News from the Front

Building upon the theme of helping small businesses work better not harder,
Office Depot debuted a new professional business services and
information resources section at its e-commerce site.

This new section, titled Business Services, showcases Office Depot’s
collection of pre-screened, “best-in-class” business services and information
resources. Both Staples.com and OfficeMax.com, the principal competitors in
this space, offer similar features.

The Business Services section also highlights special offers that Office
Depot has negotiated for its customers.

Office Depot said it organized the Business Services Section with busy small
business professionals in mind and the new area is broken down into six
major categories: Managing Money; Marketing Services; Managing Your Office;
Communications; Managing Your People and Business Tools.

“Our goal is to create a compelling online shopping experience for small
businesses,” said Monica Luechtefeld, executive vice president for e-commerce
at Office Depot.
“We have cut through the Web clutter and negotiated great deals with
best-in-class service partners.”

The partners include ScheduleOnline Inc., Stamps.com, Bizjournals.com,
WebsitePros.com, bookkeeping service vJungle, Agillion, TelePost,
Bigstep.com, eFrenzy, PurchasePro Inc., Eletter Inc. and DigitalWork.com.

Office Depot operates 863 office supply superstores in the United States and
Canada, in addition to a national business-to-business delivery network
supported by 29 delivery centers, more than 60 local sales offices and seven
regional call centers.

The company also has 28 office supply stores in France and seven stores in
Japan; and has 91 additional stores operating under the Office Depot name in
six other foreign countries.