How to Face the Office Products Headwinds
It has been predicted for decades that the office products industry will eventually be affected by a paperless society. For many leaders in the office products space they doubted or ignored the threat. I did not ignore the signs. How many copy paper mills have been shut down or converted to towel and tissue…think about that.
Technology and digitization have impacted products that revolve around paper. Think about it, how often do you use a stapler, file folder or a file cabinet? Now you have digital platforms such as Evernote, Dropbox, Skype, etc. etc. The print industry is almost dead altogether. With digital media printed catalogs, marketing brochures, even newspapers are outdated.
At CPI One Point we recognized this early and jumped out ahead and diversified our product offering. While office product dealers were being affected by companies like Amazon and constant acquisitions we decided to invest and expand our product offering into MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) supplies, safety PPE (Personal Protection Equipment), Facility, Food Service, Packaging and Shipping products.
We invested millions in automating our regional distribution facility and supply chain to face the inevitable decline in general office products. Sure, it was an investment but what was the other choice, “die on the vine”? We curated over 7,000 products in these categories and developed manufacture relationships to prepare.
Next, we capitalized on our 5,000+ active customers and promoted these new categories and grew our sales while developing deeper relationships with a broader product offering. Our customers appreciated the move we made. This allowed us to pursue new opportunities with business development strategies in verticals that we had never sought after.
So, my advice to those office product dealers/suppliers is to not wait for the slow demise of your business but to branch out and “bolt-on” new opportunities with expanded product offerings.
Executive | Corporate Development | M&A | Business Development
5 年Well-put, David! It wasn’t easy... but we made the necessary adjustments to stay relevant, create barriers and expand our product offering to customers in this ever-changing industry.