Office Depot, Inc. founded in 1986, and one of the world’s largest sellers of office products and an industry leader in every distribution channel, including stores, direct mail, contract delivery, the Internet and business-to-business electronic commerce has become an Authorized Apple Reseller.
Office Depot is selling Apple products via its online store. “The partnership between Apple and Office Depot is freshly inked, and currently Apple products are only available from Office Depot’s online store. However, Office Depot officials confirmed that Apple products would begin appearing at its retail stores in the coming months,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider. More here.
“You can take advantage of one stop shopping for all your office supply needs and now all of your Apple technology needs in one convenient location,” the Office Depot website states.
Link to the Apple section of the Office Depot site here.
As if I didn’t spend enough money at Office Depot aleady…
Hope this will be better exposure for Apple than Best Buy was. Can’t count on any employee having any insight on what the Mac is about…hope there is a nice setup to let people try it out instead of peel off the keytops like they did to the Powerbooks at CompUSA. Ugh!! Apple, please promote the features of Panther and Tiger with some sort of ads! Your OS is the key!
The overhaul of Apple’s retail efforts ismoving well along. Office Depot is a good choice, much better than Best Buy.
Office Depot IS a much better choice than Best Buy since I’m in Best Buy all the time and had no idea that they’ve been selling Apple products other than a few software titles. They must have been hiding them behind the (sarcasm) *superior* HP and Compaq products! (/sarcasm)
FInally someone sees the light!
I hope this creates some additional mind share among customers, because the average joe (or average ignorant if you prefer) only knows what he sees on store shelves. I remember around early to mid 90’s when Apple had a “bigger” market share, looking at different Macs on Sears, Office Max, and many other retail stores… Then all of a sudden Macs were nowhere to be found on retail, add to the mix the sucky Performa models available at that time, 6200 anyone?
Makes me remember my old powerhouse Quadra 9X… That WAS a great model, and I believe it has a special place in the hearts of many Mac enthusiast as one of the best Macs ever made!
I’m sure the O.D. people will have no idea how to sell a Mac, but do they know how to sell the cheap PCs either?
At least Apple will be represented at a store where small-business owners shop.
Luckily the product must sell themselves
OD had Apple stuff once before but had a spat with Apple and stopped carrying Macs and related software. Hope there is better rapport this time.
Apple should supply simple reminder cards for Office Depot employees. It could say:
Points about Macs:
1. No Viruses/adware/spyware
2. MS Office is cross compatible
3. Free iLife Suite Best in Class for digital photos, movies, DVDs, and music
4. Easiest Computer to Use
5. Software available for every need, over 12,000 OS X titles
That would be all their really needed to get across to customers to make a lot of sales.
The online store is no big deal. It might offer a few people the extra convenience of clicking at one internet site rather than two. Other than that, who cares.
However, once the brick-and-mortar stores start supplying themselves with Apple products, then I think that’s huge. Not only for consumers who may want to grab something that day, but also for small business owners who frequent those stores. They’ll have extra exposure to the Macs and other products. I hope the reps there will also be able to tout the qualities of a Mac.
I’m all about Apple getting their products out into the retail channel, but dammit – train these people how to SELL the products! How to display them!
The best buy by my house had all the apple stuff squished into a corner and basically ignored. The sales droids had no clue about any of it.
I will say that CompUSA has a nice display and employ some mac heads.
Office Depot sold Performas way back in the days of the Performa 600/ 47x series. They actually did a rather poor job of selling them. Seeing as they don’t have dedicated Computer Sales people anymore (or at least ones that I can see at my Local OD stores. I expect this to be as good as the Best Buy thing.
Tasha
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I remember Office Depot selling Macs way back when. I hope they do a better job this time.
This reminds me that Wal-Mart also used to carry Macs. I went in to see what they had. They were all set up with screen savers, and someone had taken the balls out of the mice so that you couldn’t really do anything with them. So people would come in, see the Mac screen saver, not get a chance to try it, and walk away. Wal-Mart ended up with a firesale to clear their inventory, and my brother got a few machines for bargain prices.
This is great news though because Office Depot is in many, many cities that currently have no Apple authorized resellers at all. They’re also in a lot of places that Best Buy and Circuit City are not as well so this gives Apple a lot more exposure than what they used to get even when they were in those stores.
12,000 titles for the Mac, wow..
There was a report the other day about college students.. saying around 8% had a POWERBOOK and 15% were planning on getting a Mac..
Well.. a sample is a sample.. but still.. Considering Mac’s home share is so much more than 2%, it makes sense that there are all these great software titles for the Mac OS X.. which drives Thurrott crazy..
Jack A, employees will also have to explain why a P4 2.4 ghz is not really twice as fast as a mac 1.2 ghz, or why it doesn’t matter, or something.
I don’t have a lot of confidence in OD employees, but it will be nice to see some macs around in the flesh.
Yeah Joe maybe you are right. I was trying to keep it simple enough for non-computer wiz employees to get but something maybe is needed here. Perhaps something like:
6. The G4 chip is set up differently and so is much faster than the GHz speed would imply. GHz measures only one aspect of a chips performance. 1.2GHz on a G4 chip is more than enough speed to cover all of a normal users computing needs.
That is a bit long winded compared to the other points though.
Office Depot employees don’t know anything about computers, PCs or Macs. You walk in, scour the store until you find one that appears still living, and hand them a product tag saying, “I want this.” Most likely they will tell you to just take the tag to the register while they check the storage cage for one in stock. After trying to put a few things in my shopping car on the Office Depot web site, it also looks pretty likely that the employee will just reappear and say “We’re out of stock and I don’t know when more are coming in,” so in that respect it will be just like going to the Apple Store.
I don’t really see where employee knowledge really matters–with there being no iMac availability, no eMac availability, four month wait for iPod mini’s, etc. there really isn’t much information for an employee to impart–a dumb Office Depot or Best Buy can tell me “We ain’t got none” with pretty much the same skill an Apple Store employee can.
I have to agree with Opinionated Jerk. At my Office Depot, I walk in and unless I ask for help, I just wander around until I find what I need. Besides, the workers I do talk to always tell me to computer shop on the web because their stuff in-store isn’t current. That is where Apple takes the advantage. Take the G5 for example: sure, you can build it to suit your needs, but a G5 is still a G5. However, a Toshiba notebook in Office Depot might as well be a 10 pound paperweight, because it is so outdated.
([OD] employees will also have to explain why… & I don’t have a lot of confidence in OD employees…)
Joe, I completely agree with you here. (nice change;-)
BTW, I see the same train wreck about to happen, again. (Some people use the term ‘Same shite, different day!) Or in a more eloquent manner: What mindset has changed at OD since the last time that Apple stuck out its neck to venture this? My guess is none.
The same $6/hr kid who won’t learn anything about a product he ‘could’ sell, can easily push a product he has learned the prefunctory, newbie-impressing, ‘Big Buzz-numbers’ for. And he’ll cover his ineptitude regarding Macs with half-truths, lies, shrugged-off indifference or the ultimate advice against a Mac purchase – ‘Macs Suk, don’t buy one!’.
Instead of concerning himself with “making a sale’ (which will strengthen the entire industry, let alone his skills), he panders to the notion that ‘the monopoly’ services everyone equally well. He thinks as far forward as planning his weekend Piss-Up, Quake tournament and choosing his Make-Out victim.
He doesn’t care about YOUR needs and ‘computer’ skill level. He thinks he’s learned that there’s no money in it for him to take the extra step.
It’s a sad Catch-22 isn’t it? Because many more customers should be taking a Mac home because it would suit them better.
I see the site is up in the US, but, of course, as usual, nothing in Canada. Interestingly, if you do a search for “Apple” on the Canadian site, you get hits for Windows XP. Really. I wouldn’t kid you.
Mike
I think it would be better if they sold Apple products in there brick and mortor stores. Another online reseller doesn’t excite me that much. I like to see what I’m buying before I buy it and that’s hard when you order from an online store. And when the product arrives damaged from shipping it’s a hassle to return it for repair or exchange.
retailers want ipods, espcially minis. apple used ipod clout to get other products in OD.
Ok… I don’t know what Office Depot you guys shop at where the people are as you describe basically dumb as bricks, but we weeded out the bad crew and brought in intelligent tech specialists. We just hired a guy that knew everything about the product before I started training him. I admit that I don’t know much about Macs (I had one when I was 10) but I have starting researching (found this site..
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James N.
Office Depot # 53 Chattanooga, TN
Oh yea I make way more the 6 bucks an hour.