Office Depot
Office Depot Inc. is an American office supply retailer. Its corporate is located in Boca Raton, Florida, United States. Its distribution channels are varied including stores and mail deliveries. It also has a strong catalog and e-commerce operations targeting the general public and large companies. was founded in 1986, in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida by three partners: Pat Sher, Stephen Dougherty, and Jack Kopkin. It currently operates under three trademarks: Office Depot, OfficeMax, Grand & Toy, Ativa, TUL, Foray, Realspace and DiVOGA.
In 2005, the European division covers eleven countries with warehouses or logistics centers located in nine different countries. The European headquarters are based in Venlo, the Netherlands.
History
Office Depot was founded in October 1988 by F. Patrick Sher, Stephen Doughtery, and Jack Kopkin, who became the company's president and chief executive officer, president, and executive vice president, respectively.
The three were formerly associated with Mr. HOW Warehouse, a home improvement company that Sher sold to Service Merchandise in 1983.[citation needed] The The first store, located in the Lakes Mall in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, opened in October 1986. The company announced its initial public offering of stock and went public in December 1988.
Mergers and Acquisitions
In April 1991, it merged with Office Club, which provided expansion to the West Coast. Office Depot entered the European and Australian direct mail market, after acquiring Viking Direct in May 1998.
On July 18, 1997, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported that a federal district court in Washington, D.C., granted its request for a preliminary injunction, blocking the merger of Office Depot and Staples as one company.
In December 2001, Viking Direct expanded into Central America with new retail stores in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica through a joint licensing agreement. Office Depot sold Office Depot Europe (parent of Viking Direct) to a investment company in September 2017.
On February 20, 2013, it was announced that Office Depot and OfficeMax would be combined in an all-stock agreement, pending regulatory approval and shareholder approval. The merger was completed on November 5, 2013. In May 2014, Office Depot announced the closure of four hundred stores, due to declining sales and customer migration to e-retailers.
On February 4, 2015, it was announced that rival Staples had agreed to buy Office Depot, in a cash-and-stock deal for approximately $6.3 billion. However, the Federal Trade Commission voted to block the merger in December 2015. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted the FTC a preliminary injunction against the merger on May 10, 2016., which resulted in the termination of the proposed merger.
In January 2017, Gerry Smith was named the company's new CEO, effective February 27. Smith was the COO of Lenovo Group.
Office Depot bought technology services company CompuCom in 2017 to help it compete with Amazon Web Services, warning investors at the time that the acquisition would show disappointing revenue in the quarter whose earnings were reported in May 2019. The stock they fell significantly in early April 2019 as a result.
Environmental initiatives
Office Depot built a LEED Gold certified retail store in Austin, Texas in April 2008. The Boca Raton location also received LEED Gold certification in September 2010.
Colombian Retreat
On September 20, 2020, Office Depot announced the closure of all its stores in Colombia, which represented 3% of the consolidated revenues of the operations of its parent company, Office Depot Mexico.
Sponsorships
In January 2005, Office Depot became a NASCAR partner, holding the title "NASCAR Official Office Products Partner". In the same year, the company signed on as title sponsor of the #99 Ford Fusion, owned by Roush Fenway Racing and previously driven by Carl Edwards. They sponsored Edwards through the end of the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.
In December 2008, Office Depot announced that it would become the primary title sponsor of Tony Stewart and the No. 14 Chevrolet at Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009. In September 2012, Office Depot announced that it would not renew the sponsorship with Tony Stewart or Stewart. Haas Racing.
During the 2011 and 2012 Colombian Professional Soccer season, Office Depot sponsored América de Cali
In November 2012, Office Depot partnered with the Born This Way Foundation to sell limited-edition office supplies and give 25% of the proceeds to the organization.
FTC Settlement
In March 2019, Office Depot and Support.com, Inc., a California-based provider of help desk software, agreed to pay a total of $35 million to resolve allegations by the Federal Trade Commission that the companies tricked customers into purchasing millions of dollars in computer repair and technical services by misleadingly claiming that their software had found symptoms of malware on customers' computers.