re: Office Depot Observation

Look on the bright side. It would have been gun play if you were at the one in Jackson.

I don’t get why school starts so early down here.

In Idaho school doesn’t start until late August.

I recently bought an office chair from there cause an online search had one I wanted in store for less than half off. Looking around was depressing... half of the shelves were bare and there was shite everywhere...was like walking through a stock warehouse. What was really wild was there was a half a dozen people working there...really no clue how they managed that

Madison, MS!

Schedule is brutal. Start August 1 and go through May 23

LINK

How do they afford the rent of the buildings? Has to be astronomical unless they own the buildings?

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Tis the season for my annual visit to Office Depot.

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I get that, but I haven't stepped foot in one in years before today

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You're either a liar or you don't know what annual means. This entire story is probably made up.

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How do they afford the rent of the buildings? Has to be astronomical unless they own the buildings?

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Never heard of them owning any of their buildings. Rent varies based on location, but most are major property management companies located in New York or California. They’ll negotiate as needed to keep them there, including cutting rent in half and offering new leases. I went through several remodels as well, including their new modern prototype layouts. Cost was roughly $600K and they were often able to secure 50% of that from the landlord as it was overall improvements to the building.

Maybe Office Depot, Best Buy and Bed, Bath & Beyond can merge.

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It’s been that way for years and years. They used to have a decent delivery business, but I have no idea if that’s still the case, especially since half their business used to be delivering copy paper. Offices don’t use nearly as much paper these days.

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I manage a transportation company, and one of our customers is Office Depot, as well as Staples. Our drives deliver next day shipments for them. Business still use plenty of copy paper. Its kind of a crazy to me with so much of everything being on computers now.

But we are all pretty sure that Office Depot's days are numbers. We've been getting less and less orders from them over the past few years, and its only a matter of time before they fizzle out. I will be glad when it happens.

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When I go to an OD (which is very rare) I can't help but notice all the empty space that is basically unused with spread out inventory. Why don't they condense/downsize their stores to save money on rent?

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They certainly should, but in most cases they won’t pay to relocate. My last store was a corporate prototype store with 5,500 individual items in my inventory (versus a normal 12-15,000 item store). The items I carried were curated as the top selling items company wide for their respective categories. These stores moved their break room supplies (paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning products) to the front of the store as the margins on them were crazy good. The idea was someone making a trip from the office for supplies could just grab them in one stop versus having to make a second stop at a Sam’s Club, Costco, etc. All of the impulse items near the registers (candy, phone chargers, etc.) are also marked up 150-200%