months later, in our annual Technology Solutions special issue of OPI, it had become obvious that this wasn’t going to be a short-term crisis, but an industry-churning event which would require considerable resilience and stamina. And an awful lot of technology.

From the initial quick-on-your-feet thinking to longer-term adjustments to systems and processes, technology has been at the very heart of the past ‘COVID year’. OPI’s Heike Dieckmann asked a selection of solutions providers in our space about the highs and lows and their specific efforts in helping independent dealers come out bigger and stronger on the other side.

Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

www.opi.net

CHARLES RUSSELL, CO-OWNER, SSI

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Over the past year or so, we have experienced a broad spectrum of performances, from customers with sales down 50% to some that are seeing their best year ever. Those that have thrived have done so because of their ability to procure and sell COVID-related products while dealers which didn’t manage to do that lost out massively.

Customer mix was also a factor. Businesses with a heavy school volume, for example, have not fared well. Overall, about 3% of our OP dealers have either gone out of business or sold it.

In terms of technology capabilities, mobile access has become paramount due to the work-from-home (WFH) situation. The challenge for technology companies has been to ensure the availability of mobile access by a dealer’s workforce, delivery people and customers while still protecting the security of the dealer’s system.

From digitally creating, transmitting and receiving purchasing orders to routing and completing deliveries, automation and efficiency have been the chief goals in order to manage the WFH situation but also to cut costs, especially the considerably higher home delivery expenses.

Dealers have been agile and found new sources for products that were in short supply and high demand by adapting to a disbursed worker environment – among their own as well as their customers’ staff. As companies call back employees and schools bring back students,

these challenges continue, with dealers adapting to new furniture and office layout demands.

SSI PRIORITIES As for SSI specifically, we cut our own cost structure too; we let go of employees to make sure we could absorb our cost increases and not raise maintenance for our customers. In terms of software development, we pushed even harder on automating certain functions to help dealers lower expenses in those areas.

We added additional merchandising controls to SSIweb so dealers’ customers can purchase the item that is the best value for them and which gives the dealer the highest margin. We also improved the system to make it friendlier and more efficient for employees working from home. All our new dealer sites incorporate responsive technology, for example, and provide a good mobile ordering experience without the need for a mobile app.

In addition, we partnered with other companies to provide dealers with more options. We helped develop and perfect an excellent mobile proof-of-delivery system, for instance, and integrated ITEM411 with our software to assist dealers with managing pricing and protecting their margins.

In terms of our own key (product) development, we’re focused on the web and dealer management tools. Our web storefront is already extremely

Special

TECHNO

SOLUT

Special

VEND SPEC

Special

VEND SPEC

SONNY ARORA, OPERATIONS MANAGER, DEALER COMMANDER Most of our dealers have fared very well during the pandemic, with some even up in the double digits year on year due to selling PPE. That’s not to say it was easy – they had to source the product and also find the customers – but when push came to shove they evolved and adapted to a completely unprecedented environment. Well-oiled tech support has been crucial, be that related to handling special requests for changes, dealing with out-of-stock items or delivering specific COVID messages to customers.

When push came to shove [dealers] evolved and adapted to a completely unprecedented environment

FEATURE Technology Providers

user-friendly, but we aim to make it even better by adding more solutions to aid with merchandising and SEO. Even with pandemic restrictions lifting, dealers are still facing a lot of challenges and being able to evaluate costs and profitability is essential. We want to give them new ways to analyse and manage things like pricing, product and delivery costs, and customer profitability.

The biggest challenge for dealers is margin management, which is why it is one of our development priorities. Even if sales come back as people return to work and school, dealers are going to be faced with fast-rising product costs and related consumer pricing.

Their biggest opportunities are the furniture, office supplies and jan/san segments which businesses, schools and government agencies will tap into as they prepare for the return of employees and students.

Workers who don’t go back to the office present another target audience. Dealers should be attacking the businesses that were served

by Staples or Office Depot and which have not seen a sales person in months. As always, they need to sell their value versus a player such as Amazon. They can also help those companies manage their home workers, providing cost containment for remote employees through purchasing rules enforcement.

Find out more: www.ssiop.com

With new technology innovations also come the bad actors. At Dealer Commander, much of our focus has been on DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks and hackers; we have spent a lot of time and resources on the best cybersecurity providers to protect ourselves as well as our dealers.

Apart from this, we’ve been concentrating on a number of areas, including digital paperless delivery. We’ve also enhanced our online offering to make sure dealers have plenty of upsell opportunities.

Dealers’ end users need to have a quick and seamless click-buy experience when purchasing online. To make shopping even better, by the end of Q3, we’re planning to introduce Plan-N-Save orders whereby end users can preschedule their deliveries. Overall, we are allocating considerable resources so that dealers can compete with online giants like Amazon.

Find out more: www.dealercommander.com

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Technology Providers FEATURE

BRIAN BOWERFIND, DISTRIBUTION DIVISION PRESIDENT, ECI Looking back over the years, independents have always figured out a way to move their businesses forward, even during periods when there have been headwinds in our industry.

The key word that consistently comes to mind when I talk to our dealers is entrepreneurship.

They never fail to impress me, particularly the way they have been able to find new areas where they can do business.

During the pandemic, the majority of our dealers quickly focused on PPE and jan/san as well as other lines that were in demand. The challenge then became supply, with manufacturers unable to produce quickly enough – another headwind for dealers.

Our solutions have helped them analyse where their business was strong by giving them timely access to data so they could make informed decisions. E-commerce was, and continues to be, a really important area for our independent dealers, so we’ve focused a lot of energy and investment on helping them with better website design and e-commerce content.

It’s more crucial now than ever for business solutions operators to maintain a strong web presence and provide an excellent customer experience. The ability to compete with the larger retailers is a focal point in our industry. As more and more consumer behaviour moves online it’s vital that the experience is feature-rich with excellent content. It’s even more important that the transaction is secure.

A big challenge for technology providers like ECI is working within the context of our customers’ businesses to deliver a result that meets exceptionally high expectations. We have certainly seen our dealers’ ability to move towards what’s working and away from what’s not. Our technology allows them to be much more efficient when making decisions.

It’s our job to give dealers timely access to information so that these decisions can be made.

Enabling them to analyse gross profit margins on thousands of SKUs immediately; making the required price changes without human intervention; and guaranteeing we’re integrated with the wholesalers in the most efficient way possible – these are all examples of how we can help.

There has been a lot of price volatility in the market, with rapidly changing costs from manufacturers and wholesalers. Dealers had to implement better technology to face these challenges head on.

In this context, one of the single biggest things we’ve done to assist is launch Margin Accelerator at the beginning of 2020, a solution designed to automate and manage end-user product pricing.

With inflation starting to pick up now and the cost of goods rising, it’s vital that dealers use technology to help manage their margins. Without it, it’s incredibly hard to keep up with the thousands of cost adjustments they receive on a regular basis.

ADDRESSING THE CHANGED WORKPLACE Our business in Europe has been focusing on helping dealers better deal with day-to-day problems presented by a decentralised workplace. Deliveries to people’s homes have become much more common and there’ve been industry-specific needs such as improvements to workwear.

On a related note, we will be releasing software that allows flexibility when products are made in-house. This presents opportunities to our dealers to further specialise their business in workwear, custom furniture and promotional items.

Find out more: www.ecisolutions.com

www.opi.net

LAUREL LOEHLIN, PRESIDENT, BMI

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No doubt, everyone had some moments of panic and despair during the initial COVID-induced shutdown. But a lot of our dealers were able to rapidly adapt to the new paradigm by doing three things to assist and protect their key constituencies: • Adopt the standards laid out by the US government’s health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to protect their on-site workers, so they could get back into their warehouses.

• Pursue new product lines that were suddenly and steadily in high demand, as well as new sources for existing lines.

• Help their customers to comply with work-from-home requirements by providing greater flexibility in their fulfilment and delivery offerings.

BMI played an important role by supplying the technology and plenty of options that allowed them to embrace a new business model quickly and successfully. What we are doing right now is upgrading our system to a pure SaaS-based cloud environment, which will greatly reduce IT infrastructure costs and the risks associated with on-premise solutions.

As part of this system upgrade, we are providing extensive B2C functionality, which will allow dealers to compete much more effectively with the big boxes. We are incorporating sophisticated SEO functionality, for instance, so they can attract the customers they want. The biggest challenge for us at the moment is related to refining the various features while the business models of our dealers are still constantly evolving.

Find out more: www.bmiusa.com

Technology Providers FEATURE

ANDY BALLARD, DIRECTOR OF SALES, GOPD 2020 was an interesting year, especially for office products dealers with businesses that are largely designed around meeting face to face with customers.

Flexibility was key and GOPD understood that very well as we are a virtual company ourselves – our employees are scattered across the US and work from home while tied into our virtual network using online work surfaces. We’ve learnt how to work closely together, even if we’re physically far away from our colleagues.

This understanding and the need for technology flexibility is also built into our software. It’s all cloud-based, so GOPD dealers and their staff can access the software simply via an internet browser

We saw our progressive dealers turn on their creativity and begin selling and operating in a smooth, virtual way and work from anywhere. It meant, during COVID, that they could start working remotely immediately, with no impact on order flow.

Many of our dealers did well over the past 15 months. By focusing on specific client needs – our system lets them change the pricing, product selection and order flow down to the individual buyer’s level – they were able to adjust their offering to present new options as those customers changed.

Product changes were two-pronged. There were COVID-type items that were suddenly in high demand, of course. But buyers also wanted different things in their home working environment compared to the office – our dealers, through our OP-24/7 Shopping Cart system, were able to focus their marketing on these specific home items.

Some dealers also had a bad year, there’s no doubt. Cost was a big challenge. We offer our services in modules and we advised independents which were struggling on how they could temporarily turn off modules they might not need and thereby save on their monthly expenses. So rather than quitting, they just reduced, and as their business picks up again, they have the option to turn modules back on.

Our advice to dealers was to follow a ‘crawl, walk, run and fly’ strategy. And several moved from crawl to fly very quickly.

Since they were more or less home-bound, they spent a lot of time custom-designing their shopping cart, updating SEO, adding in marketing tools like reward programmes, becoming mobile-enabled, and so on.

We saw our progressive dealers turn on their creativity and begin selling and operating in a smooth, virtual way. Some did so with fewer people, less inventory and reduced overheads while others filled in what they lost with more profitable and attractive new offerings.

GOPD is proud of its dealers and how they handled a very difficult period. As 2021 moves along, we are seeing many continue to look at ways in which they can use what they learnt in 2020 and grow from it.

Find out more: www.gopd.com

ALEX NICOLAIDES, PRESIDENT, LOGICBLOCK

www.opi.net

Many dealers have been using the same technology for years, decades in some cases. People get used to doing things the same way without questioning why; sometimes they are also done in a certain way because the solution that’s being used has limitations.

At Logicblock, we dedicate a large portion of our onboarding process to training. Our solution is flexible by design and we work closely with our customers to ensure they are making the best and maximum use of the tools we provide. During COVID – and leveraging the flexibility and capabilities of our 7cart e-commerce platform – dealers have been adding new products and suppliers at a pace we have never seen before.

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BEING IN CONTROL We provide the service of maintaining catalogues of the vendors they wish to work with, but they can also add new products and categories manually and through imports via Excel spreadsheets; they can further override managed catalogue content and have full control over it. All this has been vital. And we are in lockstep with these relationships, working towards integrating dozens of new, managed catalogue

partners and enhancing the ones we already have in place, saving customers time and reducing errors.

Dealers have also been implementing new ‘trading partners’ through our platform, again at record pace, to be able to digitise and further automate their backend processes. This has not been limited to suppliers/vendors, but includes external ordering systems, marketplaces, ERPs, CRMs, etc.

Over the course of the last year, our dealer partners have been leveraging more of our built-in integrations with best of breed third party solutions. They include competition market pricing, digital proof of delivery, GPS tracking and route optimisation, tax calculation and preparation, analytics, remarketing and much more. These integrations lead to automation, saving an infinite amount of time.

Since Logicblock’s inception in 2005, we have been onboarding new customers steadily and with growing efficiency (see also Case Study, page 30). During that time, 7cart has become a flexible and powerful e-commerce solution. And, as most of our new functionalities and features are included in the core solution, everyone benefits without having to pay more.

Find out more: www.logicblock.com

I’ve seen some truly Herculean accomplishments by tech-savvy dealers, mainly those that pre-pandemic understood the importance of a fluid customer web experience.

Visibility is the core challenge for way too many.

Often, when I tell people what I do, they say: “I didn’t know there were any independent dealers.”

This is a direct result of ‘shopping sites’ that are not fully searchable via the popular search engines. I’m convinced this will continue to be the black hole consuming independent growth until these old systems are gone forever.

All that said, many dealers have thrived and been agile. A competitively priced website is vital in order to obtain new business and independents have really stepped up here and addressed this tough issue. Also, none of the national players require a login to see price – it’s almost a hard stop

for anyone under the age of 100 when looking for a new supplier, especially the home worker.

PRICING CHALLENGES At OPSoftware, we’ve streamlined our processes to push competitive pricing out faster to our partners. As inflation continues to soar, price timing is becoming crucial.

Our job is to make sure that customers have the freshest market-based pricing available to maintain their margins in the post-pandemic, inflation-raging markets. Daily updates are being pushed out to those system providers capable of processing them – it’s quite simply the new reality.

Ancient fixed-pricing contracts will do nothing for dealers’ bottom line and are a thing of the past.

Get rid of them.

Find out more: www.opsoftware.com

FEATURE Technology Providers

RICK MARLETTE, CO-OWNER, OPSOFTWARE

None of the national players require a login to see price – it’s almost a hard stop for anyone under the age of 100 when looking for a new supplier, especially the home worker

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Special Issue

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS CASE STUDY

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TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

Critically IMPORTANT

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VENDOR SPECIAL

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Special Issue

ulk Office Supply began its OP journey in 1989, working out of the basement of a house in Brooklyn, New York. With no suppliers or customers initially – but a strong desire to succeed – it developed into an established, local independent dealer that, by 2006, operated from a 20,000 sq ft (2,000 sq m) warehouse with a fleet of vehicles servicing New York City and the surrounding area.

An outside sales force was never part of Bulk’s go-to-market strategy. Instead, it relied on direct mail to generate leads and orders which would then be handed to its inside sales and telemarketing team. When online procurement became more widely adopted, the company changed its internal structure and, using S.P. Richards as its primary wholesaler, moved towards a stockless model, in the process also giving it much greater geographical coverage.

Technology has always been an important part of the business, according to President Alex Minzer. He says: “In the beginning, sales management, EDI with wholesalers, product management and financial reporting were the type of solutions we needed from our systems providers. When e-commerce was starting to boom, customer expectations changed and we needed to act.

“I think it’s fair to say that the web store solutions of independent dealers in the early days – if they existed at all – did not have the look, feel and ease of use of some of the progressive operators at the time. Bulk Office Supply was no different: our front end didn’t look like an online retail store, but more like a hybrid of a sterile order form and a functioning website – it didn’t work and was not what we wanted.”

customers could place orders easily and there was no need to log in – it looked a bit like what the big box competitors offered.

“Connecting the company’s 7cart e-commerce system to our most important suppliers and wholesalers was seamless and fast. As a bonus, it also fully integrates with QuickBooks which makes it easy for us to maintain all of the required accounting functions.”

www.opi.net

VENDOR SPECIAL

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THE RIGHT PARTNER Enter Logicblock, the company Bulk ultimately chose as its software solutions provider and has been with ever since. As Minzer explains: “We first came across Logicblock at a vendor trade show in 2006. What attracted us to its system was the look and feel of the open storefront where

It was a challenging year […] during which having a well-designed and functioning web store became critical The website itself took a few months to build and finetune, he adds. But in the very first month it directed customers from the old storefront to the new one, Bulk saw a 15% jump in order size.

“We attributed the considerably larger orders to a more intuitive shopping experience which meant customers spent longer on the site and looked at new categories. Uncomplicated checkout overcame the final hurdle in the process,” Minzer says.

Alex Minzer

COVID CHALLENGES Most recently, of course, it was the shift in its offering that took considerable time and patience.

Bulk’s product mix has certainly changed during the pandemic, with ‘traditional’ sales still recovering and PPE offering something of a lifeline.

However, supply and demand volatilities also caused some difficulties, as Minzer points out: “The wholesalers couldn’t deliver inventory levels to our system fast enough, often resulting in products being offered for sale that weren’t actually available.

“Fortunately, we were able to compensate for this using the safety stock feature within Logicblock.

It was a challenging year on many levels and one during which having a well-designed and functioning web store became critical.”

Special Issue OPINION

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

Special Issue

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

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VENDOR SPECIAL

The tech-enabled VENDOR

SALES REP

Special Issue

SPECIAL

Already in a massive state of flux, coronavirus has put the sales rep function into another dimension of uncertainty. The time is nigh for artificial intelligence as a sales enablement tool, says sales-i’s Kevin McGirl

www.opi.net

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hen preparing thoughts for a recent OPI Global VIP Event on the topic of sales trends in the business products industry, it struck me just how much the tools of the trade have evolved since I first entered the field some four decades ago.

Thinking back to those early ‘pencil and paper’ days of the 1980s, it’s amazing to recall how sales reps routinely operated: going from meeting to meeting carrying reams of green ‘piano paper’ printouts on customer accounts; queuing up at petrol station payphones armed with pockets of coins to arrange meetings with prospects; collating contacts on a Rolodex; and using paper maps to locate client premises.

While these practices may seem quaint in the context of today’s 24/7 digitally connected world, what they did ensure was a level playing field where sales reps had relatively equal opportunities to close sales. But the goalposts have shifted and, thanks to the arrival of a series

of game-changing developments, sales teams can draw on a variety of tools to dramatically improve their sales performance.

MOBILE REVOLUTION The advent of the mobile phone proved a watershed moment, effectively paving the way for today’s sales enablement solutions. As technology developed further throughout the 1990s and 2000s, embracing text messaging, picture and keyboard functionality and, finally, mobile browsing, what started as a relatively one-dimensional mobile communications tool evolved into today’s ubiquitous smartphone. It opened up access to knowledge and a myriad of functionalities, all in the palm of your hand.

Of course, there was some resistance to these developments, but the early adopters of mobile tech in the sales space quickly found they were better primed to stay close to customers and, ultimately, do business more efficiently.

Kevin McGirl, co-founder and President, sales-i

AI and machine learningdriven sales enablement technology is marching forward and very much here to stay seasoned reps are also able to benefit from using the technology. This is particularly handy in those sectors – and dare I say the business supplies industry might be one of them – where younger personnel have been slower to emerge.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS The pandemic has brought a great many operational challenges for businesses in our industry and beyond, and some won’t unfortunately make it through to the other side. But we’re tentatively starting to see the green shoots of recovery in several economies.

There will undoubtedly be bumps in the road ahead – two of the most obvious ones and covered in the last issue of OPI are stock availability difficulties and significant increases in some raw material prices which we are seeing across the distribution space right now (see Hot Topic, OPI May/June 2021, page 22). But I believe we are on the cusp of an exciting period, where sales technology provision will continue to be a huge differentiator.

This is especially the case for businesses on the acquisition trail or those, conversely, that are seeking an exit from the market. Whether they’ve flourished or faltered over the course of the pandemic, 2021 is likely to be the year many businesses find themselves on the receiving end of an M&A approach. There’s no doubt in my mind that robustly tech-enabled, data-driven resellers are especially attractive to buyers and stand best placed to maximise their company valuations.

Much has changed in my four decades in sales technology, but with the march of the machines now in full swing, the biggest shift of all is possibly yet to come.

Kevin McGirl is co-founder and President of sales-i, a UK and US-based sales enablement technology firm that helps companies across varied business sectors maximise their sales performance. There are currently several developments in the pipeline at sales-i that will see AI being embedded into its own platform to deliver powerful analytics to sales professionals. For more information, see also sales-i’s blog post on the sales-i.com website.

July/August 2021

SALES ON STEROIDS As I addressed in the inaugural instalment of sales-i’s new Best Kept Secret podcast series, arguably the biggest sales game changer of all is just around the corner. AI and machine learning-driven sales enablement technology is marching forward and very much here to stay.

According to McKinsey, AI-powered sales teams were able to generate 50% more leads and reduce call times by up to 70%.

At a fundamental level, AI and automation can revolutionise a variety of everyday sales tasks,

such as sourcing and sorting/prioritising leads or communicating with potential customers via a chatbot service to qualify leads. Sales professionals can then use the resulting time savings to focus on meeting more strategic, overarching goals and, importantly, closing sales.

When combined with sales enablement technology, AI works to accumulate, sort and process the data that is so central to a platform’s functionality – delivering a range of analytics on customer purchasing behaviours to indicate trends in what they are and, crucially, aren’t buying at any given time and what they could be buying in future.

In essence, AI will make already intuitive sales enablement platforms even easier to use by incorporating tools such as voice functionality, whereby they will perform like a personal assistant to answer simple questions based on real-time data. That means better targeting, more efficient processing, swifter sales and, ultimately, bigger bottom-line impact, not forgetting greater job satisfaction.

OPINION Kevin McGirl

The internet age provided a gateway to a proliferation of information not just for sales reps, but also to their customers. As such, the dynamics of the relationship changed alongside the technologies deployed. The times when charisma and personality alone secured a sale were over.

Armed with greater knowledge and insight, customers began to pose more and more savvy questions to sales reps, leaving those with access to analytics and data at a significant advantage compared to their less tech-enabled counterparts.

The consultative sell was born, where adding value to the customer experience became increasingly prized, and indeed expected.

All of this happened fairly slowly and steadily, but then the COVID-19 crisis effectively ushered in a new era for sales overnight. Remote selling, pitching and customer relationship management quickly became not just nice-to-haves, but routine across many sectors.

Post-pandemic, there will still be a role for some face-to-face communication, although many companies will at least adopt a hybrid model going forward. Given that scenario, being tech-enabled matters more than ever.

Sales has long faced stigma regarding the perceived cachet and professionalism of the role and still to this day can be viewed as somewhat of a Cinderella function in less enlightened quarters.

However, with more digitally native millennials entering the profession, technology adoption has gone a long way to push back against this narrative. When equipped with real-time customer data, today’s sales reps can be true students and indeed masters of their trade.

What’s more, it’s not just the younger generation that can take advantage. Ease of use in the current tech solutions is typically baked-in, meaning more

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Special Issue

TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW

SOLUTIONS

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TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

E-commerce DEEP DIVE

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VENDOR SPECIAL

Special Issue Amazon divides opinion in our industry, no

VENDOR doubt. But for brand manufacturers certainly, there’s plenty to like about this online giant, SPECIAL according to Amazon expert John Ghiorso

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www.opi.net

riend or foe – Amazon’s omnipresence is something all operators in the business supplies industry have to contend with. One person who arguably knows more about the online behemoth than most is John Ghiorso, founder and CEO of Orca Pacific, a full-service agency dedicated to growing the Amazon business of consumer product brands.

Ghiorso has been convinced for many years that Amazon will ultimately become the biggest company on the planet, utterly disrupting retail as we know it in the process. An e-commerce thought leader with a reputation for forecasting shifts within the Amazon marketplace, he was a hugely popular keynote interviewee at OPI’s recent Global Forum Online (see Event, OPI May/June 2021, page 50).

The core talking points of the conversation are summarised in this OPI interview with Ghiorso.

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OPI: Let’s start with a term we’ve been hearing a lot about in recent years – the endless aisle.

From your perspective, how does it affect your customers, ie brand manufacturers?

John Ghiorso: The endless aisle essentially represents the democratisation of retail. The biggest innovation that Amazon created is access – for brands and consumers. It’s estimated that today there are about 500 million SKUs on the platform.

Amazon has allowed everybody – from big brands and one-man bands to manufacturers selling direct from China, Thailand or India – access to the consumer. This has flipped the dynamics of national organisations and the

traditional status quo, especially the big retailers in the US. They historically had a certain market share. It fluctuated a bit between the biggest operators, but tended to be shared by just a few giants.

Amazon has altered that with the access it’s given consumers, meaning those big nationals have to fight much harder for the same share.

OPI: Amazon Advertising is a big deal now I believe. What should brands be doing to maximise the opportunities?

JG: Amazon Advertising has become non-negotiable in my opinion – it’s pay to play and if you’re not participating, you’re going to fall behind and lose share. Five out of the top ten search results now are paid for.

Amazon Advertising can be broken down into two big categories: Search and Display. Search is sponsored ads, display is Amazon DSP which allows brands to leverage valuable data to reach a highly-targeted audience.

Most brands have been participating in Search for a couple of years now, but many are still underinvesting in my view. They don’t factor in that there’s the real-time, immediate ROI or ROAS (return on ad spend) and then there’s a secondary important effect. The latter happens weeks or months down the line and is difficult to measure.

I would go as far as to say that one of the biggest trends this year – and this will only continue – is adding budget into the Display side.

OPI: How significant are the revenues that Amazon derives from advertising?

JG: Advertising is a high margin business. If it’s not its number one profit centre right now, I’m sure it will be within the next two years.

OPI: What other trends do you see emerging as regards the whole Amazon experience?

OPI: But isn’t it also a fact that Amazon uses the flywheel to find new categories and private labels to sell direct?

JG: I guess so. Ultimately, it’s the customer interaction and the customer dollars which drive the flywheel forward. It’s true, the better a product does on the platform, the more likely it is that Amazon is going to create a private label. But it’s the same with any other retailer, perhaps more so.

OPI: Many manufacturers in our industry have concerns about data collection and Amazon using that data to make own label products under the well-known Amazon Basics range.

What’s your view?

JG: It’s a concern, no doubt, but you would have similar concerns about Staples or Walmart – it’s the same data. Let me just say that Amazon’s private label initiative is not going too well. This may come as a surprise to people because it gets a lot of coverage in the media. I think Amazon Basics presents less than 1% of total sales.

By now, this number should have been 5-10% judging by its own goals.

That’s not to say it’s not a threat. If Amazon is knocking off your number one seller with its own brand, it’s painful, but I do believe context is important here. Amazon, from a private label perspective, is still going after the lower hanging fruit, ie commodity top sellers. The best way to defend against it is for brand manufacturers to do

July/August 2021

OPI: How is it doing that?

JG: It’s launching a lot of new initiatives brands can participate in. Things like the Brand Store, Amazon Posts or Amazon Live – the idea is to capture customers before they even know what they want.

Most companies become less innovative as they get bigger and slow down. Amazon does the opposite. This year, I estimate it’s launched more initiatives than ever. That can be overwhelming for brands, monitoring them all, knowing when there’s an opportunity but also realising when something is not a smart use of resources.

Amazon Live is a good example: it’s essentially replicating something like the QVC shopping channel, with live videos, ie product demonstrations, on the landing page. I’m convinced it’s going to be huge in a year or two, but it’s not for everyone, because not every product is suitable for this kind of exposure.

Amazon Posts is another one: it’s like an Instagram clone on a product detail page. You have your brand-driven content, ie images and videos, and your consumer-driven content such as reviews and feedback. Posts sits somewhere in between. As a brand, you’re taking influencer, customer-created content and then you’re repurposing it.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that, when Amazon launches something, it tends to do so in beta and it’s free during that stage.

OPI: What should brands be looking for when they work with Amazon?

JG: The Amazon Flywheel is a concept many people have heard of. It seems a lot like business jargon, but the flywheel is important because it’s a self-enforcing feedback loop which is coded into the Amazon platform.

The idea is that the best way to know when to promote a product to a consumer is when other consumers have had a good experience interacting with the product. This is an organic phenomenon, but there are ways to spin the flywheel even faster. The most efficient one is through advertising.

On any ad campaign, businesses are looking at the ROAS, ie you spend $1 and sell $3 worth of product. But, as I mentioned earlier, there are also second-order effects. Because you spent $1 and sold an incremental $3 worth of product that you otherwise wouldn’t have sold, all of a sudden you have more customers who see your product and you subsequently sell another $6 worth.

Like I said, that later effect is harder to measure, but weighing into this idea of maximising the flywheel effect is how you grow a brand exponentially on Amazon.

John Ghiorso

The best way to know when to promote a product to a consumer is when other consumers have had a good experience interacting with the product

Amazon Posts is free at the moment. It won’t stay like this I’m sure, but for now there’s not a real demonstrable ROI, it’s for certain categories only, etc. This initiative is something worth looking at in my opinion, potentially testing its viability because there can be a first-mover advantage with programmes like this.

INTERVIEW

JG: Amazon is pushing the notion that its platform is a place to shop, not just buy. Amazon was not built for browsing; it’s not the equivalent of visiting a shopping centre for a few hours. Historically, the concept was: “I need a product and I need it now – at the lowest cost, or at least on par with other operators – and I want to buy it conveniently with one-click checkout.”

Convenience, speed and cost were the main parameters and instant gratification remains the core of its business. There’s a statistic which says 30% of purchases on Amazon take less than three minutes to execute – that is astonishing.

The company wants to keep this percentage high, but it also wants to layer on another segment of customer inspiration and discovery. This will generate incremental revenues. In addition, it’s a defensive move, as there are so many other digital buying platforms now, as well as social media like Facebook and Instagram which are getting into commerce in a much bigger way.

Amazon aims to be the place where customers start and end their journey. The starting point – the discovery part – is where the biggest competition is now and Amazon is conscious of the fact that, if it doesn’t offer this customer journey, it will be cut out of the loop which will ultimately reduce sales.

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John Ghiorso INTERVIEW

through all of them is that in some way they use technological innovation as a method to disrupt the existing format and make the customer experience in bricks-and-mortar stores better. All projects are in beta at this point I believe. There’ll be more too, but many won’t get out of the testing stage because they’ve failed.

what they’ve always done – continue to innovate, come up with new products, better quality, etc.

I would also add that, if I were a national brand, I would be much more worried about direct Chinese imports – what I would call white label – than about Amazon knocking my product off. Amazon has a lot of restrictions, proof points and internal hoops to jump through – these Chinese brands don’t have any of that.

OPI: That brings me to counterfeits. How serious is Amazon about blocking these? And I mean real counterfeits as opposed to annoying private label.

JG: It’s serious about counterfeits and has put a lot of resources into it. Because it’s such a massive platform, it’s a difficult thing to control, of course.

Amazon’s strategy with counterfeits has been to create the resources, opportunities and touchpoints for brands to control this themselves on the platform. There are a few initiatives, such as brand registry and transparency which manufacturers should definitely be participating in.

OPI: What would be your advice to companies in industries such as ours which suffer from secular declines?

JG: Well, if you witness your product dying a slow death and you’re looking to reinvent yourself, Amazon is a really good place to do it. And this is because you don’t have to convince a buyer to partner with you on a new product – just put it on Amazon and see what happens in terms of reviews, customer feedback and ROAS. No other retailer – online or physical – can offer the same.

OPI: Talking of bricks and mortar, what do you make of Amazon’s physical store efforts? Is this just a gimmick or a real strategy?

JG: It’s definitely not a gimmick. Physical retail overall is a huge initiative for Amazon and I would be shocked if, in five years’ time, it didn’t have hundreds or thousands of stores. Outside Whole Foods I mean.

Amazon sees omnichannel as completely pivotal to its long-term success. But Jeff Bezos has always said he didn’t want Amazon to get into physical retail if it’s just a me-too offering.

There are many different physical store format iterations being tested currently. The thread

John Ghiorso

Amazon Business will become a $100 billion giant, but it will take 15 years, not five

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ORCA PACIFIC AND WHAT IT DOES...

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OPI: What’s the ultimate aim of a store? Selling top SKUs, showroom, collection point...?

JG: I don’t think there’s ever going to be the ‘ultimate store’ where all the good bits of all the betas are being combined. There’ll be different formats for different purposes, but also a couple of things you will see throughout. One of these will be the customer walk-through, meaning consumers grab what they need and walk out without interacting with anybody, so there’ll be no staff in the forward part of the store.

Another thing I believe will happen is that you’ll have a customer front end, similar to what I’ve just described, but also a space which deals with last mile fulfilment. Eventually, this might be drones taking off and landing. So retail – seamless and effortless – combined with delivery or collection.

Something else I can see happening, perhaps at airports, is the creation of a shop smaller than the smallest convenience store but bigger than a vending machine – kind of a walk-in vending machine. There’s going to be a lot of cool stuff.

Founded in 2008 by CEO John Ghiorso, Orca Pacific’s remit is to help consumer product brands grow their Amazon business. It does so with a team of 50+ former Amazonians and top industry experts who work from within Amazon’s backyard in Seattle in the US. They use a combination of know-how and machine learning software to develop and implement custom Amazon strategies towards sustainable topline growth.

Orca’s philosophy mirrors that of Amazon – to improve the customer journey. As such, its services cover every stage of that journey, from Amazon SEO and advertising management to content optimisation.

In 2020, Orca merged with MightyHive, a global leader in advanced marketing and technology services. The partnership brought it into the fold of S4Capital, a new-age marketing services company dedicated to bridging the gap between media, creative and measurement.

OPI: Finally, but obviously very relevant to our audience, where does Amazon Business fit into the picture?

JG: Good question. I wouldn’t say Amazon Business has plateaued, but it’s not growing as fast as it has been. Amazon had very audacious plans for the B2B side. It grew Amazon Business exponentially to about $20 billion, with clearly some shift from the existing platform but also some incremental gains.

The reason growth is slowing is because Amazon hasn’t really broken into the enterprise segment in a big way. It’s done very well with SMBs – arguably already before Amazon Business came to be – but the company hasn’t been able to truly disrupt the big B2B distributors and suppliers.

They are all about relationships, salesforces, technological integrations and service levels.

Amazon is never going to be a company with 20,000 sales people visiting offices. It will try to find digital ways to replicate that, it’s just taking longer than anticipated.

All that said, I do believe that long-term, Amazon Business will become a $100 billion giant, but it will take 15 years, not five.

OPI: And many in our sector will be very pleased to hear that. Thank you John for these fascinating insights.

ADVERTORIAL

For the love OF PAPER In uncertain times, International Paper’s brand focus remains unwavering, says Commercial Director for European Papers Gerald Demets

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he COVID-19 pandemic has had an immeasurable effect on office paper demand, particularly as a result of remote working and homeschooling regulations implemented across Europe. The most significant impact was certainly at the peak of the first wave, between April and June 2020. During that period, most people didn’t even have a home office setup nor a printer installed at home.

Over time, printing capabilities at home increased which helped demand to recover to some extent. But while that was happening, we also noticed a change in buying behaviour and a greater appetite for A-brands and sustainably produced brands.

In our papers business, we are well positioned to respond to these changes in buying behaviour.

We believe in the future of paper and will continue to invest in our brands. While there is a steady decline, we expect paper demand to remain, but it will come through different consumer purchasing patterns.

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ALL ABOUT HP PAPERS We have two strong cut-size brands in European Papers, both of them with a different positioning, but clearly catering to the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s consumers.

One of them is the HP Papers range, a wide selection of home and office papers purposefully designed to meet the demands of our customers and the requirements of the modern workplace.

This is a well-established A-brand which consumers trust to deliver quality.

HP Papers have been designed and optimised to deliver outstanding print performance on both home and office printers, with a choice of paper that suits every need. They produce

excellent results across six product families and a broad weight range, helping customers deliver affordable colour documents that impress with heavier weights and higher whiteness.

HP Papers also support customers in getting the best printing results, saving them both time and money by reducing ink buildup on printer parts, ink drag and unnecessary reprints. Optimised to be jam-resistant, they give customers reliability and peace of mind.

Demand will remain, but it will come through different consumer purchasing patterns

International Paper’s Gerald Demets

Following the introduction of HP PageWide printers (offering lower costs, faster speeds and environmentally friendly printing), IP has further optimised ColorLok technology to ensure HP Papers lock in colour quickly, keeping pace with the advances in printer technology. This is the only paper range to carry the HP PageWide logo.

HP Papers are also dedicated to improving our environmental footprint. All products are sustainably sourced, and the brand has pledged to globally remove plastic from the ream wrapper packaging by 2025 globally.

Delivering what our customers need in the changing workplace is our number one priority. This is why HP Papers has launched the three-ream Home & Office box. It’s easier to handle, lighter to ship and smaller to store than a standard five-ream box. This makes it the perfect solution for home office or hybrid working.

polyethylene layer – which acts as a moisture barrier – that most of the paper packaging currently has. The new packaging is made from a renewable and recyclable paper-based solution.

The avoidance of the plastic coating also significantly improves the overall recyclability of the packaging, becoming a mono-material that can be recycled together with normal paper waste without extra treatment.

With REY, customers will be able to: • show their commitment to eliminating and reducing plastic • address growing demand for more sustainability and transparency • be part of a powerful brand story • help keep the environment plastic-free, thereby helping to protect wildlife • inspire change.

ADVERTORIAL International Paper

THE CONSCIOUS CHOICE IP’s other core cut-size brand in Europe is REY which comprises a wide selection of papers – including the 34 colours in the tinted Adagio paper range – that provide a complete offering for companies, administrations and schools.

REY has a solid reputation for being a well-established and reliable brand. It was developed with discerning consumers in mind and looks to inspire them to make a conscious choice when they buy a ream of paper. REY also ties in well with the corporate social responsibility policies within organisations, making it the preferred choice for businesses and end users sharing the same values.

REY is a strong, engaging brand with a feel-good identity that people can easily relate to. It’s all about inspiring positive interactions between people, their communities and our planet.

Through community involvement, environmental stewardship and sustainable innovation, we want to inspire people to make conscious choices – with a brand which continually works to improve its ecological footprint at every stage of the paper life cycle and support a circular economy.

The raw materials of our papers are 100% sourced from sustainably managed forestry, to ensure that we provide our customers with an environmentally responsible product. The entire REY paper range sold in Europe has approved, internationally recognised certifications, such as FSC, PEFC and the EU Ecolabel.

But it’s not just about the product itself. REY was the first in the industry to replace the use of transparent plastic foils for its sample packs and moved to a fully recyclable paper envelope. As part of our ambition to eliminate plastic usage wherever possible and initiated during our 2019 rebranding, IP moved the entire REY range of white office paper to paper-based packaging.

For Q4 2021, we’re aiming to go a step further still and introduce 100% plastic-free paper packaging by eliminating even the thin

THE WORLD’S PAPER COMPANY – SYLVAMO

July/August 2021

On 3 December 2020, International Paper announced its plans to spin off its global paper business by the end of Q3 2021, subject to customary conditions and standard approvals

by International Paper.

Operating under the name Sylvamo, the spin-off will become the world’s premier uncoated woodfree (UWF) papers company, with talented teams, substantial scale, strong brands and low-cost assets in Europe, Latin America and North America which will serve key geographies around the world.

As a standalone company, Sylvamo will generate over $3 billion in annual sales, and have seven mills and annual capacity of approximately 3.4 million short tons, with 2.8 million of those being UWF. In Europe, the mills in Saillat, France, and Svetogorsk, Russia, will be part of Sylvamo.

Among the company’s key brands in the region will be REY, HP, Jetstar, PRO-DESIGN and Preprint-E/S, all made at the Saillat mill, as well as Ballet and Svetocopy, which are produced in Svetogorsk.

Sylvamo combines the Latin words for forest, ‘silva’, and love, ‘amo’. This combination is translated as a ‘love of forests’. Indeed, the name Sylvamo speaks to the company’s connection to trees and highlights its role as a steward of sustainable forests.

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CATEGORY UPDATE

On the MOVE

With the prospect of a return to the workplace, what’s in store for the office furniture sector?

OPI’s Michelle Sturman finds out...

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t’s an intriguing undertaking to look back on what was written in OPI a year ago.

Reading the Category Update for furniture in 2020 (see OPI July/August 2020, page 40) reveals that much of what was predicted then is now coming to bear. For example, hygiene protocols and social distancing prompting a change in office design, an increased focus on ergonomics and the rise of the home office.

However, many aspects were unforeseen. How could any of us have known back then – a mere few months into the COVID-19 pandemic – that we would still be battling the virus despite vaccination programmes? Additionally, in many areas of the world, the majority of office employees are continuing to work from home (WFH).

Interestingly, the term ‘hybrid working’ didn’t appear once in last year’s feature, whereas now it’s virtually the default phrase embedded in our office-related lexicon. It’s currently a defining factor in shaping the office furniture sector for the foreseeable future, but it’s not the only one.

A more (hopefully) short-lived determinant likely guiding the industry for the rest of the year is the ongoing supply chain disruption. It is causing issues from shipping product across the globe to transporting goods countrywide, even down to the last mile.

In the US, VP of Furniture Sales for S.P. Richards (SPR), Eddie Baird, sums up the problem: “It is a perfect storm of shortage of raw materials, containers and domestic truck drivers, railcar congestion and increasing fuel prices.

“For our private brand Lorell, we started moving pieces of production back to the US years ago

as we felt a strong mix of domestic and import suppliers was needed. For the items that are still sourced from overseas, it has been challenging and is very fluid today.”

Baird notes that an aggressive inventory move a few months ago based on the expected return in demand is paying off, and customers will continue to see the benefit in the short term. “However, we do have challenges with high-velocity items as customers are coming to us because their traditional sources do not have product. This places an additional strain on our inventory because it is unforeseen demand. It is a good problem to have – sometimes!”

BREXIT BREAKDOWN It is the same in the UK, according to VOW Wholesale Furniture Category Director Vanessa Warne. “At the start of the pandemic, demand forecasting was difficult as there was no real precedent for it. Fortunately, wherever there were stock shortages, we’ve been able to offer alternative items. More recently, the challenges have been centred around the lack of container space, rising shipping costs and port closures.”

The UK has suffered extra headaches from the invasion of red tape due to Brexit coupled with the rise in coronavirus infections at the start of 2021.

Richard Costin, CEO of UK-based office furniture manufacturer Bisley, explains: “In January, at the start of Brexit and the height of COVID, we initially had 50% of drivers not wishing to take our shipments into Europe because of the new paperwork and testing at the French border. This was a challenge, but it is fortunately now back to normal, albeit with an increase in cost due to the required paperwork.”

Brexit-related expenditure has also risen for UK manufacturer Sit-Stand.Com as stock required for the German market, for example, must now be stored locally. It also has to supply Ireland from its warehouse located in Germany if necessary. “We cannot drop-ship from the UK anymore, so that’s an expense; it’s also reduced customer choice,” says Managing Director Gavin Bradley.

UK-based firms are not the only ones affected.

Dutch ergonomic accessories manufacturer and designer Bakker Elkhuizen has experienced some difficulties transporting products to its UK customers, predominantly in Q1 of 2021. The issue has not come from the manufacturing and supply of items, but dealing with UK customs and capacity in the UK palletised delivery network, says UK Country Manager Steven Howe, adding: “Getting stock the last mile has probably been the most difficult part.”

RETURN TO GROWTH Supply chain woes aside, growth is returning to the sector. Says Baird: “In Q3 2020, we saw growth in the furniture category through our e-commerce customers due to the WFH segment. At the same time, companies were pushing out their return to work plans as COVID continued to spike.

“Q4 was the typical seasonal decline and although e-commerce once more was strong,

Many companies are struggling to envision what the office is going to look like A HYBRID MODEL Part of this buoyancy can be attributed to a swift about-turn by manufacturers and dealers in terms of supplying customers with WFH furniture and accessories as workplace demand shrivelled.

“We’ve experienced a huge surge in sales of our office chairs to homes as well as our dedicated home workstations for use in open or limited spaces,” notes Simon Howorth, Marketing and Sales Director for UK-based DAMS. “Ongoing, we expect many businesses to adopt a hybrid work model, and anticipate sales for homeworking and office furniture to continue.”

SPR was already primed to take advantage of the WFH opportunity when it ramped up in 2020, having added a SOHO solution years ago. Baird

believes WFH sales will continue to grow as more firms propose a flexible work schedule. “The hybrid work model is here to stay,” he adds.

For VOW, on the other hand, WFH represented an emerging market which made it necessary to respond differently as regards the type of items offered. According to Warne, new SOHO products were sourced and brought quickly to market.

“These have now become part of our wider offering and featured in this year’s catalogue. We expect sales of home office furniture to persist, though perhaps not at the levels witnessed in 2020.”

Bakker Elkhuizen has equally seen huge demand for its mobile products such as laptop stands, separate compact keyboards and vertical mice for employees who required them in a home set-up. But, says Howe, even as offices begin to reopen, there’s still some hesitancy over the final decision on hybrid working for many companies.

“I think a number of employers that have decided on flexible working protocols are those likely at the end of their office leases; others haven’t figured out their policies yet. They’re making preparations, but this could just bump along over the next few months, maybe longer.

“Many firms are struggling to envision what the office is going to look like as it depends on how many employees occupy the same space at any one time, the social distancing etiquette required, whether an HVAC system is necessary, etc.”

All this is necessitating a redesign of the workspace and the furniture utilised within it. But what will the post-COVID office look like?

July/August 2021

AN ERGONOMIC FUTURE It will incorporate several pre-coronavirus trends such as health and well-being, including hygiene and ergonomics, collaborative spaces and better awareness of hybrid working, all of which have been turbo-charged during the pandemic.

Baird says ergonomics still influence the seating and active office segments of the business and continue to grow. For Jim Foster, General Manager, Merchandising and National Accounts at HON, the demand for sit-stand will only accelerate. “Many people started this pandemic sitting at their kitchen table and are now more conscious of the need for ergonomic products.

“They may not previously have connected the reason they were able to work at the office for eight hours a day without backache, but now are in pain after a few hours at home due to an uncomfortable set-up. I think this will translate back into the office as employees insist on their well-being in the workplace as well as a better home solution too.”

Remmers agrees with Foster’s assessment. He believes many companies will try to improve the working environment – at home or in the office – specifically around ergonomic work solutions due to the associated days off related to back pain which increased during 2020. Likewise, Warne says sales are growing in this category, adding that most employers realise investing in a decent chair for the workforce can save money in the long run through a reduction in sick days and lost working hours.

CATEGORY UPDATE Furniture

dealers and their customers were still confined to home offices.

“2021 has started positively and continues to improve as the independent dealer business is returning, as are projects. We are currently outpacing our forecast and expect the year to finish strong.”

Warne echoes this sentiment, adding that VOW is fortunate to have a wide-ranging customer base that has been incredibly resilient throughout the pandemic. “Some have been able to maximise the opportunity of switching from face-to-face to online, and many customers have had really good furniture sales growth in the past 12 months. We fully expect this to continue as we enter the second half of 2021.”

Meanwhile, German office furniture manufacturer Wilkhahn has been helping its dealers to establish online shops and notes an increase in its own e-commerce business.

Ultimately, according to Wilkhahn’s Director of International Communications and Public Relations Burkhard Remmers, the company planned for moderate growth this year, and it appears it’s on course to attain those goals.

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Furniture CATEGORY UPDATE www.opi.net 42

Both Howorth and Bradley refer to the inactivity of homeworkers during the pandemic.

According to Howorth, ergonomic office furniture is now being thought of as a long-term health investment. “The well-being of employees in the workplace is becoming more vital, and office furniture can play a huge part in helping to keep them happy and healthy.”

Bradley believes we are certainly more aware of the ‘sitting’ problem and the benefits of standing desks, and predicts a snowball growth effect with this knowledge. However, he says many people continue to search for office chairs that enable them to sit comfortably for longer, instead of looking for more ‘active’ seating solutions which encourage them to move more often and reduce prolonged sitting. “This is counterintuitive from our perspective, but it is a message not yet being delivered,” he notes.

Howe agrees, and adds that while seating represents a critical element of any ergonomic solution, it should be seen as just one part of the package. “People may have a great chair, but it has to be used in partnership with other ergonomic solutions including desks and accessories, which are equally as important.”

To this end, Bakker Elkhuizen has just launched its enhanced WORK & MOVE software which can record personal workstation settings as well as provide tips and reminders for healthier working and to encourage movement.

A COMFORTABLE SPACE With a mass hybrid working model expected, signs point towards the office functioning primarily as a social and collaborative area. “I think you’ll see an increased resimercial aspect to the office to mimic the home space, as it’s more about having comfortable areas to work and impromptu spots where employees can move around. There will also be different privacy zones so people can have a videoconferencing call where they won’t disrupt anybody else at the same time,” states Foster.

“We’ve experimented with removing the traditional long conference table and replacing it with just individual chairs to enable social distancing and the flexibility to move around to facilitate requirements within that space. We’ve also looked at increasing the number of monitors to enable a more two-way conversation with those accessing a meeting remotely,” he adds.

Bisley’s Costin has identified a major focus by employers to provide staff with personal storage such as lockers with digital technology locks to eliminate any shared space. The company has recently launched collaborative and private meeting booths with personal storage.

“I believe social distancing will continue for some time, especially as staff must feel their employer prioritises their safety and well-being.

Having pods and booths where people can collaborate, meet or focus on their individual work will remain a priority,” he notes.

Many offices will be different post-pandemic, that’s for sure. DAMS’ Howorth sums it up succinctly: “The most effective office spaces

are characterised by division into distinct zones, supporting employees as they perform particular tasks. A modern layout encompassing private workspaces and collaborative areas, alongside breakout zones, can support how people work through freedom of choice, encouraging organic interaction and promoting movement.

“Moveable elements such as modular furniture or space dividers and screens will be critical.

Additionally, an office should be adjusted to employees, not employers.”

Ergonomic office furniture is now being thought of as a long-term health investment THE SUSTAINABLE OFFICE The issue of sustainability has been amplified by the pandemic and vendors and wholesalers agree it is integral to the design of the ‘new’ workplace.

The increasing importance of this topic has led VOW Interiors to create a project team to look at the office furniture range in particular.

Explains Warne: “It’s not only about looking at the products, logistics, packaging, etc, but also at the services we provide and the impact on the environment. It is a full 360° review of where we are versus our vision.”

According to Howorth, environmental concerns are on the client agenda more than ever, and the company works “exceptionally hard to ensure it is doing the right things, in the right way”.

Foster concurs, saying the issue is being driven by customer expectations. “A lot of social changes have happened within the past 12 months or so, and a focus on the environment is one of those areas. I think there will be a lot more to come from the office furniture sector moving forward; it will definitely remain a priority for HON.” Bisley’s Costin believes sustainability is a primary concern and companies need to move quickly to ensure they’re doing all they can or risk losing business. “For us, it’s both making certain that our facilities are as sustainable as possible as well as making sure our products last and are sustainably sourced.”

For an interesting customer viewpoint on the creation of and the required products for a post-pandemic office, listen to the OPI Talk podcast Planning for a hybrid working environment – visit opi.net/podcast

ADVERTORIAL

On a MISSION

Ninestar continues on its journey to becoming an industry leader and a truly international brand

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aving been founded in June 2000, Zhuhai, China-based Ninestar Group has fast accelerated the business through strategic acquisitions as well as organic growth. In 2014, it was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. It is now a world-leading innovator and solutions provider in the printer and imaging supplies markets.

OPI talks to Eric Zhang, General Manager of the Printing Consumables business unit, about the company, its setup, philosophy and future plans.

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OPI: Please tell me a bit about Ninestar as it stands today.

Eric Zhang: Sure. Ninestar has over 18,000 employees, operates in 60 countries and provides a high-quality, environmentally-friendly and cost-saving user experience for some 200 million customers. Our annual revenues are now in the region of $3 billion.

OPI: Ninestar has made a number of acquisitions in recent years. Can you elaborate on these and what they’ve done to enhance the company as a whole?

EZ: In 2015, Ninestar bought Static Control, the founder of the remanufacturing industry’s quality standard. This print aftermarket supplier gave us access to cutting-edge remanufacturing technology, knowledge and experience.

The 2016 acquisition of Lexmark International was another big milestone. Lexmark is one of the best printer makers in the world, incorporating outstanding components and printer technology.

These two purchases have improved Ninestar’s technologies in the area of both remanufacturing and printers, which has been very helpful in terms of developing and producing high-quality products.

Eric Zhang, General Manager, Printing Consumables, Ninestar

OPI: Innovation is vital I assume?

EZ: It’s in our DNA. Ninestar invests more than 6% of its annual revenues in R&D. With more than 3,000 engineers worldwide, it leads the aftermarket with 4,661 granted and 934 pending patents as of the end of December 2020.

This enormous portfolio includes patents in printer, ink, chip, and ink and toner cartridge technology as well as 3D printing.

OPI: Many Western resellers are cautious about dealing with the aftermarket industry,

Right: architect impression of the new Ninestar employee residential project Below: staff well-being with weekly yoga lessons at Ninestar.

All in all, Ninestar’s mission is to become the eminent high-tech service provider of the printing industry OPI: Talking of SmartMate: I believe this brand is being launched in Europe. What can the market expect from the product?

EZ: SmartMate is a premium Ninestar brand, specifically tailored for the B2B channel. In Europe, SmartMate offers an eco-friendly and reliable range of printing consumables due to its recycling credentials and industry-leading remanufacturing techniques.

Our customers in North America trust SmartMate – the products speak for themselves.

OPI: Where does corporate social responsibility (CSR) factor in Ninestar’s overall philosophy?

EZ: It’s incredibly important and revolves around several aspects. Ninestar has a long history of remanufacturing. This business idea itself is the driver of our sustainability efforts.

But being a responsible business means taking further steps in terms of reducing our

Ninestar’s SmartMate – products trusted by the company’s customers in North America.

For more information on SmartMate, please email contact@ smartmatetech.com

ADVERTORIAL Ninestar Group

particularly suppliers from Asia, because of perceived issues around product performance, reliability and patent infringement. Why should the reseller community trust Ninestar?

EZ: As an exclusive aftermarket player, an international hardware manufacturer as well as a leading third-party supplies vendor, our background and the in-depth OEM expertise we have all help us understand international regulations and the needs of worldwide customers.

We know they seek high-quality, reliable, intellectual property-safe, and environmentallycompliant products.

This is why Ninestar invests so hugely in world-class raw materials, R&D and production. At present, we have 37 automated production lines: 32 for inkjet and ink products, the other five for toner cartridges.

We were the first aftermarket company willing to make considerable investments in automation in order to provide more cost-effective, consistent quality cartridges.

carbon footprint. We offer a broad closed loop, remanufactured range of alternatives to customers, for instance, coupled with the Going Green return-your-cartridge recycling services for consumers and our internal waste treatment plant.

In a different CSR initiative, back in 2007, Ninestar’s founder Jackson Wang signed a collaboration with the Chinese Red Cross – Ninestar Angel of Love – to establish a special fund for helping poor children suffering from leukaemia, with a significant annual contribution being donated to the fund every year.

At the same time, Ninestar is ramping up its training support to break the cycle of poverty in rural villages. By teaching skills and commencing enterprise projects, parents can afford to educate their children and as such hope is delivered to many communities.

Our workforce is also very important to us.

Extra, high standard and comfortable apartment accommodation will be provided for staff in China close to their workplaces to reduce travel time and expenses. In addition, more women are being targetted for leadership roles after identifying, training and empowering employees.

I talked about innovation being in our DNA. It’s the same with CSR. Positive involvement in that regard is vital and both the founders of the group as well as its management go way beyond the typical legal necessities to ensure an outstanding, happy and healthy corporate culture.

July/August 2021

OPI: Ninestar has grown rapidly to become an innovator as both a hardware manufacturer and a supplies vendor. What do you see as the next chapter in your remarkable story?

EZ: As a hardware manufacturer, our goal is to become a global top three supplier. We’re currently constructing a high-tech printer manufacturing base covering an area of 900,000 sq m (9 million sq ft) with a total investment of RMB9 billion ($1.39 billion). At full capacity, we will be able to achieve an annual production of four million printer units.

As a supplies vendor, our aim is to build a globally renowned and trusted brand. All in all, Ninestar’s mission is to become the eminent high-tech service provider of the printing industry.

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FOCUS

Some priorities have undoubtedly changed in this COVID-challenged year. But City of Hope’s focus has remained razor-sharp, all in the name of sustaining hope for cancer and diabetes sufferers around the world

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ith so many in-person events cancelled and even City of Hope’s (COH) National Business Products Industry (NBPI) tour going virtual in 2021, it’s been a challenging time for all involved. However, support by our industry has been unwavering, as this year’s City of Hope Spirit of Life honouree Greg Gibson, VP & General Manager of International Paper (IP), told OPI’s Heike Dieckmann in a May podcast conversation (visit opi.net/podcast).

Below are extracts from that interview, conducted jointly with COH’s Senior Director of Corporate Philanthropy Matt Dodd, plus an update on the aforementioned virtual tour in mid-June.

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OPI: Let’s begin with you, Greg. How did you get involved with City of Hope?

Greg Gibson: About 30 years ago I was introduced to COH through Irwin Helford when calling on Viking Office Products. Irwin was telling me how the NBPI was supporting this medical research facility and invited me to go on a City of Hope tour the following year.

From the moment of walking onto the campus, I knew it was a special place and something I wanted my company International Paper to support. We’ve been strong advocates ever since.

I’m also very invested from a personal perspective. My father passed away as a result of cancer when I was three years old. In addition, I’ve long been involved in Type 1 diabetes charity JDRF and what COH is doing in that area too.

Those two causes are very dear to me, making why I want to stand behind COH in a significant way even more impactful.

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OPI: Your campaign is called Sustain Hope.

What’s the specific relevance of that tagline?

GG: We got a group of IP people together and asked ourselves what type of theme that’s meaningful to us would also be important to this year’s campaign and City of Hope overall? We came up with Sustain Hope for two main reasons.

One is that our business revolves around sustainability, whether it be the paper, packaging or pulp we make, or the long-term approach we take around a strong and vibrant forest. When you relate the concept of sustainability to City of Hope, there’s a considerable parallel.

The NBPI has been supporting COH for many years. The last couple of fundraising campaigns – both Stephanie Dismore’s and mine – have been dominated by COVID. It would have been easy to throw in the towel in these circumstances and pass on the fundraising effort for the time being.

But that’s not what happened and this is the second reason. What this industry did instead is persevere with the campaigns in difficult times to make a meaningful difference. As such, the Sustain Hope theme seemed appropriate and fitting, both from a business as well as a philanthropic point of view.

OPI: You mention coronavirus and there’s obviously no escaping from it. Matt, these must have been an intense 15 months or so for you.

Matt Dodd: Definitely. City of Hope – like everyone everywhere – had to turn on a dime and deal with something completely unexpected. It did that incredibly well in my view, in terms of the magnitude of what was required.

UPCOMING EVENTS 7-10 September 2021 City of Hope Industry Golf Challenge – Pebble Beach, California 6 October 2021 NBPI Memorial Golf Classic (presented

by Essendant & Staples) – Harborside Int’l Golf Course, Chicago, Illinois Greg Gibson

7 October 2021 NBPI Spirit of Life Gala honouring Greg Gibson of International Paper – Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois 17-18 October Bob Parker Memorial Golf Classic (hosted by Staples) – Kiawah Island, South Carolina

Matt Dodd

8 November Spinitar’s Annual Golf for Hope – Yorba Linda Country Club, Orange County, California

OPI: In terms of the NBPI’s involvement, you had to cancel an awful lot of physical events.

What has that meant for fundraising?

MD: It’s been very sad as those events are a really important part of the NBPI’s involvement with COH. The good news is, however, that the fundraising is incredibly diverse. Unlike some of our other industry verticals which are mostly focused on events, NBPI monies are raised in many different ways. Out of the $15 million we typically generate each year, 33% come through events.

The other two thirds are via a variety of non-event related activities, led by our direct mail corporate matching gift programme. The response to those mailings from supporters and people who care about cancer and diabetes is astounding – we raise roughly $8 million from this programme every year.

We also have quite a few companies that engage in promotional activities through product sales, meaning a percentage of the sale of a certain item goes to COH. Then we have employee giving activities – car washes, bake sales and the like – and national company sponsorships for initiatives including the Walk for Hope or our student Summer Science Academy.

Last but not least, we have our personal giving programme that’s really important and involves anything from a contribution of $25 up to $25,000 per individual.

All these activities combined make up about $10 million. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for some remaining big events later this summer (see ‘Upcoming Events’) and more fundraising then.

CITY OF HOPE GOES VIRTUAL Customarily organised in February along with the Hall of Fame Dinner, this year’s City of Hope (COH) tour went virtual. Held on 15 June, it brought together about 400 COH supporters – including ten Spirit of Life honourees – in a 90-minute tour de force highlighting the medical research centre’s achievements and current focus points.

A short opening address by COH CEO Robert Stone was followed by a message from the 2021 Spirit of Life honouree Greg Gibson. Assistant Professor Saul Priceman, Dr John Zaia and Professor Debbie Thurmond then gave updates on the centre’s work in the areas of immunotherapy, virus therapy and diabetes, while 17-year-old patient speaker Anya Shah candidly talked about her cancer experience and City of Hope’s role in her recovery.

As Chief Philanthropy Officer Kristin Bertell was quick to point out, COH’s work hasn’t stopped because of the pandemic, with fundraising being more important than ever. The next part of the ‘tour’ dealt very specifically with the personal giving aspect of that fundraising, spearheaded by now retired Essendant executive Joe Templet and OPI CEO Steve Hilleard. Having set a goal to raise $3 million over a five-year period through personal giving for the NBPI’s chemical GMP synthesis facility, Hilleard urged supporters to go that extra mile to secure the remaining $50,000 in the coming weeks and months.

The Virtual Tour culminated in the announcement of the 2021 class of the NBPI City of Hope Hall of Fame. Introduced by Council Chair Scott Light, he referred to all Hall of Famers as the “true lifeblood of the NBPI’s council”. The two individuals inducted this year were Vonnie Provinzino from 3M – incidentally the first woman in the Hall of Fame – and Greg Welchans from Distribution Management/Supplies Network.

Wrapping up, Gibson’s upbeat message was that, after a challenging and utterly unprecedented year, his Sustain Hope campaign will hopefully conclude with a number of events that will not only bring supporters together again in person, but also raise more vital funds in the process.

FOCUS

July/August 2021

OPI: What is the money being spent on?

MD: First and foremost, it’s for research that results in new therapies, treatments and ultimately cures.

Let me explain this in a bit more detail.

The large pharmaceutical companies and government agencies are not really in the risk business anymore. Before they commit and work with an organisation, they want to know proof of concept, efficacy, will it work, is it going to make some money.

They have a great idea, want to start testing, but they can’t get the funding, the materials, and so on. As regards COH, the NBPI monies are being used as seed money for the latest ideas, recruiting new researchers, etc, so we can move that continuum along and evolve from a great concept to actually testing, proof of efficacy and the like to keep the process going. The focus is on the next generation of therapies.

Immunotherapy is something we have led the way in with clinical trials for many years. It’s

basically reprogramming our immune systems that fight and kill cancer, but making them stronger and smarter.

It’s also about precision medicine. Years ago, it was chemotherapy and radiation which killed the good cells along with the bad. As technology has evolved and our knowledge has fast-tracked, we can be less aggressive in treatments, and more precise and personal. Diagnosis is not all that matters; why you have the disease is important too, because it will dictate the best therapy.

Every day we discover and learn more – about cancer, diabetes and virus therapy. But all that knowledge requires an enormous amount of research which, in turn, relies on incredible funding. The monies raised by the NBPI are simply invaluable to City of Hope.

FOCUS City of Hope

Implementing new protocols and procedures to maintain ultimate safety for the patients, nurses and healthcare providers at COH was a massive undertaking and transformation. We had to cater for all eventualities and it worked out as well as you could possibly expect.

Through it all, we of course also needed to continue to plough ahead with research efforts and the treatment of patients. And that’s what we did.

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EVENT

LONG AWAITED,

don’t miss

T

INDUSTRY WEEK ’21 POWERED BY ISG PREVIEW

www.opi.net

his November will finally see one of the most hotly anticipated events on the US industry calendar take place in Orlando, Florida. Industry Week ’21, powered by ISG, has – thanks to COVID-19 – not had the easiest of births, with multiple delays and venue changes. But now it promises a jam-packed programme of meetings, seminars, social events and a trade show.

What makes Industry Week special is that, while events by Independent Suppliers Group (ISG) provide the backbone to the agenda, there will also be meetings and presentations led by other main players in the US market. These include both of the major wholesalers, S.P. Richards (SPR) and Essendant, the Business Solutions Association (BSA) and – of course – the North American Office Products Awards (NAOPA), organised

by OPI in association with ISG (for more on the NAOPA, see Event, page 50).

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PACKED SCHEDULE The early part of the week sees one-on-one meetings for ISG’s Pinnacle members, with general registration opening on Tuesday, 9 November, and a Giveback Event that benefits local children’s hospitals and youth organisations, sponsored by ISG’s NEXT Young Leaders Group.

Wednesday features a host of activities, comprising panel discussions, seminars, an ISG Members Meeting and the General Session, which will include the 2021 NAOPA presentations.

In the evening, SPR will host its General Session, followed by a Welcome Reception that incorporates a number of fun fundraising events for City of Hope.

The next day, 11 November, begins with sessions led by Essendant and the BSA – to be run concurrently – followed by the conclusion of the seminar programme. In the afternoon, it’s time for the trade show where dealers can benefit from

several money-saving Show Specials, with one lucky dealer also in with a chance to win $5,000 by taking part in the Tickets to Treasure promotion.

Raffle tickets are awarded by trade show exhibitors for meaningful conversations had at their booths.

This groundbreaking event will allow ISG members and vendors to collaborate at an even higher level

These raffle tickets then go into a prize draw to take place on Thursday evening at the gala closing event – A Night in Havana - Esta’ Volao! – at the Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum Bar. The party will feature fantastic Cuban food created by resident chef Guillermo Pernot, a variety of rum-based cocktails (including the ever-popular Mojito), upbeat Latin music and even a cigar rolling demonstration!

The week wraps up on Friday, 12 November, with shuttle buses supplied to return attendees to Orlando International Airport.

“We’re very excited about Industry Week,” says ISG Chairman Jordan Kudler. “I believe this groundbreaking event will allow ISG members and vendors to collaborate at an even higher level. Members are anxious to spend quality time together and engage in some good old-fashioned networking. While videoconferencing served as an adequate bridge for communicating, there is nothing like some live face-to-face time.”

ISG CEO Mike Gentile adds: “Dealers, review the jam-packed Industry Week agenda we have for you and get yourself and your staff registered early to receive your $500 bonus incentive. Suppliers, be sure to register quickly to reserve your booth space and marketing opportunities.”

Industry Week ’21 powered by ISG takes place from 7-12 November 2021 at the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Florida. To attend – and take advantage of the early registration discounts on offer – visit www. industryweek21. cventevents.com

EVENT

NORTH AMERICAN OFFICE PRODUCTS

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

A

NORTH AMERICAN OFFICE PRODUCTS AWARDS 2021 PREVIEW

www.opi.net

fter a year’s hiatus, the North American Office Products Awards (NAOPA) are back with a bang. The 2021 awards feature more categories and a new host event, while the individual dealer awards have been expanded to include anyone contributing to the independent dealer channel, be that as a supplier or service provider.

Now in their eleventh year, the NAOPA are organised by OPI in association with Independent Suppliers Group (ISG). The awards will be presented live as part of Industry Week ’21, powered by ISG, from 7-12 November in Orlando, Florida.

The past year or so has been hugely challenging for the business supplies industry due to the coronavirus pandemic and all it has entailed.

However, many manufacturers and dealers have found ways to grow and thrive, whether through the launch and sales of new products – many related to dealing with COVID-19 – or by adapting to cope with the extraordinary business environment in which they found themselves.

50

NEW CATEGORIES Several tweaks have been made to the product-related awards this year, including the introduction of infection control and furniture & design, both of which reflect how the pandemic has modified existing categories. In total, there are four Best Product awards.

OPI Director and NAOPA organiser Janet Bell says: “We are expecting some great entries to emerge in the furniture & design category due to the homeworking phenomenon and alterations to the workplace post-COVID. “The addition of infection control this year is a no brainer. We’ve deliberately kept this broad as there are so many ways in which this category can be interpreted. We’re certainly anticipating some interesting contenders.”

The coveted Innovation of the Year covers any category, but products must have been launched within the past two years. The judging panel – a broad range of dealers, dealer group figureheads

and wholesaler executives – is looking forward to a high number of entries and exciting new solutions.

The culmination of all the product categories is one of the main highlights of the NAOPA – the always popular, interactive People’s Choice award. The shortlist is chosen by the judges from the top-scoring products, and then opened to voting by OPI readers in the US and Industry Week delegates. Voting takes place online via opi.net.

The addition of infection control this year is a no brainer... we’re certainly anticipating some interesting contenders At every NAOPA, the spotlight is shone on personalities who make an outstanding contribution to their company, community and the wider business supplies industry. The three categories – Young Executive of the Year, Professional of the Year and Industry Achievement – are designed to acknowledge and reward individuals at different stages in their career.

The individual awards and People’s Choice will be revealed at Industry Week in November, while the product shortlists will be announced at the end of August with a full preview of the selected products in the September/October issue of OPI. For more information on this year’s NAOPA, visit opi.net/naopa2021

AWARD CATEGORIES Nine awards will be presented at NAOPA 2021: • Best Product – Core Business Products • Best Product – Furniture & Design • Best Product – Facilities, Breakroom, Safety & Infection Control • Best Product – Technology • Innovation of the Year • People’s Choice • Young Executive of the Year • Professional of the Year • Industry Achievement

Listen to OPI Talk with Janet Bell and Andy Braithwaite for more NAOPA insights – visit opi.net/podcast

5 MINUTES WITH...

Daniel Kelly

CAREER Q&A

What’s your life philosophy?

Do the simple things right and always be the hardest worker in the room.

Describe yourself in one sentence.

An honest, affable, positive Aussie guy who is laid back but loves winning.

What makes you happy?

My family and helping those in need.

What do you do in your spare time?

Spending time with my wife and girls is number one, but I love a game of golf and a quiet fish.

Best compliment you’ve ever received?

On his retirement from the Australian office products industry, Brad Starr, founder and inaugural Office Choice Director and member, said he was happy to know the Office Choice board was being led by the best Chairman the group has seen in its existence.

Favourite books?

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight or Open by Andre Agassi.

Best way to spend the weekend?

A BBQ, a few beers with family and friends, and golf.

Early bird or night owl?

Night owl.

Where would you most like to travel and why?

To be able to take my wife Nicole to Lapland and sleep under the Northern Lights would be the ultimate for me.

Favourite time of the year?

Nothing beats an Australian summer.

www.opi.net

What’s your guilty pleasure?

I’m a bit of a beer snob, so probably craft beer.

Independent breweries only though. Got to support the locals.

52

Daniel Kelly, Stuart and Dun n Office Choice, and Office Choice

Who is your biggest inspiration?

Dwayne Johnson. Not for his wrestling ability, but I love his humble nature and his passion to always be a better version of himself, both professionally and as a family man.

What is on your bucket list?

I’ve been fortunate enough to tick a few things off my list already. What’s still on there though – among other things – include an African safari, trek the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, cage-dive with a great white shark and achieve a single digit handicap in golf.

What song always puts you in a good mood?

Don’t stop believin’ by Journey.

What skill would you like to master?

Definitely putting.

What subject should be taught in schools, but isn’t?

How to deal with and handle defeat. Kids don’t know how to lose these days.

Describe your current job.

I wear many hats, but the three standouts would be: Chairman of Office Choice whereby I lead the board of directors to set the strategic direction of Australia’s greatest buying group; owner – with my brother Benn – of Stuart and Dunn Office Choice as well as Newcastle Computer Wizards; and, best of all, father to my two gorgeous daughters.

If you weren’t doing your present job, what would you like to be doing?

Professional golfer.

Best moment in your career?

Earning the honoured role of Office Choice Chairman.

Your best piece of advice to someone who has just joined the OP industry?

Be diverse, be open-minded. When you think you know everything, you’re not even halfway there.

If you could change just one thing about the industry, what would it be?

I’d stop the race to the bottom. Our industry baffles me. During our peak seasons, we make products cheaper. Supply and demand should mean we make more money, not less, surely.

What is the best way to stay motivated and complete goals?

Always have a glass half-full mentality.

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FINAL WORD

VITAL:THE user

EXPERIENCE

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54

roadly speaking, I think independent dealers have coped with what have been an incredible 15 months or so really well – certainly better than many anticipated. They encountered many challenges along the way, of course.

From a technology standpoint, I would highlight three. The first is to provide the kind of experience customers expect. Many dealers still have a B2B mentality when it comes to online ordering. True, things like purchasing approvals and contract pricing will never go away in this channel, but independents need to think about the user experience from a consumer perspective. It needs to be easy, seamless and merchandised for every customer.

The second is creating an open web store that allows guest orders and pricing. How is your software provider handling this? The particular difficulty is to set up your guest user contract pricing competitively, while at the same time not jeopardising current contract customers.

The third challenge is featuring products on your website catalogue which are not from the wholesalers and adding new catalogues from various manufacturers. Dealers have become very creative in terms of sourcing safe workplace items during the pandemic, but there are still many issues with obtaining good product content, and quickly and efficiently adding items to their online product portfolio.

MARKETING PIVOTS As much as we can, we try to help in our areas of expertise. We focus on marketing strategies – constantly, often multiple times a day for every dealer. From products to delivery, pricing and more, everything we create is based on what dealers have access to, what stage in closing or opening their region is (or was) in and shifting their contracted strategies to new ones.

For example, we temporarily shifted clients that had been engaging in successful SEO strategies before the pandemic to social media and email marketing campaigns so we could follow their customers and where they were engaging online.

Some dealers did not have a strong organic search presence or website, and they struggled to catch up. For these, we shifted from, say, social media and basic website maintenance to more intense, evergreen marketing strategies.

There is still plenty to be done. We need better personalised merchandising options to enhance the onsite buying experience. While product content has improved greatly, many manufacturers need to step up their content game and software providers need to adapt their design to better handle it.

Special Issue

TECHNOLOGY

SOLUTIONS

THE ‘NEW’ BUYER One of my perennial bugbears is a resistance to the fact that buyer personas have changed, in our industry as much as anywhere else. ‘Old buyers’ were price driven and bought product one cent cheaper from one company compared to another; they wasted time ordering from multiple vendors and spent even more hours researching them – no matter how much dealers tried to drill home soft costs and the benefits of a single-source supplier.

Buyers today want great access and ease of use; they want to be educated along the way and have options at their fingertips. Importantly also, they want to establish trust with their supplier. They seek authority and expertise from their business products partner, and prefer one order, not many from multiple suppliers. And they are certainly less price orientated.

Jennifer Rae Stine, President, Fortune Web Marketing

Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL Buyers today want great access and ease of use; they want to be educated along the way and have options at their fingertips

GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES Some of the biggest areas of growth right now – and certainly something we at Fortune Web Marketing are working on – are: • Social media marketing: if your business is not utilising social to increase brand awareness and your digital footprint, you are missing out on a tremendous opportunity. Whether you like it or not (or indeed believe it), the social channels are where your customers are, personally and professionally.

• Merchandising and improving the user experience on e-commerce platforms: it’s important that the software providers can facilitate this.

• True inbound strategies: creating content that appeals to buyers during the various stages of their journeys; and capitalising on the EAT principle, ie expertise, authority and trust.

• SEO: this should be at the very heart of any strong digital marketing strategy. Without SEO, the chances of growing your commercial business online are slim for a dealer. It’s comparable to building a house upon a foundation with cracks.

• Video production and marketing.

NEXT ISSUE Special 30th anniversary issue l Big Interview: Mike Gentile, Independent Suppliers Group l The rise and fall of the global big boxes l Defining moments & biggest influences l State of the industry around the globe l The next generation

30 Celebrating

thirty years