Opi march 267 b

BIG INTERVIEW

Connecting the

business products world

Jürgen Vent Consumer Business Group, 3M March 2017

Special Issue

FACILITIES SUPPLIES Special Issue

FACILITIES SUPPLIES

Special Issue

FACILITIES SUPPLIES Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

Special Issue

INSIDE THIS ISSUE Amazon Business grabs public sector dollars l Megatrends l Wesfarmers to divest Officeworks Issue l Vendor focus: who stands out? l Paperworld reviewSpecial l The art of social selling l

VENDOR SPECIAL

VENDOR SPECIAL

Special Issue

CONTENTS FACILITIES SUPPLIES 21 Hot Topic Do megatrends really influence our industry?

Special Issue

FACILITIES SUPPLIES

Special Issue

43 How To… ...use social networks to find new prospects

FACILITIES SUPPLIES

47 Review: CORE Live Essendant talks about disruption and opportunity

49 Review: Paperworld The good, the bad and the ugly from the 2017 show

Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

52 Research Investigating the appeal of Amazon Business

Special Issue Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

VENDOR SPECIAL

14 Big Interview The importance of branding and customer focus 24 Vendor Focus OPI looks at the vendors that are pursuing excellence

Big Interview: Jürgen Vent, 3M

Awareness of the 3M brand is pretty much unrivalled in the business supplies sector. But while the ubiquitous Post-it note is just a tiny cog in the overall 3M wheel, it serves as a good example of what phenomenal branding, continuous innovation and a relentless focus on the customer can do HOT TOPIC: MEGATRENDS

34 Feature The double-edged sword of outsourcing sales 36 Spotlight CEP reveals the secret to its success in new categories 38 Vendor Profile Bi-silque on the up 54 Generation Game Alex Bonarius 56 5 min with…

Elisabeth Gebler

REGULARS 5 Comment 6 News 58 Final Word Mike Gentile

March 2017

Those in the office products world know first-hand how a business can turn on a whim given the transformation that is currently affecting every aspect of the industry. But these changes are not being driven by a short-term shift, they are part of a much longer cycle of change caused by what are commonly referred to as megatrends.

Unlike ‘normal’ trends, a megatrend is a major movement in the progress of a society

32 Interview Kevin Schoen on the value of manufacturer rep groups

3

The OPI team

COMMENT

EDITORIAL

Editor Heike Dieckmann +44 (0)20 7841 2950 heike.dieckmann@opi.net Deputy Editor Michelle Sturman +44 (0)20 7841 2942 michelle.sturman@opi.net News Editor Domenic Donatantonio +44 (0)20 7841 2952 domenic@opi.net Freelance Contributors Andy Braithwaite andy.braithwaite@opi.net David Holes david.holes@opi.net

SALES & MARKETING VP – Continental Europe, Middle East and Africa Ewan Dickson +44 (0)20 7841 2954 ewan.dickson@opi.net VP – North America and UK Chris Turness +44 (0)20 7841 2953 chris.turness@opi.net Director of Growth Services Jeremy Hughes +44 (0)7807 810617 jeremy.hughes@opi.net Digital Marketing Manager Aurora Enghis +44 (0)20 7841 2959 aurora.enghis@opi.net

EVENTS

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PRODUCTION & FINANCE Studio Joel Mitchell +44 (0)20 7841 2943 joel.mitchell@opi.net Operations & Production Eda Sismanoglu +44 (0)20 7841 2950 eda@opi.net Finance Kelly Hilleard +44 (0)20 7841 2956 kelly.hilleard@opi.net

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Connecting the

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can’t recall an issue of OPI in recent times when Amazon hasn’t been a major talking point in one way or another (or indeed on opi.net or at any industry event). But this month it’s a bit different. Different to the tune of $5.5 billion. That’s the potential amount of sales that Amazon Business could generate through its new US Communities contract.

Maybe the news didn’t come as a huge surprise, but it’s certainly another major statement of intent of just how omnipresent Amazon Business is going to be in our sector. See our lead news story on page 6 to find out more about the online giant’s public sector grab.

As Independent Stationers’ Mike Gentile says in this month’s Final Word (page 58), “we need to find a new box” to effectively compete. He’s positive that many independent dealers will find that box – some have already – in whatever shape it may come. The overwhelming theme – and it’s evident at every industry event the OPI team attends, whether it’s Paperworld (see page 49 for our review) or CORE Live (page 47) – is this: sticking your head into the sand is not an option anymore and only those that are willing to change and evolve will come out the other end.

What [all successful companies] have in common is that they pay close attention to the slowly simmering megatrends that affect us all And that premise is as true for the manufacturing community as it is for the rest of the industry. In this, our second Vendor Special issue of OPI, we’ve dedicated a lot of pages to progressive manufacturers that have managed to stay at the top of their game for one reason or another (see our Vendor Focus on page 24).

How does a brand stay relevant for 115 years, for example? Read our Big Interview with 3M’s Jürgen Vent to find out (page 14). Or how do you cope when you realise your core product is positioned at the heart of a shrinking category? CEP Office Solutions faced that very threat and tackled it head on (page 36).

What, in my mind, all of them – and by all I don’t just mean vendors, but all successful companies – have in common is that they pay close attention to the slowly simmering megatrends that affect us all. And then they take action. Turn to page 20 for our Megatrends Hot Topic.

Just as many of you will be picking up this issue of OPI, I will be heading to Amsterdam for this year’s Partnership event and our annual European Office Products Awards dinner where outstanding companies – many of them vendors in the various product categories – as well as individuals will be acknowledged for their achievements over the past year.

Read all about the winners and why they won in the April issue of OPI… Have a great month.

HEIKE DIECKMANN, EDITOR

March 2017

No part of this magazine may be reproduced, copied, stored in an electronic retrieval system or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with provision of the copyright designs and patents act of 1988. Stringent efforts have been made by Office Products International to ensure accuracy. However, due principally to the fact that data cannot always be verified, it is possible that some errors or omissions may occur. Office Products International cannot accept responsibility for such errors or omissions. Office Products International accepts no responsibility for comments made by contributing authors or interviewees that may offend.

I

Find that box!

5

NEWS

in

Analysis: Amazon Business’s public sector land-grab

www.opi.net

OPI investigates the online giant’s multibillion dollar deal with public sector purchasing organisation US Communities

6

It’s no secret that Amazon Business has been looking to grow in the US public sector space following the hiring of the US government’s Chief Acquisition Officer Anne Rung in September 2016.

Now public sector purchasing cooperative US Communities has announced that it has awarded Amazon Business a multi-year online marketplace contract, giving Amazon’s B2B arm access to public agencies – schools, school districts, higher education institutions and public sector organisations such as local and state government entities. It is estimated that the deal could be worth up to $5.5 billion.

Readers of OPI will recall that US Communities previously had a long-standing relationship with Office Depot in the office supplies category, a contract that came to an end in 2010 following the landmark award to independent dealer group Independent Stationers (IS). US Communities has not had a specific office supplies contract since that agreement with IS expired.

Now public agencies that use US Communities purchasing contracts – a number exceeding 55,000 agencies with more than 400 registering each month, according to the marketplace contract request for proposals (RFP) that was issued last September – will again have access to office supplies via the cooperative purchasing group, but that is by no means the only product category that Amazon Business will offer.

Whereas US Communities contracts have traditionally involved individual product categories

such as office supplies, school and educational items and technology products, the new contract awarded to Amazon Business was bid as a nationwide online purchasing agreement covering a multitude of product categories. These include – but are not limited to – books, office supplies, classroom and art supplies, home and kitchen, musical instruments, audiovisual and electronics, clothing, animal supplies, scientific equipment and lab supplies.

The final product category listed on the Amazon Business website is ‘hard to find items’. This is described as follows: “Our marketplace offers hundreds of millions of products from a wide variety of industries and specialties including 3D printing, commercial espresso machines and coffee makers, cutting tools, material handling equipment, packaging and shipping supplies, pulling and lifting supplies, and much more.”

It suggests that Amazon is able to offer its entire product range to public agencies through this US Communities contract. Indeed, the RFP document states that “the intent is for each offeror to submit their complete product line”.

The lead public agency that put this contract out to bid is Prince William County Public Schools (PWCPS) based in northern Virginia. PWCPS as well as US Communities advisory board members have committed to purchasing through the Amazon Business contract and the RFP estimates the annual contract spend to be around $500 million.

The length of the contract is also interesting. Prior contracts typically tended to be for an initial two-year period with up to three 12-month extensions. This marketplace contract is for a period of five years with the option to renew for up to three two-year periods.

That could mean the contract running for 11 years – meaning $5.5 billion in sales to Amazon based on the RFP spending estimates.

This is not a case of Amazon Business simply getting a foot in the public sector door – the e-commerce giant has barged the door open THE TENDER PROCESS The contract was put out to competitive bid in September and US Communities said there were a total of nine respondents. Nevertheless, the breadth of the product categories listed in the RFP would suggest that US Communities had at least one eye on Amazon when it put the bid together.

This is not a case of Amazon Business simply getting a foot in the public sector door; the e-commerce giant has barged the door down and is now taking on all those that supply products to educational and local/state government agencies throughout the US – not just office products, but pretty much every workplace supplies category you can think of.

Despec launches new service Denmark-based IT and office supplies wholesaler Despec has unveiled a new reseller offering for the printing market.

‘Prisume’, launched for the Nordic region, monitors company printers, sending through an automatic ink or toner order through a cloud-based service.

Greener Staples Canada Staples Canada has announced record growth in Q3 for several in-store recycling programmes.

The reseller said its battery recycling solution collected 44,004 kg, up 12.4% over the same period in 2015.

UK dealer buys local firm UK-based independent reseller ASK Office Supplies has announced the purchase of fellow Yorkshire firm Executive Office. The deal is ASK’s second acquisition in four years, following the purchase of Keighley-based Walker Office Supplies.

VALUE O HE F T .

$22.2 BILLION

including its own manufacturing and web-to-print operations.

All three dealers are members of an existing grouping of resellers called the Challenge Consortium, an initiative co-founded about ten years ago by Noble and Paul Cohen from JPS (a dealership which was subsequently acquired by London’s RED BOX), and which has some 13 members. This membership will expire on 31 March, after which the Vertical Alliance will officially launch. Commenting on this departure from the consortium, Noble said that he had felt for some time that it “needed to go in a different direction”.

For more information and an exclusive interview with Adam Noble, please visit opi.net.

29

THE WORKING HOURS A WEEK

(OUT OF 44)

CONSIDERED TO BE PRODUCTIVE

March 2017

Marginal US retail gains The NPD Group has reported total retail sales for the US office and school supplies industry grew 1% in 2016.

Three office products dealers in the UK have joined forces to create the Vertical Alliance.

The Irongate Group from Derby, Guildford-based Office Gold and London dealer Anglo Office Group said the primary aim of the alliance was to deliver “a national solution with local service benefits with the broadest products and services offering in the market”.

The three resellers – with aggregate sales of more than £40 million ($50 million) and over 3,500 active customers – will combine their buying power to optimise purchase agreements, share marketing initiatives and development investment, and tap into each company’s specialist areas of expertise to expand their collective offerings.

Irongate Managing Director Adam Noble said the three firms had significant expenditure in common areas, prompting the obvious benefit of pooling resources. He added that there was a “big advantage” in the fact that each dealer has its own specialist divisions or areas which can now be shared across the group without the need for significant individual investment.

One of the first areas of collaboration will be in the area of print. Irongate has a well-developed and successful print management business,

LOBAL S M EG TH

Kimberly-Clark eco award Kimberly-Clark has been honoured for its environmental measures with its seventh SmartWay Excellence Award.

The award, organised by the US Environmental Protection Agency, rewards energy efficiency. Since 2006, the firm has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of the energy used by 87,000 homes in a year.

New UK office products dealer alliance

KET IN 202 R 1 A M

Armor secures Blue Angel Aftermarket supplier Armor has received the German ecolabel Blue Angel for 13 remanufactured laser cartridges. Products awarded with the label must contain at least 75% recycled material, no toxic substances or heavy metals, and must be part of an integrated collection system.

TRASH BIN RT A

IN BRIEF

NEWS

in

7

NEWS

WHO’S WHO IN OP

Top 100 new entry: Julie Hawley, Managing Director, Office Friendly

Office Depot UK future uncertain

The new owner of Office Depot Europe has declined to comment on whether its UK headquarters is facing up to 200 job losses. Speaking to OPI about speculation in the media, an Aurelius spokesperson wouldn’t disclose whether the posts are at risk at the site in Leicester. Office Depot in the UK also declined to comment on the subject. Aurelius completed the purchase of the office products reseller in January.

Meanwhile, it is understood that Office Depot has had Goldman Sachs drumming up interest in its Australian OfficeMax operations following last November’s announcement to withdraw from all international operations.

According to the Australian Financial Review, Office Depot has received first-round bids for the company.

Antalis IPO plans?

European paper group Sequana has outlined a move to float its Antalis division on the Paris Stock Exchange.

The flotation and the planned sale of Arjowiggins Security are part of Sequana’s strategic plan to exit creditor protection in H1 2017.

Sequana said its creditor filing follows the latest ruling by the High Court of Justice in London, which has ordered the group to pay $138.4 million to British American Tobacco in a litigation case over five-year-old dividend payments by its former subsidiary Windward Prospects.

Even though Sequana confirmed that it intended to appeal the ruling and the court has allowed a postponement of the payment, the group explained the proceedings only affect the holding company and not its two subsidiaries, paper and packaging merchant Antalis and paper manufacturer Arjowiggins.

OPI.NET POLL RESULTS

www.opi.net

Robotics 19%

8

Technology 84% NB: Multiple answers were allowed

Which of the following trends do you think will impact the OP industry the most?

Growing population/ageing society

16%

5% Urbanisation 5% Climate change 5% Individualism 3% Globalisation 3% Localisation

Julie Hawley stepped up to the Managing Director role at UK dealer group Office Friendly in December after taking the role in an interim capacity in June 2016 following the sudden departure of Steve Harrop.

Hawley is no stranger to the group and how it works, having been at Office Friendly for ten years, four of those as Finance Director. Prior to joining Office Friendly, she worked at wholesaler Kingfield Heath. Overall, she has more than 25 years’ experience in the office products industry.

Under Harrop, Hawley and colleagues Katie Metcalfe and Keeley Shepherd were instrumental in transforming Office Friendly from a buying group into a more service-oriented partner for its members. One of its solutions includes the award-winning KascAid marketing programme.

Hawley now hopes to build on this success, with the focus very much remaining on helping dealers grow their business. Plans include a new dealer platform which will integrate all the benefits the dealer group offers in a single location.

Acme acquires Spill Magic US-based office products vendor Acme United has bought safety firm Spill Magic in a $7.2 million deal.

Spill Magic had revenues in 2016 of $6.3 million and EBITDA of approximately $1.4 million.

The firm specialises in absorbents that turn spills into dry powders which can be safely disposed.It also sells bloodborne pathogen kits for the medical supplies market.

Parker to leave Fellowes Fellowes has announced that Mike Parker has resigned from his position as President for personal reasons.

Parker is leaving in order to focus on his family life with the office supplies vendor currently having no plans to directly replace him.

EBP expands team UK manufacturer Environmental Business Products (EBP) has appointed Berrie Matse as Head of Sales DACH Benelux. Matse will be responsible for new business development within the region – for both 2D and 3D printing – and will also support the EBP team to manage existing relationships across Europe.

Logicblock/Essendant deal Web design firm Logicblock has teamed up with US wholesaler Essendant to complete work on its digital services programme. Essendant will offer customisable campaigns, campaign tools and templates as part of the deal.

Record Big Buyer numbers Italy’s biggest office supplies and stationery show Big Buyer has said its latest event attracted its best-ever attendance. The show, held in Bologna from 23-25 November, hosted more than 7,000 visitors and 280 exhibitors.

Initiative Office Paper launches in Australia Australia-based dealer group Office Brands has announced its first Initiative branded product following the signing of a licensing agreement with UK counterpart Integra Business Solutions. Initiative Office Paper is now available to dealers and has an estimated annual volume of 5,000 tonnes.

@FastCubes 10 Office Design Tips to Foster Creativity #officelife #officedesign @OfficeCoffeeCo The way your office colleagues take their coffee says a lot about them #officelife #business @Furniture_Work 17 cool things to spruce up your #officedesk right now #officelife #gadgets Follow us on Twitter @opinews

ACCO completes Esselte purchase ACCO Brands has finalised its acquisition of Esselte Group Holdings. In January, ACCO confirmed that it had received clearance from the relevant competition authorities for the deal.

As a result, the company’s new combined European business will be run by former Esselte CEO Cezary Monko, who will report directly to ACCO CEO Boris Elisman.

The purchase continues ACCO’s acquisitive trend and follows the full buyout of Australian and New Zealand office products distribution business Pelikan Artline in March 2016. Both transactions are expected to ultimately deliver annual synergies of approximately $31 million.

There was not a lot of information about Esselte during the company’s recent Q4 and full-year earnings call. Elisman said the deal would help ACCO reduce its dependency on global customers in Europe given Esselte’s strong sales into the independent dealer channel. He added the integration process was just starting and that he would update the market in the coming quarters.

Elisman also talked about the “huge shift” in the way consumers are buying products, turning to mass merchants such as Walmart and Target and online players, and away from speciality office supply retailers.

Combined, retail and e-commerce customers represented 38% of ACCO’s sales in 2016, while sales to Staples and Office Depot declined to 23%. This is still a hefty reliance on two large customers that are both facing secular

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Productive helps with building motivating chains of habits, provides focus and gives reminders to get things done.

Reminders can be scheduled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to motivate users into action.

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challenges – not to mention uncertainties about what will happen to their (still owned and recently sold) international operations – but a move in the right direction in terms of customer balance. The sales mix to the commercial channel – ie independent dealers – was also down, accounting for around 30% of ACCO’s total sales last year.

Elisman stated that ACCO would continue to “invest, grow and innovate” with categories and channels that are growing, and “prudently manage” relationships with its traditional customer base.

That said, he underlined that ACCO would not turn its back on the office supply channel, saying it’s an area where the company “definitely” wants to be, and it would be looking to grow sales and take share.

Overall, total company Q4 sales were up 6.2% year on year to $437.6 million while comparable year-on-year full-year sales fell by 1%.

Boris Elisman

March 2017

Hoffmann promoted TriMega has promoted Tom Hoffmann to VP of Purchasing.

He has spent six years at the OP dealer group and moves up from his role of Director of Purchasing following the retirement of Greg Fish.

BIRD FEED

NEWS

IN BRIEF

9

NEWS

Analysis: Wesfarmers to sell Officeworks OPI looks at the announcement from the Australian conglomerate to divest its high-performing OP business

www.opi.net

Wesfarmers is looking to cash in on Officeworks’ success and earn potentially in excess of A$1 billion (US$770 million), either via a sale or an IPO. Officeworks was acquired in 2007 as part of the A$21 billion Coles Group deal, and the office products retailer has been evolving successfully under the leadership of Managing Director Mark Ward, growing sales, profits and margins, and developing a strong multichannel offering.

Speaking on Wesfarmers’ earnings conference call, the group’s Managing Director Richard Goyder said Officeworks was “a really discrete business” and could easily be separated. However, he added that Wesfarmers was just looking at its options and had decided to make this strategic review public – if it’s not able to achieve the required shareholder returns then it will “happily leave [Officeworks] in the stable”.

Goyder denied that the timing of this strategic review of Officeworks was linked to the entry of Amazon into the Australian market, stating that Officeworks was “quite different” and that it already had a significant online business.

It’s interesting that the three biggest pure-play business supplies resellers in Australia – Staples, OfficeMax and Officeworks – are all up for sale. Could that lead to these businesses merging in some way?

10

While the Australian competition authorities have already given the green light to a Staples/OfficeMax combination as part of Staples’ attempt last year to acquire Office Depot, it might make more sense to combine Officeworks with either Staples or ‘Max. Officeworks caters to the small business customer, Staples and OfficeMax more to corporate and public sector clients, so – on the surface at least – that would create an entity serving businesses of all sizes and there would no doubt be some significant synergies to be achieved.

It would also make sense in terms of branding.

Officeworks is very much an Australian brand with strong local brand equity, so renaming Staples or OfficeMax in Australia as, for example, Officeworks Corporate Solutions, would probably be a smart move.

It’s all just speculation at this stage. Officeworks’ achievements have been built on providing solutions for the small business customer with the store at the heart of the customer experience. But it’s not easy at the moment to find a business supplies reseller that has been able to profitably combine retailing, catalogue/online delivery and enterprise/public sector

Wesfarmers is looking to cash in on Officeworks’ success and earn potentially in excess of A$1 billion solutions. Anyone looking to try and do that with Officeworks would therefore need to proceed with considerable caution.

Turning to Officeworks’ results for the six months to the end of December 2016, it was another solid performance with sales growing 5.9% year on year to A$927 million and EBITDA up 5.7% to A$74 million.

Research firm Gartner has forecast that the delivery drone market is set to have little impact, amounting to less than 1% of the commercial market by 2020.

This is in contrast to the sharp rise in revenue from commercial drones – the money generated from ­­ which is expected to rise 32% to manufacturer shipments – $3.7 billion in 2017.

Global market revenue – which also includes personal drones – is expected to increase 34% to reach more than $6 billion in 2017 and over $11.2 billion by 2020.

Gartner Senior Research Analyst Gerald Van Hohy said that the commercial and personal drone markets are increasingly overlapping, as lower-priced personal devices are being used for commercial ventures. However, he didn’t tip delivery drones to be a major factor for several years due to logistical issues, like the time needed to return a drone to its origin point after delivery.

Meanwhile, in another study, the firm forecast that 8.4 billion ‘connected things’ will be in use this year, an increase of 31% over 2016.

The company said that Greater China, North America and Western Europe will represent 67% of the overall Internet of Things installed base in 2017.

Gartner added that businesses are set to employ 3.1 billion connected things and the applications most in use will be smart electric meters and commercial security cameras.

In addition, companies will spend over $960 billion on hardware this year.

Commercial Group trials zero-emission vehicles

NEWS

Gartner downplays drone impact

UK independent business supplies reseller Commercial Group has begun work on two landmark government-funded projects pioneering innovation for zero-emission delivery vehicles.

The schemes, part of the Low Emission Freight and Logistics Trial, are being led by engineering services company Arcola Energy and low emission technology specialist ULEMCo. Arcola Energy will develop the UK’s first hydrogen-electric hybrid drivetrain for a 3.5 tonne van. It will be installed in a Commercial Group van with a 1,000 kg payload, then trialled across an operating range of up to 120 miles (193 km).

The ULEMCo project involves the deployment of trucks and vans fitted with hydrogen dual-fuel technology – Commercial Group subsidiary Wiles Greenworld will operate two such vehicles in the London area.

Separately, Commercial Group is now using an electric van to deliver office supplies to customers in west London. Adoption of the electric van, coupled with a commitment to ensure at least 5% of its fleet comprises plug-in electric vehicles by 2020, helped the group secure Go Ultra Low Company status.

Armor to launch managed print solution

3%

THE EXPECTED CAGR OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS OF THE GLOBAL OFFICE SUPPLIES MARKET

5.2%

Office Printing division, the MPS team will mainly look to work with value-added resellers to drive adoption of the MPS offering, though Reynolds said it would also appeal to office supplies resellers that are able to sell print solutions.

Armor is using a customised third-party software solution for its cost-per-page model, and has partnered with IT distribution giant Tech Data for product fulfilment.

March 2017

THE CAGR OF THE OFFICE FURNITURE MARKET UP TO 2021

European aftermarket print consumables firm Armor is set to launch a managed print services (MPS) solution for resellers as it looks to lessen its reliance on transactional sales.

Armor Sales Director Bob Reynolds revealed the news to OPI at the recent Paperworld event and said the France-based group will initially offer its MPS solution in its home market, with the official launch taking place at last month’s IT Partners trade show in Paris.

There are no plans at this time to launch the service in other markets.

Running as an independent unit within Armor’s

11

BIG INTERVIEW

3M MESSAGE the

POSTING

Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

Awareness of the 3M brand is pretty much unrivalled in the business supplies sector. But while the ubiquitous Post-it note is just a tiny cog in the overall 3M wheel, it serves as a good example of what phenomenal branding, continuous innovation and a relentless focus on the customer can do

S

www.opi.net

ay 3M, think Post-it notes – arguably no other brand in this industry is as synonymous with the company that makes it. And that’s astonishing given the broad product portfolio that 3M has in five very diverse business segments and the fact that its flagship product only hit the market in 1980 – 78 years after the company was founded.

OPI’s Heike Dieckmann speaks to Jürgen Vent, Business Director West Europe of 3M’s Consumer Business Group about the enduring appeal of a small, bright-yellow sticky note and how this and many other 3M brands hold up against evolving micro and macro industry dynamics as well as changing customer behaviour and demands.

Being transparent and consistent throughout the entire organisation – from a geographic as well as product point of view – is vital, says Vent.

14

OPI: I wouldn’t typically begin with talking about a product, but it’s hard not to when you’re dealing with something as iconic as the Post-it note.

Everybody always talks about the decline in paper usage as a result of digitisation – does that apply to Post-it notes as well?

Jürgen Vent: Not from what we’re seeing. Certainly in my market of Western Europe, sales of Post-its have increased over the past three years. What you have to bear in mind, however, is that the product and – very importantly – the use of the product, has evolved hugely over time.

Ten years ago, for example, these notes were used to communicate. People left messages for others on Post-it notes – it was a means of communication. Then they realised – and this is where digitisation comes in – that there are other ways to communicate much faster and much better.

Today, and this is backed up by our consumer research, people are using notes to remind themselves of what needs to be done. According to a study, writing down something by hand increases your chance of remembering it by 42%. People are so busy now in their work and personal lives that they feel a greater need to remind themselves about all sorts of tasks, jobs as well as goals.

Secondly – and this is another big trend that we’re seeing in our research – people are collaborating a lot more. They meet spontaneously and they want to have an easy solution to brainstorm and to exchange ideas.

OPI: When I hear the word collaboration I’m thinking of interactive whiteboards, easels and flipcharts. You are still talking about a little paper sticky note, is that right?

JV: 3M’s portfolio of solutions offers a real opportunity for sales growth to our distributors if they want to tap into this megatrend. There’s massive potential in this segment and the Post-it brand has a range of collaboration solutions to meet needs in the market.

BIG INTERVIEW Jürgen Vent

We have big meeting notes, meaning larger versions of the original Post-it SuperSticky notes that can be stuck to any vertical surface, and so on. But we also have meeting charts in various sizes that are based on Post-it technology. There are plenty more products in this area – and many more in development – that are tapping into the collaboration trend. You can also combine these with a note app, thereby sharing information digitally.

training and became a certified Six Sigma Black Belt for two years in Germany.

Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement which Jack Welch, for example, made central to his business strategy at General Electric. When you do your Six Sigma Black Belt you are taken out of the everyday business and spend two years purely on project work. The idea is to improve the processes within the company, whether that be selling, marketing or any other business practices.

When I finished that assignment in 2005, I became the country business leader for the consumer and office business in Germany. Since 2015, I’ve been heading up the total Consumer group in Europe as Business Director West Europe.

March 2017

OPI: I believe you’re something of a ‘3M lifer’ and have seen many of these developments?

JV: You could say that! I started at 3M in 1989, so I’m in my 28th year now. I worked in a number of 3M divisions over the years, including the automotive sector, before moving across to office products in the Consumer Business Group in Western Europe.

My work in this unit has been quite varied and I was on assignments all over Europe before becoming permanently based here at 3M Germany’s headquarters in Neuss. I was working in a number of functions for three years before I started my Six Sigma

Writing down something by hand increases your chance of remembering it by 42%

15

BIG INTERVIEW Jürgen Vent

OPI: What’s your definition of Western Europe?

JV: It’s eight regions within Western Europe: the Nordic region, comprising Scandinavia and Finland; the UK and Ireland; Benelux; Germany, Austria and Switzerland under the DACH umbrella; France; Iberia; Italy; and Greece.

OPI: And what are your core responsibilities in your current role?

JV: The Consumer group’s entire business development. We have a matrix type of organisation whereby our staff are organised in a subsidiary environment as well as in a business environment.

My job includes driving our product portfolios, setting prices, developing sales and marketing activities, overseeing product development, etc.

What’s important for our distribution partners is that our set-up is the same wherever there’s a 3M subsidiary OPI: What are your are best performing markets for the office channel, geographically-speaking?

JV: Well, the biggest market is North America. China and Asia Pacific are important growth areas.

Western Europe is big in terms of overall size and has been slightly growing recently, after a pretty steady decline in the previous six or seven years. We refocused on a couple of things and reinvented the wheel a bit with some products and we are now back into growth mode. Western Europe is the third largest region for the Consumer group, after North America and Asia Pacific.

March 2017

OPI: Please tell me a bit about your specific Consumer group that you’re responsible for.

JV: There are four divisions in this group which has total global revenues of $4.4 billion – that’s out of $30.1 billion for the whole of 3M. The first one is the Stationery and Office Supplies division where you will find the classic products for the office market, like Post-it notes and Scotch tape. Then we have the Construction and Home Improvement division which comprises products related to DIY. You would typically find them in home centres, rather than in an office, although there’s an overlap.

The third division is our Home Care segment, which revolves around Scotch-Brite cleaning products in the home environment. Lastly, we have the Consumer Healthcare division – these are over-the-counter products that we are selling into either pharmacies and drug stores, like plasters, bandages and so on.

How we’re organised in Western Europe pretty much mirrors the structure in the rest of the world in terms of broad company set-up.

OPI: Which of these divisions are selling into the office channel?

JV: Well, the Stationery and Office Supplies division, as the name suggests, is aimed completely at the office channel, while the others are less specific, but certainly overlap into that target audience.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the Scotch-Brite cleaning products from our Home Care division, for example, are now really moving into OP catalogues because of the resellers’ focus on jan/san as an adjacent category.

So the boundaries are blurring and this will only accelerate over time. What’s important for our distribution partners, however, is that our set-up is the same wherever there’s a 3M subsidiary. That works well for our transnational accounts and working with resellers like Staples, Office Depot or Lyreco, for example. If they open a subsidiary in any market, they know they can get exactly the same product from us.

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Jürgen Vent BIG INTERVIEW

OPI: What can you do to minimise and counteract declining sales in the stationery and OP division?

JV: I’m a very strong believer in category management. I think 3M was one of the first companies in Europe that took category management from the retail arena and applied it to channel tools like catalogues and increasingly now also websites.

What we do is we really customise the principle of category management. This means we develop a portfolio of products either on a shelf in a retail shop, in a catalogue or on a website. It has to meet the needs of consumers – whether it’s a home user or a white collar worker – and allow them to find the right product, of the right quality, at the right time and for the right price.

It’s important to offer products for all price points, not just the cheapest or most expensive. In fact, even price lists should be created through category management, rather than in alphabetical order or by brand. One of the benefits of proper category management is that it results in better margins and higher growth rates for everybody in the chain.

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OPI: And a fuller basket?

JV: Absolutely, because you are able to fulfil customers’ entire demands rather than just a portion of it. To find out what these demands are you need to do is what we call shopper marketing. So you have consumers and you have shoppers – two very different things, certainly in the B2B market. The consumer is the user of the product while the shopper is the chooser.

If you go into the office of a medium or large company, the user of the Post-it note is almost certainly not the one who is ordering it, ie the shopper.

As a company and in collaboration with our reseller partners, we need to satisfy the needs of all end consumers – the user, who might want a specific size of Post-it note, or a certain colour, and the shopper,

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3M FAST FACTS Founded: 1902 in Two Harbors, Minnesota, US Total revenues: $30.1 billion (of that $18.2 billion outside the US, ie 60% of total) Employees: circa 90,000 globally Company set-up: 26 business units, managed under five business groups: Consumer, Electronics & Energy, Healthcare, Industrial, Safety & Graphics President/CEO: Inge Thulin

who will have very different demands and think more about multipacks and price.

On the other hand, if you have a SOHO or small business customer, the user and the shopper are likely to be the same person. By having all that information to hand, we can build portfolios around different demands – category management at its best.

We centralised all our marketing functions in Western Europe about a year ago. Now we’re driving all product launches and our entire portfolio out of this central organisation to all countries in the region.

It makes it much easier for our channel partners to work with us.

As you can imagine, we partner with a wide range of companies in the office channel. Some are the large transnational companies such as Lyreco, Staples and Office Depot and then we work with the wholesalers which address the smaller dealers. We also have the bigger national operators like Printus and OTTO Office in Germany or JM Bruneau in France. And, of course, we have a presence on Amazon, on the B2B as well as the B2C side, as well as other B2B marketplaces such as Mercateo.

OPI: Amazon Business only launched in Germany last December, so I presume it’s early days for that?

JV: It is very early. Amazon B2C has a very high consumer penentration. With their Business platform they want to target commercial end-users in small and medium-sized companies offering their full portfolio.

OPI: You also mention Staples and Office Depot.

What are your thoughts on them leaving Europe?

JV: After the consolidation process that we’ve seen over the years with so many companies being bought in Europe – Buhrmann, Guilbert and all the others – it’s interesting that these two global companies are now drawing back from Europe.

When the mergers happened years ago, it had a minimal impact on us, apart from short-term warehouse consolidation. And strategically, we don’t expect much of an impact now. What I believe will happen with Staples and Depot is that there will be more centralisation in their organisations which is something I see occurring elsewhere as well.

Like I said, it’s already happened at 3M. Our customers – say ADVEO as an example – are telling us that they want to drive more and more from their central organisation and also deal with us from a more central perspective.

OPI: To finish up, what’s your view of the industry as a whole right now?

JV: It’s an exciting time right now. If you go back about ten years, it was all a bit quiet. Yes, we had some consolidation on the reseller side, but all in all it was pretty settled.

What we have now is a totally different dynamic.

And that is because requirements have changed and much of it has to do with technology. Everything is faster and the entire industry is finding ways to cross the bridge to the digital world. It’s exciting and we see a lot of opportunities to generate profitable growth together with our channel partners.

For more exclusive content from the interview, please visit the Magazine section on opi.net.

HOT TOPIC

Hello

FUTURE

Michelle Sturman looks at some of the megatrends that are creating the biggest impact on the business supplies industry

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e all know that fads and trends can create losses or gains for businesses. We also know that companies need to be agile enough to move with the times – or likely face demise in some way, shape or form.

Those in the office products world know first-hand how a business can turn on a whim given the transformation that is currently affecting every aspect of the industry. But these changes are not being driven by a short-term shift, they are part of a much longer cycle of change caused by what are commonly referred to as megatrends.

Unlike ‘normal’ trends, a megatrend is a major movement in the progress of a society. The Council of State Governments in the US offers one of the most succinct definitions: “A megatrend is a large, social, economic, political, environmental or technological change that is slow to form. Once in place, megatrends influence a wide range of activities, processes and perceptions, both in government and in society, possibly for decades.”

GLOBALISATION Globalisation is not new, but it is entering a second phase. For some time, the balance of power has been shifting towards Asia, in particular China, but

DEMOGRAPHICS

The population of the Earth is growing overall, but demographics are strikingly different depending on location. In many Western European countries, for example, the number of people is predicted to shrink while it’s set to grow in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Meanwhile, Frost & Sullivan forecasts that countries such as Japan, Germany, Italy,

March 2017

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE MEGATRENDS Their importance for the business supplies industry should not be underestimated as ‘pie-in-the-sky’ theories; megatrends have very real consequences and companies need to put plans in place to cope with a world where the pace of change is rapidly increasing and business models are constantly being redefined. It is expected that within the next few decades, some modes of production and delivery systems will have developed beyond recognition and certain product types will simply no longer exist.

According to academics and research analysts, there are roughly 20 megatrends, but for the purposes of this article the focus will be on the five that are considered to exert the greatest influence: globalisation, demographics, technology, climate change and urbanisation.

even this giant is decelerating. In fact, global trade was slower than global GDP in 2016 – the first time this has occurred for almost two decades – and is expected to affect emerging countries more severely than developed markets. The promise of the BRICS economies has also failed to materialise as Brazil, Russia and South Africa have fallen into recession.

While decades of globalisation have given rise to an affluent middle class, they have also failed to live up to their promise of spreading wealth more evenly.

Instead, the gap has widened and many believe it has led to the populist uprising that is responsible for Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump to the White House. Brother UK Managing Director Phil Jones says that with the global political environment changing rapidly, it will clearly impact the velocity, span and influence of globalisation.

But despite this growing trend of ‘anti-globalisation’, global trade will continue between all economies and agreements will be struck that will favour many emerging countries. As Frost & Sullivan Senior Consultant for Visionary Innovation, Jillian Walker, points out, the EU will continue to lead the world in trade, and while the US explores protectionist policies, economies such as China and India are looking to establish the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – a mega-regional trade deal that would unite much of Asia and Oceania.

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Megatrends HOT TOPIC

Demographic changes are influencing traditional ways of working and creating an innovative and flexible working culture France and the UK will have hyper-aging societies by 2025 where 20% or more of the total population will be 65 or older. This compares to 15-20% in the US. This means developed countries with a declining or stagnating populace, in conjunction with an ageing society, will face skills shortages and pressure on health and welfare systems. As a consequence, immigration will need to increase to fill the gaps. This in turn will create what is referred to as a ‘brain cycle’ whereby migrants return home to their home nation taking their skills with them.

This demographic maelstrom will lead to a ‘war for talent’, which CBRE Americas Head of Research Spencer Levy explains is about getting the level of ability and quality of talent that is required for a particular industry. “The war for talent is only going to get worse as advancing economies move up the value chain,” he adds.

The entry of millennials into the workplace is already creating fundamental changes in terms of working culture, office products purchases and mobility. Says VOW Commercial and Marketing Director Heather McManus: “Demographic changes are influencing traditional ways of working and creating an innovative and flexible working culture.

There is also a greater need for products that promote wellness, optimum working and productivity, while offering simplicity of use.”

All of this is good news of course for the business supplies industry as the younger generations require new collaborative tools in the workplace, while older people will be required to work longer and therefore need products that appeal to them specifically.

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TECHNOLOGY

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The most pervasive megatrend has already permeated every part of our life, is constantly morphing, and has irreversibly changed society.

Technology will continue to impact our lives in unforeseen ways.

As professional services network PwC points out, unlike the previous agricultural and industrial revolutions, the digital revolution has no boundaries or borders. Indeed, in many instances emerging economies are adopting some technologies faster than developed countries as they do not have to

contend with replacing old legacy systems. A good example is the use of mobile banking in African countries such as Kenya with its M-Pesa money transfer and financial services mobile platform.

Technological developments within the workplace have also picked up pace in recent years which is having a dramatic impact on traditional OP sales.

The proliferation of laptops, smartphones and tablets are a prime example as the rapid take-up of these products by staff has modified the office environment by giving them the freedom of mobility. In addition, the office has seen an influx of millennials who are ‘digital natives’, and this is in turn is having a direct impact on purchasing – they are among the prime candidates who are turning to e-commerce platforms such as Amazon for their business supplies.

ROBOTICS AS A SUBTREND Within this megatrend, there are subtrends such as robotics that are ultimately expected to become megatrends in their own right. Other interesting technological applications that are worth investigating include artificial intelligence, augmented reality, blockchain, drones, Internet of Things (IoT) and 3D printing. Some of these such as the IoT and 3D printing are already providing opportunities for the OP sector.

CBRE Americas’ Levy suggests that this new world will involve competing on services, not goods, explaining that just selling goods at a lower cost is a short-term outlook. “What are you really selling?

You’re selling communication tools, so you’re now in the communications business. The Internet of Things is important when talking about supplying an office with both facilities management and business supplies as everything is becoming interconnected.”

On the flipside, as Brother’s Jones points out, people will also seek escapism from technology to reconnect with the ‘real world’. “Pens, paper and printouts will still play an important role in the digital detox of individuals wanting to avoid infobesity (data overload),” he says.

Incidentally, in OPI’s Q1 OP Business Confidence Survey, all respondents said technology would have a major impact on the OP industry in the coming years – this is backed up by a recent opi.net poll (see News, page 8).

Pens, paper and printouts will still play an important role in the digital detox of individuals wanting to avoid infobesity” These procedures are already evident from the increasing numbers of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green office buildings that are being constructed globally. Environmental efforts are also extending to business supplies.

While there is a shift away from traditional office products, including paper, there will be growth in environmentally-friendly products, particularly ones that have been manufactured from recycled material or with renewable energy.

Preventing, or at least managing, climate change through limiting greenhouse gases has become a major focus with the signing of the historic Paris Agreement which came into effect late last year.

And back in 2015, the original eight Millennium Development Goals were replaced by 17 Sustainable Development Goals as part of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

As governments around the world get to work achieving these environmental goals, legislation and regulations, it is likely to act as an accelerant in terms of what businesses will have to comply with in the future.

HOT TOPIC Megatrends

CLIMATE CHANGE The impact of climate change goes beyond just a shift in weather patterns. A Leadership 2030 report by global management consulting firm Hay Group states that growing industrial and residential waste in developing countries will further aggravate the issues caused by rising CO2 emissions and temperatures.

PwC paints a pretty bleak picture of the future in terms of resources, pushing home the fact that as the overall global population continues to rise, by 2030 there will be a 35% increase in the need for food.

The net effect is that, globally, demand for water will rise by 40% and energy by 50%, meaning the world faces the very real threat of conflicts over increasingly scarce resources.

Good environmental practices and sustainability as part of long-term business strategies are becoming the norm. “This is particularly the case for those businesses that want to attract and retain environmentally conscious millennial workers,” says Frost & Sullivan’s Walker.

She adds that advanced measures of sustainability will define new office construction and retrofits.

URBANISATION Globalisation has led to the explosion of urbanisation and the creation of megacities (populations of over ten million), such as Tokyo, Mexico City, New York, Delhi, London and Shanghai. Currently, more than half the world resides in an urban area with the influx of people from rural areas continuing to grow – there are estimates of over one million people in mostly African and Asian countries migrating each week into urban areas. The prediction is that almost 80% of the global population will be in urban centres by 2050.

According to Frost & Sullivan, for many European countries just one megacity can contribute at least 30% to GDP. These giant urban centres also create megamarkets with business concentrated in these hubs. “This could impact logistics, placement of warehouses and locations for bricks-and-mortar stores,” says Walker. In the near future, it is expected that some megacities will turn into megaregions – Sao Paulo and Rio de Janerio is a prime example.

On a micro scale, VOW’s McManus explains that office space is becoming more multifunctional as companies look to fit more in and do more within existing spaces. “This filters through to how staff and employers have changed their expectations of the humble office by demanding more domestic comfort and design-led features and leaning toward more of a leisure and hospitality environment.”

MEGATRENDS TASTER While all of the above is a mere introductory taster to megatrends, it illustrates where the world is heading.

The difference now is that the pace of change has been greatly accelerated due mainly to technology, meaning businesses must respond faster than ever before. What is also abundantly clear is that none of these megatrends work in isolation – they are all completely interdependent on one another, which Levy sums up quite nicely as “a seamless web”.

For more on megatrends, please visit the Magazine section on opi.net.

March 2017 23

VENDOR FOCUS

Special Issue

In pursuit

OF EXCELLENCE

VENDOR SPECIAL

In OPI’s second Vendor Special issue, Michelle Sturman is putting the spotlight on companies that have excelled in one or more specific areas over the past 12 months

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www.opi.net

hile some may bemoan the lack of innovation in the business supplies industry, in reality all they have to do is simply have a good look around. There are still plenty of vendors that are driving transformation, be it through new product design, technology or functionality, by realigning the business or laying the groundwork for the future through acquisitions.

To ensure the vendors featured in the following pages are truly worthy of inclusion, OPI asked for anonymous feedback from the industry – wholesalers, resellers and dealer groups – from around the world. The final selection, perhaps predictably, includes some of the biggest names in office products. Judging by the responses received, however, there’s certainly an expectation that some of the companies put forward which are relative newcomers to our sector right now are likely to play a much more important role in the not too distant future – and that’s always a good sign in an industry on the move.

The manufacturers featured this year certainly earned the right to be included and are (in no particular order): Epson, Emerald Brand, Fellowes Brands, Newell Brands, International Paper and Acme United.

New for this year are the ‘Ones to watch’ – companies that should be on everyone’s radar.

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Global technology manufacturer Epson has made giant strides in terms of pushing the boundaries of technology, most notably in its Printer division with its high-capacity ink tank printers that include replaceable ink pack system (RIPS) and EcoTanks.

Its innovations have clearly struck a chord with customers as Epson revealed last year that these high-capacity ink tank printers had achieved cumulative global sales of 15 million units since their launch in 2010.

The company attributed the success to a number of factors, including the ability to print thousands of pages before refilling, and ultra-low-cost per print. Going forward, Epson expects these printers

[Epson] has certainly upped its game in terms of lowering the environmental impact across its manufacturing processes

to account for almost 40% of the company’s inkjet printer sales.

Recognising the innovation, Epson Europe has been shortlisted for a European Office Products Award (EOPA) 2017 in the Business Product of the Year category for its WorkForce Pro RIPS series.

Members of the industry have further applauded the vendor’s efforts in sustainability – which includes all of the above print innovations – and in particular its work in Australia with Planet Ark on cartridge recycling.

Epson is also in the process of bringing to market the world’s first compact office papermaking system, which will be demonstrated in Europe later this year.

PaperLab is capable of producing new paper from securely-shredded waste paper with minimal use of water, and can produce thousands of sheets of recycled paper a day.

The vendor has certainly upped its game in terms of lowering the environmental impact across its manufacturing processes and Epson President Minoru Usui was quoted recently as saying that as part of the company’s Environmental Vision 2050, it has set itself a goal of reducing its CO2 emissions by 90% across the lifecycle of all its products and services.

The company already achieved by 2015 a 43% reduction in CO2 emissions, on top of a 33% reduction in waste emissions, and a 55% reduction in water consumption.

Last year saw the vendor release its 2025 corporate vision which is to create a “connected age of people, things and information with efficient, compact and precision technologies that generate value to customers in the form of smart technologies, the environment and performance in four areas of innovation: inkjet, visual, wearables and robotics”.

VENDOR FOCUS Manufacturer Excellence

EPSON

EMERALD BRAND He expects to see further expansion as more of the company’s production moves to the US this year: “We anticipate even greater growth in acquiring new customers as well as improving our retention rates.”

B2B retention rates are already at 93% and no doubt Emerald will continue to work hard to improve them over the coming year.

We anticipate even greater growth in acquiring new customers as well as improving our retention rates

March 2017

Sustainable product manufacturer Emerald Brand has spent the past year bedding down its e-commerce plans and that is currently paying serious dividends.

The company now has partnerships with major e-commerce outfits such as Amazon, Shoplet, Max Delivery and Jet.com.

On Amazon, Emerald saw sales rise by 207% year on year in 2016 compared to 2015. On Shoplet, the vendor offers a full branded line of more than 200 products ranging from tree-free paper to environmenally-friendly cleaners. Emerald Brand Managing Director Ralph Bianculli Jr says the company’s focus and growth in e-commerce is due to a number of factors.

The first is the general increase in online ordering, particularly from the millennial generation. The second is due to the growing appetite over the past five years for healthier, more sustainable products.

Bianculli also refers to the connection between price points, the quality of sustainable products and the desire to purchase them. “We continue to narrow the gap compared to traditional, or less sustainable products, and are seeing a linear demand increase and growth reflection,” he says.

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Manufacturer Excellence VENDOR FOCUS

FELLOWES BRANDS Fellowes Brands is a rarity these days – as it celebrates 100 years in business it’s still family-owned and run.

One of the main reasons the company still exists after a century is its ability to recognise gaps in the market as well as innovate in areas where many would think it difficult, such as its traditional shredder business. At the end of last year, Fellowes was granted yet another patent to protect new technology related to this segment – the latest in a line of more than 50 shredder utility approvals and applications.

The true genius behind the company, however, lies in its ability to think laterally and successfully manoeuvre into new categories. In the past few years, Fellowes has started the shift away from a reliance on the declining paper category and into the burgeoning ‘health and wellness in the office’ space, especially ergonomics.

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Given our 100-year history, the need to evolve is not new to us

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One of its most successful forays outside of its original Bankers Box is the AeraMax air purifying series, one of which – the AeraMax Pro AM III – won both the EOPA and North American Office Products Awards 2016 for Product Innovation of the Year. Talking to OPI, Fellowes CEO John Fellowes says: “Over the past five years, Fellowes has very intentionally responded to industry-wide trends which has impacted end-user demand for paper-based products, as well as changed how consumers research and purchase products. Given our 100-year history, the need to evolve is not new to us and we have learned to approach these sorts of situations as opportunities.

“Today, we are in the midst of running two growth strategies, one that draws from our expertise and capabilities in maximising mature categories, and one which is more entrepreneurial in nature – focused on emerging trends and new category opportunities. These two strategies are providing both short and long-term opportunities for our organisation to thrive as we move into our second century as a family-led business.”

Breaking into even more new categories, Fellowes has kicked off this year with the launch of its Lotus sit-stand workstation. According to industry members, it certainly lives up to its tagline ‘Innovation in Motion’, not only in terms of the products it offers, but also in its way of selling and developing these new categories.

NEWELL BRANDS

2016 was a huge year for Newell Brands, not least because of its renaming from Newell Rubbermaid after it acquired the Jarden brand in April, creating a $16 billion company.

Restructuring of the company has taken place in various stages over the past year, all designed to simplify the newly-merged business.

As part of its streamlining, Newell has been busy offloading numerous divisions including its Rubbermaid consumer storage totes business, Pine Mountain business and selective parts of its Diamond brand that comprises lighters and its laundry business.

At the same time, the company has been boosting other divisions with the acquisitions of food storage container manufacturer Sistema Plastics in New Zealand, and Smith Mountain Industries, which owns the Woodwick Candle brand.

Newell is clearly not resting on its laurels when it comes to tackling changing buying habits In its February 2017 earnings call, CEO Michael Polk said the company’s new corporate strategy strengthens its overall portfolio while focusing resources on the categories with the “greatest right to win”. He added that the new strategy allows for investment in “growth capabilities like insights, design and innovation”.

Adjusting for acquisitions and the divesture of 10% of its portfolio, Newell has shifted much of its original bulk and trimmed down from 32 to 16 divisions.

Under the restructuring, Newell has created a new global enterprise-wide e-commerce unit which, when fully staffed, will be 300+ strong.

With a team that focused, Newell is clearly not resting on its laurels when it comes to tackling changing buying habits. The company’s online sales have grown over 30% over the past three years and currently sit at over $1 billion – Polk’s aim is to double this revenue by 2020.

Amid all this transformation, Newell has still managed to keep an eye on product innovation.

Two of its label writers, the DYMO LabelWriter 450 and the MobileLabeler, have been shortlisted for the Business Product and Innovation of the Year award categories at this year’s EOPA.

Manufacturer Excellence VENDOR FOCUS

INTERNATIONAL PAPER International Paper (IP) is one business supplies vendor that continually crops up as leader in sustainability. It is often held up as a beacon for others to try and emulate.

It is doubly important for a paper company to have sound environmental credentials as this specific industry sector has come under continuous fire. But IP has no such concerns and always punches above its weight on important environmental benchmarks.

Guided by its Vision 2020 Goals which were set in 2010, its 12 voluntary objectives include energy efficiency, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water use, fibre certification, recycling, supply chain and community involvement.

Some of the accomplishments so far – against the 2010 baseline until 2015 – include a 4.7% improvement in energy efficiency; 16% reduction in GHG emissions; 28% rise in certified fibre volume; 3% increase in the recovery of old corrugated containers for recycling; and $15.5 million donated to charitable organisations.

In October last year, the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) honoured IP with a Leadership Award for forest certification which recognises extraordinary commitment to responsible forest management and the FSC. Taking its FSC membership very seriously, IP developed its own FSC forest management group, Certified Forest Management (CFM), which along with its support of supplier-based FSC groups, has influenced the growth of over one million acres of FSC lands in the US. But the company’s success is not all about sustainability. The slow decline of the paper industry has seen IP expand into other related categories such as packaging and pulp. In December 2016, the manufacturer acquired Weyerhaeuser’s pulp business for $2.2 billion. The deal includes five mills

IP was once again named as one of ‘America’s most admired companies’ by Fortune magazine and two converting facilities to produce consumer products including tissue.

The business is also ensuring that its brand is widely available, and last year signed up to become the first print and copy vendor to join Amazon’s Dash Button automatic replenishment programme.

Last month, IP was once again named as one of ‘America’s most admired companies’ by Fortune magazine – an accolade it has been awarded 14 times in the past 15 years. Criteria for inclusion include quality of management, innovativeness, quality of products, effectiveness in doing business globally, and social responsibility to the community and the environment.

ACME UNITED

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The past 12 months for Acme United have been about steadily building upon its previous success in new categories. In February 2016, the vendor acquired Diamond Machining Technology (DMT), a sharpening company which was designed to complement its existing Westcott, Camillus and Cuda brands.

Over the year, all of its product lines, including those from acquisitions, have done exceeding well, leading Acme to a number of record-breaking quarters.

It will be interesting to see how its latest purchase, Spill Magic, fares over the coming 12 months. The safety firm was purchased in February for $7.2 million and includes products designed specifically for the medical supplies industry.

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Innovation is definitely our biggest differentiator

In fact, first aid products represent over 40% of its corporate sales and Acme is widely recognised as one of the top suppliers in North America.

To retain its cutting-edge position, it not only ensures growth through complementary category expansion, but also by introducing add-ons such as a phone app that replenishes products by creating an automatic order when a barcode is scanned. Acme CEO Walter Johnsen told OPI: “Innovation is definitely our biggest differentiator. It is real here and we mean it.”

Acme’s current focus is in the hobbycraft and DIY sector, with its recently launched tool line and glue guns.

The following vendors are worthy of inclusion for a wide variety of reasons, including category diversification and technological innovation – or for simply being on-trend SMEAD MANUFACTURING

North American OP vendor Smead is a stalwart of the industry and it’s always been highly-respected since its founding in 1906, and under successive generations of the Hoffman family.

Last year, the company celebrated 110 years in business, as well as the handing over to the next generation with the promotion of Casey Avent to the position of President exactly 18 years after his mother Sharon Avent (née Hoffman) became President/CEO. The manufacturer has signalled its intent to expand the business through actively pursuing acquisitions this year, something it has done (mostly) successfully throughout its history. Smead will also continue its ongoing successful diversification into adjacent categories beyond its traditional paper-based organisational products.

VENDOR FOCUS Manufacturer Excellence

Ones to WATCH

HP INC

Now that HP Inc is settling down in its own skin and is in charge of its own destiny, it is concentrating on turning around the business. The includes the launch of products into expected growth categories such as 3D printing and what the company calls ‘blended reality’, which comprises the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. The PC and printer manufacturer has also been sorting out its divisions in terms of restructuring and realigning its partner channel. And let’s not forget HP’s acquisition of Samsung’s printer business which is expected to close later this year.

SAFCO

Celebrating its 50th anniversary last year, Safco is sitting pretty as the requirement for ergonomic office furniture explodes, thanks to the health and wellness trend in the office. It’s not just riding the wave however, but has also made a few decisions recently that sets it up strategically for the future.

In August 2016, Safco agreed to buy fellow office furniture brand Mayline, while a few months prior to this, it acquired Focal Upright, an award-winning manufacturer of ergonomic office furniture.

CEP OFFICE SOLUTIONS

CEP is definitely one to watch in terms of desktop products as it continues to innovate in this category at every turn. It has also successfully branched out into other categories and is now well-known for its ‘Take a Break’ beverage solution for the breakroom. In the past year, the France-based manufacturer has further released products that include wireless charging stations for smartphones, ‘Take Care’ safety stickers and the stylish Ellypse Xtra Strong desktop accessories range (see page 36 for our Spotlight on CEP).

THE NAVIGATOR COMPANY

March 2017

2016 was a stirling year for The Navigator Company. The paper manufacturer – formerly known as grupo Portucel Soporcel until February 2016 – posted record paper volumes and was named the number one paper brand in Europe following an Opticom study on customer recognition.

Navigator has also been shortlisted for the Product Development of the Year category at this year’s EOPA for its Advanced paper product.

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INTERVIEW

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VENDOR SPECIAL

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choen & Associates is a manufacturer rep group that’s been going in the US market for just over 60 years. Plenty has happened in those years, but the group’s core premise remains the same: to help manufacturers sell product.

OPI’s Heike Dieckmann speaks to President Kevin Schoen about the evolution of rep groups and why they still have an important role to play.

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OPI: What do you believe is the overall value of a manufacturer rep group in today’s business products industry?

Kevin Schoen: Manufacturer rep groups have many services that they offer, but it’s important to realise that each manufacturer has different needs depending on their size, where they fit in the industry, their amount of distribution, etc. The one common denominator is that every manufacturer I talk to needs help launching products or getting more share on existing ones.

Some of the core values of a rep group include multiple line selling, feet on the street and flexibility.

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OPI: Your group has been around for 60 years.

What was your focus back then and what’s your core USP now – has it changed much?

KS: Schoen & Associates was started 60 years ago by my father Fred Schoen who was employed by Sanford Ink as a New York City sales rep. He put together a few lines and moved back to Chicago to represent these in 13 states.

Today, we cover 17 states in the Midwest, with nine field sales people and one office staff, representing 15 manufacturers. We have made five acquisitions of other rep groups which have given us relationships in the jan/san, tech and contract furniture channels. Our current focus is in furniture where we can provide the most value.

But to properly answer your question, our core USP now and 60 years ago rests with our relationships in and knowledge of the marketplace. Information is everything in this business – without it you are a rudderless ship.

What is different today is that the information changes daily if not hourly. The industry, back when we started in 1956, was almost all privately-held small to medium-sized manufacturers. They operated in an abundant range of products that were demanded by consumers. Generally, suppliers manufactured these products in the US, with a lot of custom-manufacturing taking place as well.

Today, because of smart devices and technology, companies need far fewer products. This shrinking range has put more margin pressure on the remaining items. Also, a good percentage of products are not produced in the US anymore, so manufacturers provide less value when they import the products just like their competitors do. In fact, in many cases large distributors are able to have their private label products produced by the same import manufacturers.

Consequently, the value of the manufacturer lies with logistics and new product development.

Rep groups provide a lower cost of sales because of their shared resource environment

Kevin Schoen, son of Schoen & Associates founder Fred Schoen

OPI: What’s the biggest challenge you have?

KS: A rep group is usually organised around just a few manufacturers. This leaves us very vulnerable to being reduced in a short time. We have endured several of these situations where we lost our key line and had to find another to continue.

In terms of the bigger picture, we are constantly looking for ways to add value to our manufacturer’s selling proposition and for the customer we call on.

Some would suggest we are adding cost but that’s not true. In the words of United Stationers [now Essendant] founder Howard Wolf: “You can replace the wholesaler but you cannot replace the function.” It’s the same for us – you can delete the manufacturer’s representative but you cannot delete the function.

Someone, somewhere has to do the work and bear the expense. My view is that rep groups provide a lower cost of sales because of their shared resource environment. There is no other, more efficient way.

OPI: What do you think is the value of a regional versus a national group?

KS: I believe it’s in the best interest of a manufacturer to have 4-8 independent rep groups to cover the US and manage them with one employee of the company. Too many times I have seen a national rep group take on a manufacturer and neglect certain areas. When the manufacturer wants to leave it’s a huge problem. We will provide the service of putting national coverage together and providing oversight, but in my opinion the manufacturer needs to have an individual responsible for results.

FEATURE Special Issue

FACILITIES SUPPLIES Special Issue

FACILITIES SUPPLIES

Special Issue

FACILITIES SUPPLIES Special Issue

It might seem a straightforward proposition from the outset. But manufacturers outsourcing part or all of their sales function is Special Issue anything but simple, as OPI’s Heike Dieckmann finds out VENDOR

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firm staple of the North American office products landscape, manufacturer rep groups have evolved enormously over the years (see also ‘Adding to the value chain’, page 32), so much so that their definition is often changed to the more comprehensive term of sales and marketing or brand advocacy agencies.

And that is because the scope of their services has expanded in terms of technology expertise, call reporting, product reach – just think of all the adjacent categories in our industry right now – brand representation into more channels, as well as straightforward research and marketing assistance.

Does that make them more invaluable to the manufacturing community than ever then? Not necessarily so. OPI spoke to a range of global vendors, many of which work with rep groups (to stick with that term for now) in various guises. The issues are plentiful and there is simply no one-size-fits-all.

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NORTH AMERICA STRONGHOLD North America is indisputably the biggest stomping ground for rep groups, for the very simple reason – apart from history – that both the US and Canada are vast geographic markets difficult for manufacturers to penetrate comprehensively from a sales point of view.

It’s interesting in this context actually that Australia – equally vast – has no comparable groups at all, at least not in our industry; it’s a concept that simply hasn’t made any headway there.

Some vendors use rep groups – regional or national – to attack local markets and/or independent dealers while they still maintain national account coverage of the larger resellers and wholesalers through their own sales force, a kind of head office/big box customer versus branch office/small customer attitude. And given that especially the traditional vendors work in shrinking product categories with ever-tightening margins, outsourcing all or part of the sales function appears like a cost-effective solution.

SPECIAL

VENDOR SPECIAL

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VENDOR SPECIAL

Synergistic multiple line selling is often quoted as one of the core USPs of rep groups. But while the economic benefits of this theory are solid and proven, the practice sometimes looks a little different. As one Canada-based global manufacturer told OPI: “Multiple line selling means you may only be getting one fifth, sixth or seventh of a buyer’s attention or the rep’s time.

Multiple line selling means you may only be getting one fifth, sixth or seventh of a buyer’s attention or the rep’s time “Also, what happens is that big customers like Staples or Office Depot have partnership programmes that you must sign up for in order to work with their sales force out of the branch offices.

These additional programmes can be quite costly and may vary by vendor. But it makes the use of any third-party sales reps, even at branch level, almost impossible. Vendor sales reps are very protective of their customer relationships and will only work with rep groups if head office approves although that is still no guarantee the reseller will actually take you.”

The ‘advantage’ of multiple line selling is similarly lost on Jacques Merabtene, owner of Novart & Partners, one of the largest sales agencies for print, paper and packaging brands as well as educational supplies in France. And while he also talks about the big box customers – the biggest revenue generators for his group – the reason is very different.

He says: “Our sales people used to represent several manufacturers, but that has completely changed. The buyers at Staples, Depot and Carrefour are in charge of many more product categories now.

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WHO’S PAYING? Indeed, commission-only agreements among established and service-focused rep groups, certainly in the mature OP markets, are becoming a thing of the past, with flat fees topped up by commission rates being the favoured route now. The fundamental proposition of groups to manufacturers is to fund their representation out of the growth generated by increased sales. Achieving that is no mean feat in a declining market.

And it takes time, says Merabtene, pointing out that there’s typically at least a two-year delay before any real results can be expected. Novart works on the basis of a high flat fee/small commission in the first year, lower flat fee/higher commission in the second year and commission-only from year three.

The company works 100% with manufacturers that want to enter the French market – mostly Germany and Canada currently – as opposed to native manufacturers wishing to grow in their own market.

I’m [...] not sure I’m ready to relinquish my brand to a third party top to bottom

FEATURE Manufacturer Rep Groups

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As such, their time is more precious than ever, you have to wait months for a meeting and then you only get a limited time period of, say, an hour. In that time you cannot feasibly and comprehensively represent and show the products of two or three companies.

Times have changed.”

Trust remains a big hurdle and that appears hard to overcome. As one global, UK-based vendor explains to OPI: “We’ve used rep groups, but on a very targeted basis, ie we had an initiative we wanted to launch, like a 12-week campaign in the dealer channel. It was short and hard-hitting and that to me seems more cost-effective than the all-encompassing brand representation that a company like Highlands offers. I’m also not sure I’m ready to relinquish my brand to a third party top to bottom, from commercial negotiations with the wholesaler through to a monthly promotion with a local dealer.”

In that statement lies a real challenge as well as opportunity. A company like Highlands, which is very well established in North America, but remains a relative newcomer to Europe where the rep group concept exists but is not as prolific, is battling engrained attitudes and very different demographics as well as the fruits of its own success. Given the broad scope of its solutions, there clearly needs to be a cost associated with that as well.

That’s not to say that the concept of commission-only sales reps is dead, however. Single or multi-brand commission-only sales agencies – often just one or two-man bands operating out of a family home – are alive and well especially in many southern European countries like Italy and Spain.

The OP markets there are hugely fragmented, with thousands of small papelarias dotted around the country and historically a limited wholesaling channel (which has changed now with the likes of ADVEO).

These type of activities might not have the sophistication and services of a Highlands but, as one pan-European vendor pointed out to OPI, it might actually be a more suitable solution in certain markets.

There are many reasons why manufacturers might contemplate employing the services of a third-part sales rep group: • Cutting cost on their own sales function • Keeping a foot in the door in low/no-growth categories • Expanding into new geographic markets • Penetrating a particular existing channel more deeply with the aim of generating higher sales (like the dealer channel) • Entering new distribution channels (like the discount or mass market) • Reaching into new verticals/industries with high-growth products (the industrial sector, healthcare) All but the first two points are progressive and require finding rep groups that have the specific expertise needed to address the challenge, be that in terms of technology, marketing, contacts or product expertise. And if those groups have skills that the vendors don’t have, perhaps the all-important trust will follow.

March 2017

Visit opi.net/highlands for an exclusive interview with Highlands’ Bob O’Gara and Gordon Christiansen where they will discuss the changing face of rep groups, the need to move away from traditional OP and the requirement to become a strategic partner rather than merely an outsourced sales person.

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Special Issue SPOTLIGHT

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Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

VENDOR SPECIAL

The key

conCEPt

CEP’s bold decision to expand its export market and diversify is now paying off, as David Holes explains

EP Office Solutions is well known for its range of desktop accessories, but it has recently found success in other OP categories, including breakroom, lighting and technology products. The man behind the company’s transformation, vision, strategy and future plans is Managing Director Cédrik Longin.

CEP is a business that was founded in 1923. In 1985, it was bought by current CEO Gery Dambricourt. Its headquarters and four main factories are situated in the Auvergne region of central France, with a further facility in Bayonne, in the south-west of the country. It has also recently opened its own manufacturing plant in China dedicated to the production of LED lamps, one of the new product lines in the company.

The company employs 245 people, many of whom have been with the company for 15 years or more. Indeed, Longin attributes much of CEP’s success to this accumulation of experience and long-term dedication from the workforce, though he acknowledges that there’s also a need to attract ‘new blood’ and bring in fresh ideas.

WORLD VIEW Today, more than 95% of the company’s sales are generated within Europe, but exports to North America, Africa, China and Australia are seeing double-digit growth thanks to CEP’s continued drive for international expansion.

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Our strategy is to partner with specialist suppliers where we see something unique, but also to manufacture products in-house where we can

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However, that wasn’t always the case. When Longin joined the company in 1999 as International Key Accounts Manager, CEP was mainly focused on the French market, with export sales only accounting for 8% of the total value of the business, compared to 43% now. He was given the responsibility by then Managing Director Etienne Béchet de Balan to build revenues outside its home nation, a task he admits was a huge challenge.

Mark Gartner

PARTNERSHIP APPROACH Parallel to this, Longin investigated the possibilities of developing partnerships with other producers. The first of these occurred in the same year – 2009 – with British firm Strata, a manufacturer of plastic storage boxes, and it proved mutually beneficial. As Longin explains: “This was an ideal complementary product to our range that had the benefit of not just being linked to sheets of paper – you can store anything in a plastic box. It was very popular in the UK, but not well known in mainland Europe, so presented great opportunities. It’s been a massive success.”

CEP decided to repeat this strategy, looking to partner with others producers that operated in niche markets where quality and innovation were key. In time, new ranges including clocks (AIC), hygienic bins (Rossignol), plastic cupboards (ABM) whiteboards (Rocada) and light therapy (Dayvia) were added to the catalogue. A recent partnership with Belgian firm Office Deco has also brought decorative products into the portfolio.

“Our strategy is to partner with specialist suppliers where we see something unique, but also to manufacture products in-house where we can,” says Longin. “Our Take-a-Break range of accessories for tea/coffee breaks is a good example of the latter, as is our new ‘Take Care’ range of safety stickers. Our goal is to spot a gap in the market and fill it with a solution.”

March 2017

SHIFT IN FOCUS CEP’s core business is still in traditional desktop accessories, but Longin realises that those days are numbered in the long term. Focusing on key areas that either won’t be affected by digitisation or which complement it is vital, he explains: “An office

will always need lighting, breakroom products and signage, for example.” The company’s decision to branch into LED lamps – some also including charging ports – is a good example of this philosophy.

CEP’s desire to concentrate on technologicallyadvanced lines is further evidenced by its current focus on QI charging products – the ability to recharge mobile devices wirelessly. “When you see this demonstrated for the first time it looks like magic,” Longin says. “We’ve had excellent feedback and many listings – it provides a simple solution to the perennial problem of limited battery life in portable technology. Just place your device on a charging pad when you’re not using it and it’s constantly topped up.”

As might be expected, plagiarism is a constant issue – competitors are quick to spot a good idea and produce their own range of copycat products. “This has already happened with our Take-a-Break range,” comments Longin. “However, we do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...”

Surprisingly, he doesn’t see cheap imports from Southeast Asia as a major threat as CEP’s core products – bins, trays, magazine racks – are all quite bulky. “Importing these products involves transporting a lot of empty space,” he explains. “This tends to make it uneconomic to ship them over large distances and somewhat protects our home market.”

What is a far greater problem, he explains, is LED lamp consolidation within the OP with QI industry – the disappearance charging pad of many big names and the concentration of purchasing power within fewer, increasingly larger, resellers makes market conditions riskier each year.

Longin’s role has developed in line with the company’s successful transformation and he became Managing Director of CEP in 2013.

Despite the threats and challenges that the future holds he remains optimistic.

His vision of an expanding product line and an increasingly international outlook has proved a success and puts CEP on a firm footing as it moves forward.

CEP OFFICE SOLUTIONS

Cédrik Longin in CEP’s factory in Thiers, France

That said, thanks to the quality of the products, the support of dedicated teams and a customer-centric outlook, export sales began to develop at a fast pace.

Longin was promoted to Export Sales Director in 2006 and progressively assembled a team of talented and multicultural export area managers.

Though the company is now a leading European manufacturer of desktop accessories, it was hit hard by the consequences of the worldwide financial crash. A 30% drop in sales during the first quarter of 2009 brought the imperative need for diversification sharply into focus.

Longin saw that the company’s core business of desktop accessories was declining by over 3% year on year and if CEP was to prosper in the future it would have to diversify. Getting that message across internally was a tough undertaking, he admits.

But he received backing for his plans and became International Sales Director in 2009, with responsibility both for the company’s French and international markets. He directed his team – which he describes as “brilliant and incredibly committed” – to focus on innovative and adjacent product segments that would be unaffected by an increasingly digital and paperless world, while also developing new lines which fully embraced emerging technologies.

SPOTLIGHT

Right: CEP’s new range of safety stickers

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VENDOR PROFILE

INSPIRING

communication V

Visual communications category leader Bi-silque is celebrating yet another year of impressive growth as it continues to embrace and stay ahead of an ever-changing OP environment

isual communications (viscom) leader Bi-silque is busy securing its future for both the company and its resellers through a strategy of product innovation, category and customer expansion, and digital transformation.

Its laser-like focus is now paying huge dividends, but the manufacturer is certainly not resting on its laurels as OPI finds out from Bi-silque Chief Commercial Officer Beth Wright.

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OPI: The past year has been incredibly successful for Bi-silque in terms of growth – what have been some of the highlights?

Beth Wright: 2016 was another double-digit growth year for the company. This past year was also another year of physical expansion as we opened two additional factories in Portugal to accommodate the growth in new product manufacturing and expansion of current business.

Our export volumes are higher than ever, with our US business growing 48% domestically last year. Therefore the need to expand our logistics capabilities was critical. In 2017, we will build a state-of-the-art logistics facility of over 300,000 sq ft (30,000 sq m) as well as expand our factory again with over 100,000 sq ft of new space.

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OPI: What are the current trends in viscom?

BW: The major themes relate to open office space and the movement towards improved employee collaboration. Products that are focused on mobility

are growing significantly, as well as those that feature noise-cancelling properties. Glass surfaces are also increasing in popularity as they give a ‘best-in-class’ writing experience with a sleek, modern aesthetic.

The Back2Chalk collection is perfect for hospitality environments

OPI: How does Bi-silque stay ahead of the curve?

BW: Our focus is on providing solutions for the challenges end users face in their workplaces, facilities, schools and homes. We continue to invest in consumer research in key vertical markets to design and manufacture the most relevant product to suit a particular consumer need.

OPI: The industry is moving away from traditional OP into ‘beyond office supplies’. How are you supporting your resellers in this?

BW: We know our reseller partners are experiencing growth and margin pressure across their business, therefore we closely monitor and follow the current selling trends that our customers are focusing on.

Increased end-user segmentation is one way in which we are further developing our marketing material. In addition, we’ve found that targeted product development is helping to grow our resellers’ business, and it also provides a healthy margin for them.

Our new industrial range of products tackle everything from production planning through custom boards used by consultants implementing projects in Lean manufacturing plants. Since we make our products in-house, we have the ability to react swiftly

STILL SEEING GREEN

to market trends and provide our customers with more products to sell in this and other segments.

With the newly-changed administration, we believe the corporate sector in the coming years will be a growth area due to policies related to infrastructure in the US market. We stock a full solution in this space that will help project-based resellers take advantage of this predicted upswing. We also believe our Trade Agreements Act compliance is more of an advantage than ever in this business climate.

Other segmentation includes the healthcare space with custom boards and an antimicrobial assortment – great for hospitals, laboratories and foodservice.

Displaying metrics and KPIs are critical in any industrial environment

Increased end-user segmentation is one way in which we are further developing our marketing material The education market is also a strong area of growth for Bi-silque and our customers. The recent hiring of education specialist salesforces by many of our reseller partners enables us to bring to market our products in a more focused effort. We produce joint collateral for many of our partners in this space, including a co-branded, full-line education primary years catalogue.

OPI: You mention customer segmentation – is this helping Bi-silque to expand its customer base?

BW: Expanding and differentiating our customer base is certainly a key part of our strategy. We have made heavy investments in new products as previously discussed to broaden our range targeted to pure-play customers such as Grainger/Cromwell, Manutan, B2B Partner and other industrial accounts in our global customer base.

For 2017 and beyond, we are once again innovating by developing our high-end range and branching out into products that satisfy the architectural and

Creation Station: the best in mobility with adjustable height for the primary years

March 2017

Resellers that are looking for solutions to answer environmental concerns in the market, especially as the millennial workforce continues to grow, need companies that have sustainability as a core value.

Bi-silque’s Earth range was the first to market in the visual communication category. As one of the top-selling global ranges for the company, Bi-office/MasterVision Earth products are being sold in the public sector, education and corporate environments where sustainability is a must.

The range has expanded over the past few years and many items contain the Cradle to Cradle certification. Whether it’s the high post-consumer content of the Earth range, recycled wood processes, or factory solar energy use, Bi-silque places great value on the future of the planet.

Bi-silque

OPI: At Paperworld, you had a large selection of boards that looked more consumer oriented. Can you tell us about that?

BW: With more than half of small businesses in the US being home-based, we see this as vital for focused product development.

We have recently launched a refreshed personal board collection that has a blend of function and style focused on the home office consumer. Meg – our target persona for this collection – is a busy, work-from-home mum who balances her daily activities with her family’s busy schedules. The centre of her home is her kitchen area where an alcove serves as her personal office.

Our Simplicity collection is the perfect solution for her walls to have all she needs to post important messages, display pictures and schedules as well as her plan for the coming week.

VENDOR PROFILE

A good illustration of this can be found within our newly-launched Chalk collection which features a rustic, wide-planked, wood-framed chalkboard.

We interviewed a bar owner who recently opened a hipster bar in an upscale area of New York in the US. His interior designer used mixed materials of dark woods and metals to create an industrial NYC loft look. Understanding the needs of that bar owner who not only needed to easily change his daily specials, but also required signage that fit the decor of his bar, is critical.

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VENDOR PROFILE Bi-silque

interior design industries. Our new Archyi brand is centred on satisfying the need for high-quality and designed pieces. Some of the innovations specifically created for this range include a moulded noise reduction selection, easels made of noble materials and glass/wood LCD cabinets.

OPI: What’s your biggest strength in terms of supporting your resellers?

BW: We offer the widest assortment of viscom products in the world. With Bi-silque, they can purchase a commodity product, facilities planner, interactive board and glass revolver all from one supplier.

With the effort our partners are making in supplier consolidation, we believe this is a key competitive advantage for us and we actually make the products ourselves, not outsource the production like many competitors in our space.

HEALTHCARE SUCCESS

Bi-silque’s new custom board solution specifically designed for use in vertical markets

As we develop our strategic plan for the coming years, supporting the shift to digital is mission-critical to our business and our resellers

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We provide supply chain flexibility. Our customers can purchase our products from our strategic wholesale partners throughout the world, direct from our domestic warehouses in certain markets, or in full containers as their business dictates.

Last but not least, I believe our marketing support has significantly improved over the past 18 months.

We can provide best-in-class digital content including targeted videos, ‘how to choose’ landing pages, segmented email campaigns, relevant blogs for resellers’ own websites, as well as training for their salesforce, either live or through webinars.

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OPI: What other moves are you making to prepare Bi-silque and your customers for the future?

BW: As we develop our strategic plan for the coming years, supporting the shift to digital is mission-critical to our business and our resellers. We started this digital transformation a few years ago, but identified the need to rapidly increase its adoption. From the automation of key business functions to stay as lean as possible, to creating best-in-class content for our partners, Bi-silque will lead the way in this regard within our sector.

We realise the need to also adapt our global trading plan to fulfil the needs of our growing online customer base, as well as implement these initiatives to maintain our competitive advantage in the global viscom market. These investments are both system and human capital-related.

The addition of Danny Berendsen to our team as our Head of Global Digital Transformation Strategy will provide us with in-house expertise to rapidly build out our strategy. He will focus on moving much of our offline initiatives online through category management, content management, online trading plans and digital marketing activities.

Beth Wright is Chief Commercial Officer for Bi-silque

Bi-silque recently launched a custom board programme and website which helps resellers easily create and sell these products into vertical markets.

The healthcare market, for example, has significant demand for these types of products and has already created its first reseller success story.

WB Mason Regional Sales Manager Bryan Vanalstine says: “MasterVision was instrumental in creating a solution for a key hospital account for us.

Their custom board solution, graphic design capabilities, quality and quick shipment made this a seamless transaction for WB Mason and our end user. We were able to supply these new boards for several areas, including intensive care and the maternity ward of this hospital network.”

Bi-silque’s custom board website offers easy-to-use templates for healthcare, sports and industrial applications. Graphic design assistance is also available to dealers to help cater for any unique customer requirements.

OPI: Are there any standout markets for you in terms of growth and opportunity?

BW: This year we are focused on growing our core markets and execution of the business.

France is certainly one of the markets where our business is growing rapidly, but there is more to be accomplished. The Nordic countries are showing strong growth, and we now have our first major partner in Australia. As stated before, the US business continues to be very strong and we will work hard on the implementation of our new partnerships with the major US buying groups.

OPI: Finally, what does the future hold for Bi-silque?

BW: Our future is a bright one as we push to accomplish our mission of helping people to communicate! We understand the challenges of our resellers and are clear in our objectives to help them overcome those in our categories. Our teams are motivated and energised as we push our organisation to the next level. Throughout our building you can see our 2017 mantra ‘Because We Can’...

It’s our belief, our mission and our goal to be the world leader in visual communication products.

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HOW TO...

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Social selling DEMYSTIFIED

Social selling – core to our business we’re told and ultimately essential to its success. But what is it, how does it work and what can you expect from it? In this first part of OPI’s How to… guide to social selling, content marketing expert Thierry Gillmann takes us through the basic premise and where to go from there

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et’s set the scene. Originally understood as 2.0 forums or enhanced address books, social networks have blossomed into media or even metamedia. Their aim is to attract content – and lots of it. They want to host communities and they make most of their profit from advertising revenues, along with the database of your fans, followers, contacts and friends – all of whom belong to them.

It’s a system that came into being long before Admen. But only being interested in the traditional advertising dimension, the ‘push’ of social media, is to look at one side of the coin only. Social media have so much more to offer you: the targeted diffusion of content that belongs to you; the ability to interact with your audience; and the opportunity to develop the individual authority of your sales people and help them to develop their own network.

These all seem like fairly conventional ways of building and preparing a sales strategy, except that social selling uses new channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and any other of the many social networks. It involves identifying the target, catching the prospect’s eye and establishing contact. But with social selling,

March 2017

WHAT IS SOCIAL SELLING? Social selling is the umbrella term for all practices that consist of using social business networks to promote the performance of sales teams.

Sylvie Lachkar, Social Selling Evangelist at SAP and author of Social Selling Explained To My Boss, presents it like this: “Social selling enables sales people to improve their performance by using social media”. In other words, it’s not a revolution, but simply a new channel used by sales teams.

Social selling enables sales people to find new prospects via social media, facilitate contact with them, initiate an appointment more easily and then to enrich the way that appointment pans out and make the process smoother.

Contrary to what it sounds like, social selling is not a method of online selling. Instead, it’s a sales facilitator that takes advantage of new business customs as well as new tools that are now accessible to sales teams.

For a sales person, social selling is about: • observing and locating new prospects and customers • developing a position in social media that is professional and reassuring for the target audience • looking for the right people to talk to • interacting with prospects, based on relevant details gathered in advance.

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Social Selling HOW TO...

the ‘boots and all’ approach does not work. Sales people in too much of a hurry will find the door slammed firmly in their face!

MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL Social selling can be a difficult things to implement, because rather than selling something straightaway, sales people have to really understand how they can best serve the needs of their customers. Yes, ultimately there’s a product being bought, but the journey is about the soft-sell of trust and relevance.

It means putting the target in the centre of the relationship until such time as the sales person manages to become indispensable. By being more interesting… than interested.

Caroline Sautereau, Web and Social Media Manager at Edenred, a global leader in prepaid corporate services, confirms this paradigm shift: “What we invite our teams to sell using this process is not our products, but our company’s expertise and what goes with it.”

Old Sales Model

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Cold Calls

Sales Demos

Sales 1.0

What we invite our teams to sell using this process is not our products, but our company’s expertise and what goes with it

www.opi.net

WHERE DO YOU START? First and foremost, start by focusing on your target audience. Who are your customers? What do they have in common? What’s happening in their market?

What are their business-related questions? What’s on-trend for them at the moment? The Persona method of identifying customers and prospects is very much part of the process.

You need to get your own profile right – that magic encapsulation of you that describes you on a social network: your photo, who you are and what you have to share. Once you’ve done that, all you have to do is share content regularly on the social network that focuses best on the concerns of your new business prospects. The next step is networking per se.

The bigger the sales person’s social network, the easier it will be to make contact. And the more the content is relevant to the prospect, the more sales people can become a useful point of contact. They know who works where and with whom. They also know how close they are to these targets and what the chances of becoming a useful intermediary are. And when all that is in place, they can even try to make a direct contact.

These days, most CRM and marketing automation solutions include social networks. Independently or – better still – combined, here are some useful social selling tools:

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New Sales Model Social Networks

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Social Sales Educate

Engage

• Sharing content Curation tools enable you to share observations of your target audiences. The best known of these tools is Scoop.it: based on your keywords, Scoop.it suggests a range of new publications online each day.

The ones approved by Scoop.it can then be shared automatically across a group of selected social media.

Other tools include Mention or, to a lesser extent, Inoreader or RSS aggregator tool Feedly.

• Distributing content You can automate the distribution of your curation or blog content on the social networks of your work colleagues, adding in simple rules such as frequency and periodicity, as well as propitious times during the day. You can give preference to one network over another using keywords and you can add hashtags.

All of this is part of social media marketing automation. Services available include Sociabble, Brainsonic and Sociallymap.

• Managing contacts LinkedIn now offers a service aimed at simplifying sales prospecting – the LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

This tool provides a fast way of finding the most interesting prospects, in particular by proactively recommending the prospects who correspond to what you are looking for. It also makes it possible to track what prospects are doing, so that you can engage in potentially profitable conversations at the most appropriate time.

Other services available include Nimble, a connected CRM tool offering similar services, but not just on LinkedIn. Nimble traces the activity of prospects on social networks, enabling a contact to be tracked in your conversion funnel. There are numerous other solutions available in CRM packages.

Thierry Gillmann is an advanced content marketing evangelist with an entrepreneurial background. He is CEO of Voicings, a French content consultancy boutique specialised in B2B and technology sectors.

CORE LIVE REVIEW

Mixed MOOD at

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ESSENDANT’S CORE LIVE

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ssendant’s biennial CORE Live event, held last month in Las Vegas, did not disappoint in terms of content and announcements.

A new brand tagline of ‘Powering Possibilities’ was unveiled by CEO Bob Aiken as a carefully choreographed opening day of excellent seminars and keynotes sought to lift the mood of the assembled resellers that are increasingly concerned about the penetration of Amazon into the business products sector.

Amazon is more than a competitor. Amazon is a habit The wholesaler’s President of Office and Facilities, Harry Dochelli, opened the event talking about disruption, distraction and opportunity. The disruption focused primarily on (relatively) new entrants into the office and jan/san industries such as Grainger, Home Depot and Ferguson, as well as Amazon which is now the number three office supplies reseller in the US, and number seven in the more fragmented cleaning sector.

On Amazon, Dochelli also delivered the standout quote of the day: “Amazon is more than a competitor.

Amazon is a habit.” Indeed.

Other disruptive forces identified were the rapidly-growing influence of millennials in B2B buying decisions. There are now 53 million millennials employed in the US and by 2020 – just three years away as Dochelli emphasised repeatedly – they will account for 46% of the workforce.

FOODSERVICE FORAY With Aiken and Dougherty being former colleagues at US Foodservice, it was also no surprise that the latter chose CORE Live to announce a major foray into the foodservice sector in Q4, a move that was warmly welcomed by all the dealers OPI spoke to.

The opening session concluded with Dochelli unveiling a plethora of statistics – some quite alarming – from research recently conducted among 1,500 B2B buyers that will be summarised in the April issue of OPI. The remainder of the event comprised some superb, content-rich seminars and keynotes, with the presentation from former Amazon executive John Rossman providing a gripping insight into the unique way the global giant manages its business.

The only negative at an otherwise excellent event was a three-hour afternoon trade show that failed to capture the imagination of many dealers which scuttled off right after lunch to (presumably) enjoy Vegas, much to the disappointment of most vendors that had invested not insignificant dollars to participate.

With that experience and the Preferred Supplier Program top of mind for most vendors, there will surely be some interesting negotiations at Essendant’s headquarters in the coming weeks.

March 2017

BIG BOX DISTRACTION The distraction Dochelli referred to was the aftermath of the failed Staples/Office Depot deal. With Depot busy integrating OfficeMax into the company – a process which was stalled throughout the Staples saga – and both big boxes trying to reinvent themselves under new CEOs, he emphasised that there was a very real and present opportunity for the independent dealer channel (IDC) to grab market share.

That subject was also picked up by Aiken who pointed out that the US market today for office supplies was approximately $40 billion in size, with the IDC enjoying just a 20% share of it. He was bullish on the prospects for independents to increase that share, but insisted that the channel dynamics of the IDC had to change.

From top: Bob Aiken, Harry Dochelli and Keith Dougherty

“The all things to all men model no longer works,” Aiken insisted, as he spoke of a new strategy to reduce an overly broad assortment of product, complex pricing and incentive structures and to work more closely and strategically with key reseller and vendor partners.

That topic was expanded upon by the company’s relatively new SVP Merchandising, Inventory & Pricing, Keith Dougherty, who told the audience that the company’s long tail of products was “ridiculous”, with 66% of inventoried SKUs accounting for just 5% of Essendant’s sales. The wholesaler, he said, will now focus aggressively on attacking the tail to eliminate redundant, low-margin brands while optimising the mix of its own and national brands.

Dougherty also unveiled a Preferred Supplier Program which he claimed would “unleash simplicity” and be a win-win. A win if you happen to be on the programme, of course – like Newell Brands, the first participant – but many of the assembled vendors we spoke to were disturbed and some surprised by the timing of the announcement, although such a move had been alluded to frequently in earnings calls since last year’s disappointing Q2 results.

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European 7

14-16 June 2017 The Westin Grand Berlin

An invitation-only conference for C-level executives with a focus on the European business products industry “The European OPI CEO Forum is one event that I always prioritise attending. It’s an insightful blend of current industry challenges and the wider future trends. I always return to the day job with lots of ideas, food for thought and a broader perspective of the changes that successful companies need to embrace. It’s also a one-stop shop to network with the key leaders shaping our industry.”

Simon Drakeford, CEO, EO Group

OPI EUROPEAN FORUM l The European Forum is not a large conference, but a small, closed forum for CEOs and senior level executives at leading resellers, manufacturers and wholesalers of business supplies. l

The European Forum will feature speakers and moderators of an extremely high quality to stimulate thought and debate.

l

The European Forum offers a unique opportunity to spend quality networking time with fellow leaders in the business supplies sector.

PAST ATTENDEES

Attendees at recent OPI European Forums include senior representatives from companies such as: 3M, ACCO Brands, Acme United, Actionable Intelligence, Advanced Workplace Associates, ADVEO, ALSO International, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon UK, Arnos Australia, Avery, BIC, Bi-silque, Bong, Brother, Bruneau, Bureaucrat, CEP Office Solutions, Clover Technologies Group, COLOP, Corwell, CPD, Daymon Worldwide, ECi, edding, Esselte, EO Group, Everything Office, EVO Group, Exacompta, Fellowes, First Base Group, Forrester Research, FusionPLUS Data, GMK Markenberatung, Gruppo Buffetti, Hamelin, HP, Highlands, HSM, ICIDU, Interaction, International Paper, Lyreco, M2, MBP Group, MEDIUM, Messe Frankfurt, Moorside Office, nectere, NEMO Group, Newell Brands, Office Club, Office Depot, Office Friendly, OP Network, OP Resource, Oresa Ventures Romania, OTTO Office, PBS Holding, Pilot Corporation of Europe, Printus, ProBuro, Really Useful Products, RTC Proffice Experience, Rubbermaid Commercial Products, Ryman, Smarton Belkanton, SPOT Group, Staples, Stewart Superior, Superstat, tesa, TC Group, UOE, Victor Stationery, Waser + Co, Westcoast, Wulff Beltton, Xerox.

For more information about this event, please visit www.opi.net/EF2017 If you would like to be considered for an invitation, please email steve.hilleard@opi.net

EVENT

PAPERWORLD REVIEW

Falling exhibitor and visitor numbers once again raise questions about the relevancy of Paperworld for the commercial workplace supplies sector, says Andy Braithwaite

turn it around?

CAN MESSE FRANKFURT

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change of location is temporary or not, but it was certainly more convenient for visitors not to have to make that trek out to Hall 10.

To be fair, visitor traffic in Hall 3.0 – where the main office supplies exhibitors (excluding writing instruments) were located – was steady during the first three days of Paperworld. The exhibitors that OPI spoke to were largely satisfied with the meetings they had set up prior to the event and with the number of international customers they were able to see over the space of four days. That said, it was clear that some of the larger resellers and wholesalers – due to their well-documented current challenges – had sent reduced teams to Paperworld this year.

LACK OF PLAZA SUPPORT Hall 3.0 was also the location for the second incarnation of the Paperworld Plaza concept – an initiative between Messe Frankfurt and the German trade association PBS-Markenindustrie, whereby the association’s members would have a major presence at Paperworld every two years.

Whereas the first Paperworld Plaza in 2015 had its own dedicated space in Hall 3.1, there had been

NEXT YEAR The next Paperworld will be held in Frankfurt from 27-30 January 2018.

March 2017

year ago, in our March 2016 issue, we said that Paperworld was “struggling for relevance” as an international platform for the evolving B2B business supplies channel. One year on and – quite frankly – it is difficult to alter that opinion despite all the positive spin coming out of Messe Frankfurt following Paperworld 2017.

While there were more visitors to Frankfurt this year than last year – an increase of about 3% to around 85,400 – it was largely due to the launch of a concurrent show called Floradecora. That means Paperworld is now one of four shows taking place at the same time at the end of January, along with the aforementioned Floradoecora, plus Christmasworld and Creativeworld.

Looking at the Paperworld figures only, visitor and exhibitor numbers continued to decline: the number of visitors fell by almost 9% to around 33,560 and there were 1,525 exhibitors, down from 1,608 last year. It is true that the number of exhibitors was negatively impacted by a hall switch this year as the euphemistically-labelled ‘international sourcing’ suppliers traditionally housed in Hall 10 were moved to Hall 1 due to construction work at the Messe Frankfurt exhibition grounds. Time will tell if that

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Paperworld EVENT

a lack of enthusiasm from the wider PBS-Markenindustrie membership second time around. Messe Frankfurt had been hoping for some 40 members to sign up, enabling the show organiser to open Hall 3.1. However, fewer than 20 of the association’s members committed to the event, meaning that the Plaza really just blended in with the rest of the show in 3.0. In fact, visitors and other exhibitors were seemingly not aware that there existed such a thing as Paperworld Plaza.

This will probably lead to more talks between the trade association and Messe Frankfurt in the coming weeks and months, but there appears little point in continuing with the Plaza concept. This would be tough on the trade show organiser which has devoted a lot of resources to the idea over the past few years in order to cater to the wishes of these leading (mostly) German manufacturers; time and effort that could well have been devoted to tackling some of the more fundamental challenges that the event faces.

Virtually the entire Paperworld events programme [...] was held in German and targeted mainly at visitors from Germany

www.opi.net

FOCUS ON THE FUTURE OFFICE The centrepiece of Hall 3.0 was an exhibition and presentation area called Future Office, a futuristic space designed by Berlin-based architect André Schmidt. Interestingly, rather than attract international business supplies buyers, resellers and manufacturers to Future Office, Messe Frankfurt intended to target a different type of visitor to the show in the form of architects, interior designers and facilities managers.

The hope was that around 100 invited guests would attend guided tours of the Future Office exhibition, followed by visits to the booths of sponsoring Paperworld Plaza exhibitors to raise awareness of how these manufacturers are already catering to the needs of the modern workplace. With the number of attendees of the Future Office guided tours on the Monday and Tuesday of the show exceeding 300, Messe Frankfurt was understandably pleased with how things turned out and hailed the concept a success.

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Nevertheless, OPI is not convinced Future Office did anything to reinforce Paperworld’s dwindling status as the annual meeting place for the international business supplies community. The presentations – their noise levels certainly weren’t appreciated by exhibitors on nearby stands – were all in German, and the invited architects and designers were purely from the German market.

When questioned about it, Paperworld Director Michael Reichhold told OPI that bringing in German visitors was the strategy for the first year of Future Office. He explained that the organiser didn’t want to be overambitious until the concept had proved itself.

However, it meant virtually the entire Paperworld events programme that was of potential interest to the business supplies community – Future Office, the Paperworld Procurement day in partnership with brands organisation Office Gold Club, and Sustainable Office Day – was held in German and targeted mainly at visitors from Germany.

This apparent homeland focus was borne out in Paperworld’s official visitor numbers: more than 11,600 visitors this year were from Germany; that’s 35% of the total (up from 30% last year), and Messe Frankfurt revealed that exhibitor numbers from Germany were also up.

All this doesn’t mean that Paperworld is not a great show for stationery retailers and those involved in the craft, hobby and gift sectors. These are categories that are experiencing something of a renaissance with consumers, and that buoyancy definitely came across at the event.

But, is Paperworld still essential – relevant even – to the world of commercial business supplies? In part, of course it is – there are still tens of thousands of visitors and some 1,500 exhibitors – but Messe Frankfurt has still failed to get the message in terms of the realities facing the wider workplace supplies and services industry.

Above: Is this the office of the future?

RESEARCH

Piranha PREVIEW: INVESTIGATING THE APPEAL OF AMAZON BUSINESS

BUSINESS

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mazon Business is going to be big, that’s an undisputed fact. To gauge just how big and important it might become, Martin Wilde Associates (MWA) and OPI have teamed up once again for a new research study – Piranha Business – which examines the experiences of B2B buyers in the US with Amazon Business.

Back in the summer of 2014, OPI and MWA published Swimming with Piranha, a market research report that investigated the use of Amazon for office products purchasing by B2B buyers in the US and the UK. The study detailed some significant findings about the true extent of Amazon’s penetration into the B2B OP market and why these end-users chose to purchase from the company.

The picture looks somewhat different now.

Launched in the spring of 2015, Amazon Business is a B2B portal that offers – among other things – “hundreds of millions” of products, business-only pricing on select items, quantity discounts and multi-user business account administration allowing integration with third-party procurement solutions.

By November 2016, Amazon Business was already reported to have reached sales of $1.9 billion and to be achieving growth of 20% month on month.

Given that Amazon is looking to roll out its B2B model in other countries – Amazon Business kicked off in Germany last December – it only increases the need for OP suppliers globally to gain an up-to-date understanding of the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities being posed by Amazon Business.

• What is the demographic profile of Amazon Business customers?

• What business supplies product categories do they buy overall, and what product categories do they buy from Amazon Business?

• What share of their overall business supplies do they now buy from Amazon Business, and is this increasing?

• Which other types of office products supplier do respondents still use?

• Why have respondents chosen to buy from Amazon Business, and what are the perceived advantages and disadvantages of doing so?

• What do respondents think about the quality of Amazon Business’s customer and after-sales service?

• How important are commercial visits by suppliers to respondents?

• How frequently do respondents place an order with Amazon Business and what is their average order value?

• What kind of delivery service do respondents require from Amazon Business? How important is ‘free delivery’ and how often do they qualify for it?

• Are respondents happy to buy from third party suppliers via Amazon Business and to receive their order in several separate consignments?

• What are their usage and perceptions of the Amazon Basics brand against manufacturer brands and other own brands? Are there any product categories in which they would not like to buy this brand?

• What is the respondents’ anticipated future use of Amazon Business? Would they ever go back to using a conventional OP supplier and what would persuade them to do so?

GAUGING THE IMPACT Piranha Business will feature the results of 400 in-depth interviews with B2B buyers – from micro to large corporate companies – in the US that have purchased any type of business supplies from Amazon Business in the past year. Survey

Piranha Business – which will also include a summary of the key research findings and conclusions – will be published in June/July 2017. A $500 discount is available on the price of the report (the non-discounted price is $3,750/€3,500) for orders placed before 14 April 2017. Visit www.opi.net/Piranha-Business.

www.opi.net

Given that Amazon is looking to roll out its B2B model in other countries […] it only increases the need for OP suppliers globally to gain an up-to-date understanding of […] Amazon Business

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participants will be asked a series of questions about why – and how – they purchase business supplies from the e-tailer. These include:

Special GENERATION GAME

SPEAKING

the lingo H aving been presented with a great opportunity, I recently made the decision to change industry. I started work as International Business Manager at Rapesco Office Products, a manufacturer of stapling and punching products for almost 60 years – that’s a very long time for a 28-year-old.

As I began networking and talking to customers and other professionals in the industry, it became apparent to me that not only are there plenty of companies out there with an extensive track record, but many of the people working in these companies have also spent the majority of their careers in this industry.

With the proliferation of networking platforms such as LinkedIn and Xing, we live in times where everything is transparent and it feels like barely a day goes by when I don’t get a notification about somebody I know who has changed job yet again.

This is what makes the longevity of so many so impressive. There’s clearly a lot of loyalty that people have to this industry.

Yes, English remains the international business language, but [...] if we can talk to our overseas partners in their own language, progress can be made much faster

www.opi.net

And so much knowledge too. When I started at Rapesco I was slightly nervous, if not intimidated, by the number of highly knowledgeable people I was working with. Knowledge really is power and let’s face it, everybody likes to be the ‘go-to person’ for his/her specific area of expertise because it makes us feel valuable and important.

However, I have been surprised time and time again at just how willing people are to help and to pass on their knowledge because they know that it will be for the greater good of the company. Whether it’s technical advice on a product, helping to understand a specific market or some kind of other favour, I am encouraged by this attitude.

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NEW STARTERS All of this is great, but it also begs the question: What about those starting out? What can us newbies bring to an industry packed with knowledge and experience that can only be achieved through years of service and the accumulation of grey hair? In my opinion, one

VEND SPEC

Special Issue

VENDOR SPECIAL

of the answers lies in the evolution of our industry which sees organisations increasingly seeking to work internationally.

Yes, English remains the international business language, but our experience at Rapesco tells us that if we can talk to our overseas partners in their own language, progress can be made much faster and they also feel more comfortable working with us.

When it comes to the younger generations starting out in the OP industry, many are coming through as bilinguals which should give them a real advantage from day one. I see this becoming the standard as employers inevitably realise the added value that comes with employing bilingual staff. I believe that the ability to speak an additional language is something that has been undervalued in the past. Us Brits, of course, are particularly guilty of being lazy when it comes to learning a language – I was exactly the same before I spent five years living in Germany.

It’s also become obvious that many organisations that started life as a pure distributor or wholesaler, for example, are having to adapt and move away from those traditional models to stay effective and competitive. Thanks to the internet, there is a transparency which did not exist 20 years ago. As a result, we have seen some of our international partners move to a hybrid model whereby they are selling into multiple channels across a variety of platforms. This can make understanding the structure of organisations very difficult and giving the correct pricing level even more so. If there is a language barrier to overcome as well, progress can be extremely slow indeed.

The combination of all that long-accumulated knowledge and expertise in tandem with an all-encompassing global outlook – and the language requirements that this might entail – is a sure recipe for success in my view.

Alex Bonarius, International Business Manager, Rapesco

5 MINUTES WITH...

Special Issue

Elisabeth Gebler

CAREER Q&A

What do you do in your spare time?

In my holidays travelling is what I love the most.

Over the past couple of years, I managed to visit some great places, including Australia, Costa Rica and Namibia. And if long trips are not feasible, I love the German and Dutch coastline.

Describe your current job.

I am responsible for all central marketing activities at Durable.

If you weren’t doing your present job, what would you like to be doing?

Working in a job like this one.

Or travelling around the world, money-permitting.

What scares you?

I’m not the type of person who gets scared easily, so it’s the prospect of losing loved ones or illness that worries me the most. In business, I have huge respect for the changes that are happening in our industry right now – we need to make sure we turn them into opportunities and wins.

Optimist or pessimist?

A realistic optimist. I see myself as a positive person, with a healthy appreciation of risks.

Early bird or night owl?

Neither really, but the tendency is more early bird.

Best way to spend the weekend?

It should start with sports, then a a visit to my mother, followed by cooking and meeting friends.

Your favourite gadget?

Apple TV. Favourite author(s)?

Ken Follett and Anita Shreve.

Best compliment you’ve ever received?

In business: “I wish you could come back” (from former colleague).

What’s your life philosophy?

Never be a victim, be in charge of your life.

What special/secret skill do you possess?

Haha. Unfortunately, I have no secret skills. I wish I had.

What word do you use the most?

Hello.

What’s your specialist subject?

‘Branding’ is the topic I’m most passionate about at work.

What’s your favourite place to visit in Germany, and why?

St Peter-Ording – a fantastic place on the German coast. It has a huge beach, houses on stilts and a great atmosphere.

www.opi.net

What’s the best moment in your career so far?

No specifics; there have been many great moments, and most of them involved working in teams.

What would you be the patron saint of?

It would have to be cats.

What makes you happy?

A day on my patio with the sun shining and a book in hand.

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VENDOR SPECIAL

What do you like best about the OP industry?

Office products have such relevance in that nearly everybody uses them.

The range of products is huge, spanning everything from labels to fine writing instruments, while target groups also differ considerably, encompassing small children as well as the complete business environment. Aside from all that, I have been involved in this industry for many years and feel part of a big family.

Your best piece of advice to someone who has just joined the OP industry?

Before you act, listen and understand.

ENTER

NOW

NORTH AMERICAN OFFICE PRODUCTS

ORGANIZED BY OPI, IN ASSOCIATION WITH S.P. RICHARDS COMPANY

CALL FOR ENTRIES Best Product – Core Business Products Best Product – Furniture Best Product – Facilities, Breakroom and Safety Best Product – Technology Product Innovation of the Year People’s Choice Young Executive of the Year Professional of the Year Industry Achievement

Enter or nominate online at www.opi.net/naopa2017 or email awards@opi.net for details The North American Office Products Awards are held as part of S.P. Richards’ Advantage Business Conference which takes place at the Marriott World Center, Orlando, USA, from 12-16 July 2017

FINAL WORD

WE NEED

a new box S

www.opi.net

o many old clichés are used today: ‘The times they are a-changin’; ‘It’s a new normal’; ‘We need to think outside the box’... Well, I have another one: ‘We need a new box’.

I have observed many respected and successful entities in our industry announce and implement novel strategies that, if they succeed, will position several of them into a ‘new box’. This might mean greater percentage of private label, shifting sales resources away from the traditional OP channel, entering new markets via a non-traditional sales model, and more aggressive M&A into new product categories.

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LACK OF COLLABORATION The lines are getting increasingly blurred now among wholesalers, buying groups, marketing groups and manufacturers, and there is a lot of talk about collaborating, making sea changes and embracing the independent dealer community (IDC). But when it’s time to actually do something, some people are pushing back from the table due to a lack of trust and a feeling of insecurity about the idea of having to make changes. Everyone wants progress, but they do not want to have to change in order to achieve it.

Meanwhile, our industry is evolving faster than anyone ever imagined: IDC attrition, manufacturer consolidation, wholesalers’ shifting sales and marketing strategies that foster indecision and possible conflict, big box retailers seeking relevancy, new entrants into the traditional OP space… the list is long.

Disparate consolidation is happening, at times out of desperation and without a plan. However, I am encouraged to see some initiatives that help create market opportunities for the IDC from the dealer groups and wholesalers. That said, what is counterproductive at times is when we are competing against each other to gain a larger slice of a shrinking pie.

And let’s throw this into the mix: Amazon now has a US Communities contract. I guess you could say that the online giant too has found a new box!

My overriding feeling is that, sure, this should be concerning to the IDC, but not shockingly so. Amazon has been encroaching into the SMB space for a while, and now the public sector space is its next prey.

Will the same level of transparency and pricing inspection that Independent Stationers (IS) was subjected to by US Communities (because of the Office Depot sins of the past) be a contract requirement for Amazon? Or will people just look the other way and allow taxpayers to become the victims of lack of pricing transparency and effective contract monitoring? I hope not.

What I have found to be somewhat more alarming than Amazon’s recent public sector contract is a November 2016 report published by The Institute for Local Self-Reliance called Amazon’s Stranglehold: How the Company’s Tightening Grip Is Stifling Competition, Eroding Jobs and Threatening Communities. Amazon has the potential of becoming a modern-day economic Trojan Horse. The report emphasises how the e-tailer is monopolising the economy, undermining jobs and wages, and weakening our communities far more than we experienced with the birth of the big box retailers and the growth of Walmart.

Mike Gentile, CEO, Independent Stationers

Let’s eliminate redundancies among manufacturers, system providers, wholesalers and buying groups and focus on creating true value-add growth initiatives THE AMAZON ‘HABIT’ I recently also heard that Amazon has become more than a company – it has become a ‘habit’.

Check it out at www.ilsr.org and see what you think. If you share some of the concerns expressed in this report, ask yourself who is enabling, encouraging and satisfying that habit?

I am optimistic that many dealers will compete effectively against Amazon. They are growing share within their own markets, delivering more products and services than ever before, and providing genuine solutions.

These dealers are great marketers, proud of their brand, and able to meet the needs of their customers – all with a personal, local touch.

That said, now is definitely the time for us in the IDC to find a new box. So how about stronger relationships with key suppliers in supporting their valued brands and more synergistic programmes with the industry’s wholesalers for all dealers in the channel? Let’s eliminate redundancies among manufacturers, system providers, wholesalers and buying groups, and focus on creating true value-add growth initiatives – and not at the sacrifice of each other’s goals.

NEXT ISSUE Big Interview Bob Aiken, CEO, and Harry Dochelli, President of Office and Facilities, Essendant Hot Topic Internet of Things How To...

Social selling, part 2 Category Update Education and back-to-school l Paper l