AS THE LARGEST OFFICE SUPPLIES COMPANY, OFFICE DEPOT SHOW THEIR STRENGTH IN HAVING THE BEST PRICES, PRODUCTS AND BREADTH OF SERVICES.

A VISION OF BEING THE BEST

Founded as a retail store business in 1986, Office Depot was already committed to becoming the best and largest provider of office products and services in the nation. Today, they have surpassed that goal expanding their reach throughout North America and internationally to become the largest office products company in the world!

With 30 warehouses and over 900 stores, Office Depot believe they are the best office products distributor in the world. The benefits of being biggest in the field are passed along to Office Depot customers in their low prices, their breadth of products and in the many ways they make finding and ordering their products easy. Office Depot's web sites are the most comprehensive in the industry.

LOW PRICES RESULT FROM HOW OFFICE DEPOT BUYS AND HOW THEY MANAGE THEIR BUSINESS.

Big doesn't guarantee best. But size can be advantageous. Office Depot's prices are always the lowest because they buy in large volumes. Office Depot buy and stock more merchandise than any other supplier-over 30% more than their nearest competitor. Generally, Office Depot is the largest single customer of the companies from which they buy, which puts Office Depot in the best position to negotiate deeper discounts.

Even more important than size, Office Depot have spent many years building long-term relationships with their vendors. And, you don't have to be the largest corporate customer to reap the benefits of our massive purchasing power. Office Depot lead the industry in extending large corporate pricing to their smaller business customers as well. Office Depot does it because they can, and because they remember what it was like to be smaller.

Purchasing leverage is one way to keep prices low. Keeping operating costs to a minimum is another. Office Depot gets top honors for having the best cost controls in the industry. All of their 30 distribution centers are on one common network for tracking and reporting of inventory status.

THE BEST SERVICES

Office Depot does whatever it takes to meet their customer's needs and expectations. Their goal is 100% customer satisfaction, 100% of the time.

To make sure Office Depot is measuring up, they regularly seek feedback in the form of surveys designed to support and reinforce their customer relationships. Through these surveys their customers tell them about their Office Depot experiences. They help Office Depot to monitor their performance in order fulfillment, order accuracy, on-time deliveries and ease of ordering, and they allow Office Depot to react to perceived and actual problems in a timely way. Office Depot focus their attention on anything their customers believe is critical to their success.

OFFICE DEPOT MAKES THE INTERNET WORK FOR YOU

• UP TO THE MINUTE INTERNET ACCESS TO MORE THAN 10,000 ITEMS
• ORDERING, ORDER HISTORY TRACKING, CUSTOM SHOPPING LISTS. IT'S ALL AT YOUR FINGERTIPS!

Purchasing managers at companies large or small are tasked with improving efficiency and cutting needless expense. That's where Office Depot shines. Office Depot offers electronic systems and services to help streamline the purchasing process and contain costs.

More than 30,000 large and mid-size companies are saving time and increasing productivity by ordering products on-line, through the Office Depot Internet Catalog. The system is fast, simple, and links them directly to live inventory data and order status on over 11,500 products, 24-hours a day. With access secured through unique user ID's and passwords, customers can build a unique electronic profile of their specific requisitioning requirements, preferences, and pricing agreements. They can define and control many day-to-day procurements functions, including setting spending limits and creating custom requisition forms for frequently ordered items.

BUSINESS SERVICES DIVISION

In 1993, Office Depot began acquiring eight major contract stationers to fulfill the office products and service needs of businesses of all sizes. In 1995, Office Depot combined the existing telemarketing and delivery business with the acquisitions, opened new markets and launched the Business Services Division. This is a nationwide business-to-business delivery network which supplies office products to tens of thousands of businesses, governmental agencies and schools across the country. Some of the benefits Office Depot offers every business every day include:

• Nationwide Distribution-Over 3.5 million square of warehouse space
• Over $180 million in Inventory
• Large fleet of trucks-Over 2000 nationally
• Their staff of friendly, uniformed drivers who deliver over 65,000 orders a day!
• National Accounts Programs
• Furniture design and more than 750 in-stock furniture items
• Recycled Products and Services
• MWDVE participation
• Business machines, computer supplies and accessories
• Store Purchasing Card program
• Summarized and Electronic Billing Options
• Highly Trained staff
• Stockless Purchasing Programs
• Electronic Data Interchage (EDI) capabilities
• Award winning Internet sites
• Over 12,000 stocking units carried in each of our CSC's
• Local representation
• The ability to "special order" non-stock products for you

As you can see, Office Depot are serious about their business and the services they provide. More than 30,000 Office Depot associates stand ready to assure you that all of your needs will be met.