Office Depot's New Look

Office Depot Inc. (Delray Beach, Fla.) has announced completion of the remerchandising and product layout in nearly all of its 790 U.S. retail stores. Only its Manhattan stores have yet to be completed, but will be shortly. The initiatives include enhanced signage, merchandising emphases on private label merchandise, reference charts on technology products throughout the store and what the retailer calls an “overall improved configuration of products that deliver a more customer-friendly shopping experience.”

“Customers are going to love our new look,” insists Jerry Colley, president of North American retail stores. “We have enhanced our stores and improved our signage to create an easier and more welcoming shopping experience. We have reconfigured the store so that our busy customers can quickly find what they need, and we have merchandised our aisles to reduce shopping time and increase multiple sales.”

New aisle markers and bold signage clearly defining specific product categories and items are part of the improvement. The company has also created handy reference charts in aisles for those product categories that customers may require additional information on before purchasing. Reference charts for copiers, printers, personal computers, photography and scanners, for example, provide customers with comparative information on product features, brands and pricing. Technology products and accessories will now be displayed together.

This summer, the company's Canadian stores will also be remerchandised with enhanced signage. And later this year, the company will install new overhead and in-rack lighting.

Office Depot operates more than 800 office supply superstores in the United States and Canada, and has operations in 16 countries outside of the United States and Canada, including 23 office supply stores in France and seven in Japan that it owns and 97 that are operated under joint venture and licensing agreements.