PDA

View Full Version : Office Supplies



KristineS
09-24-2008, 12:23 PM
At the office we buy office supplies from a couple of different online companies. For personal use, I generally go to Staples.

I'm wondering what the rest of you use when you buy office supplies. Have you found a website that has great deals? Do you buy from a local store down the street? Do you generally find that chain stores have better deals than the locally based stores?

I like to keep my dollars in the local community when I can, and I like to support independent businesses, but I also want to save money and get a good deal.

Anyone have any suggestions for where I should shop?

Dan Furman
09-24-2008, 12:54 PM
For me, it's Staples. For prettymuch everything.

I like the whole "support local business" thing, but as far as retail, that time is basically over. The one "local" office supply place is mostly about used furniture now - forget about having the nice big paperclips that I like, or the heavy duty staples I need.

Same thing with the local hardware store - they have nothing in terms of selection (they have 4 different garden hoses, for example - Lowes has 40' of hoses - any shape and size you want). Plus, the local store closes at 6pm. Yea, that's going to get my $$.

BillR
09-24-2008, 01:41 PM
I go anywhere but Office Max - that place is ridiculous in terms of pricing.

I looked at a small safe a while back to keep important papers, etc. At Office Max it was something like $200. At Sam's Club the exact same safe was $130.

There's simply no reason to have that difference in markup. These were both the regular prices - neither place was having a promotion. I know Sam's buys in bulk but that big of a swing in price is astronomical. Sadly, the same pricing difference applies to all of their stuff.

orion_joel
09-25-2008, 11:24 PM
I do really like to spend money locally especially to smaller locally owned businesses. However this is becoming more and more difficult to keep a reality.

For office supplies i shop mostly at Officeworks (Australia's equivalent of Staples i would expect). The contrast between Big box retailers like this and smaller local office supply stores is really massive. You can go into something like Officeworks here and have a choice of 2D, 3D, 4D ring binders in different sizes and colours and they literally have a hundreds in stock. You go to the local office supply store they have maybe 3 or 4 different colours, maybe 1 or 2 different sizes and lucky if you can buy half a dozen because they have no stock.

It comes down for the most part i think to the whole point that the financing behind the big box retailer's literally allows them to go over kill on stock, space and product range, do nothing for customer service and it is almost a win for people's business by default because of stock and range. It is not to say they are better, but how can a small, lower budget store compete with that.

Evan
09-26-2008, 10:34 PM
I purchase all of my supplies at Staples. I'm also a stockholder as well :)

orion_joel
09-27-2008, 01:45 AM
There is a good range of the consumable office supplies like Ink/Toner that i would like to be able to provide as part of my business. However it is the bigger retailers that i have trouble competing with for the most part. Not always on price but reach and strength of marketing.

Steve B
09-27-2008, 03:41 AM
Funny you should mention the garden hose example. Yesterday, I tried to buy some garden hose at the local hardware store - but, ended up at Lowes because I needed a bigger selection.

orion_joel
09-27-2008, 07:15 AM
That is the difference, a local store doesn't have the money behind it to afford the space, or the stock to give the variety of the big box retailers. While going bigger helps you take advantage of the economy of scale, there is financial cost barriers, that mean at some point you are putting so much time, effort and money into giving the variety and making the space to fit it all in, that you either run out of money or you don't try and give variety but be the local shop that has a bit of everything.

KristineS
09-27-2008, 12:20 PM
One thing that local shops have going for them is that they are local. I know there is a drive to buy local in my town. The problem is that the prices are so much higher, the selection is less and the service is often no better than what you would get from a big box retailer.

I'm willing to buy local and perhaps to pay a bit more to do it, but I'm not going to be stupid about it. Local retailers have to offer something, whether it's specialty items or top notch customer service or prices that match the big box store prices, if I'm going to give them my business.

I think some local businesses haven't caught on to that yet.

LJLynch
09-27-2008, 03:14 PM
We are fortunate to have a local office supply company that is fairly large and they have free delivery. Sometimes I pay more, sometimes less. But I don't have to hoist the case of copy paper in and out of my truck and I don't have to spend my time shopping. That is worth a lot to me. I used to buy stuff and have it shipped UPS, but it came damaged a lot. A case of paper with beat up corners isn't worth what it was supposed to be.

Joel - as for competing with the big box market, do you have or plan to have a retail store? I have a small one. I view it as sort of a supplement to what I really do. You can compete on price on some things (at least here in the US). I can beat big box prices on cables all day. People in offices and the neighboring stores buy ink from us regularly because we are convenient and not any more expensive. Not sure they would care if we were as long as we are still reasonable. But - I don't count on it as a big profit center and location is obviously important. We are in a small shopping center close to Michigan State University. Not a ton of traffic, but not hard to get to either. We have a carry in repair center, so location is important.

Sorry if I drifted off topic!

KristineS
09-28-2008, 10:04 AM
Convenience can be a major selling point, Linda, as you pointed out. That could be one way that a local, smaller store could differentiate itself from the big box guys. I'm with you, if someone will bring the paper to me instead of me having to carry it, I'll probably be willing to pay a bit more for that service.

I guess it's about finding a niche that they big box guys don't cover. Delivery would certainly be one area.

llcollins82
09-30-2008, 05:56 PM
we are 98% paperless, so we generally don't buy any office supplies. if we ever need anything like batteries, post-its or paper for our fax machine we just get it at Target or Office Max because it is close to our building.

is anyone else paperless here?

KristineS
10-01-2008, 12:24 PM
we try to be paperless, but so far haven't managed it. I'm not sure we ever will.

Business Attorney
10-01-2008, 06:38 PM
Gads! It seems like we have more paper in our office than we have ever had.

A lot of things have changed. Email has largely supplanted my use of letterhead and envelopes, for example.

But with high speed printers, it is easier to print out a whole new draft of a document when a secretary makes changes on several pages. Instead of giving me pages 3, 4, 7, 11 and 13 to replace, I get a new document. I try to review documents as much as I can on the screen, but if the document is very long, flipping back and forth on paper is much easier than constantly scrolling back and forth through the document on the screen.

KristineS
10-01-2008, 08:16 PM
I know what you mean David.

I'm the Director of Marketing for our companies. You have to print stuff out to see color and to make corrections. It won't work any other way. We end up throwing out a lot of paper, but the majority of it gets recycled for printing in house orders and stuff. It's just the way things work.

orion_joel
10-02-2008, 12:51 AM
I am very close to paperless, except for the inevitable back-up of financial records such as supplier invoices, bills and everything else that may be needed in the event that a audit or something takes place, by the tax department. For the most part i try to email invoices to clients, and have had the same box of 500 envelopes for close to 6 years, and still not even half way through it.