BIG INTERVIEW When Jeanette Bresitz joined Office Friendly a year ago, she quickly addressed some simple necessities for the UK group’s dealer members. Throwing off the shackles of a restricted core offering was just one of them
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ith 25 years of industry experience under her belt – in a variety of reseller and wholesaler environments – Jeanette Bresitz joined the UK dealer group fraternity in June 2021 when she became Managing Director of Office Friendly. Founded in 1994, Office Friendly was born out of wholesale operator Kingfield, with long-standing and close ties to what eventually became the EVO Group of Companies and VOW Wholesale within that entity. One of many – although slowly depleting and/ or consolidating – dealer groups in the UK, Office Friendly has continuously evolved and moved with the times, with all of its previous leaders putting their unique stamp on the cooperative. Bresitz is no different. Coming on board when the country was still in the midst of battling the coronavirus pandemic, she urged dealers to learn all they can about product adjacencies and then diversify with a consultative approach. All the while managing inflationary pressures and maintaining profitability in a challenging macroeconomic environment. Easy? No. Doable? Very. OPI’s Heike Dieckmann caught up with Bresitz for a glimpse at the current workings of Office Friendly and the UK business supplies space at large.
I left to go travelling – one of my big passions in life – and 18 months later joined Spicers where I stayed, in various roles including merchandising and marketing, for 12 years. I was Director of Marketing when Spicers merged with OfficeTeam to become SPOT Group and moved into a sales operations and communications-led position when that happened. I caught the travel bug again and spent another 12 months travelling before doing some consultancy work. Prior to starting my current role at Office Friendly in June last year, I worked for Staples Solutions as a member of the UK management team for about three years, part of which now falls under the Banner umbrella, of course, one of the components of EVO Group.
OPI: Most people in the UK will know you pretty well from your various positions in this industry over the years, but we’ve never actually had an interview with you before in OPI. So Jeanette, could you give a summary of your career for our international readers? Jeanette Bresitz: Sure. As you say, I’ve been around this industry for some time, actually all of my professional career since I left education. I started at Viking in the late 1990s and then, within that organisation, worked for both Viking and Office Depot for about seven years as part of the category team.
OPI: It must have been quite a year, with all the ups and downs COVID still had in store for us. JB: Yes, it’s been a whirlwind, especially coming back into the dealer side of the community in the UK again. I’ve spent the past 12 months trying to develop and focus the team, understanding our membership and fostering supplier relationships. Coming from what can perhaps be described as the ‘enemy camp’ that was Spicers, it’s the first time in my career I’ve worked alongside VOW, and I’ve spent a lot of time building relationships with the teams there.
