OPI Magazine

24/09/2021

OPI Talk speaks with Beth Langley, Out-of-Home Director for Nespresso Professional in the UK & Ireland. Beth Langley joined Nespresso Professional at the beginning of 2021 – certainly an ‘interesting’ time for the away-from-home coffee segment against the backdrop of COVID restrictions and off...

17/09/2021

The Big Interview in the special 30th anniversary issue of OPI – which will be published shortly – is none other than Mike Gentile, CEO of Independent Suppliers Group (ISG), the US’s – and the world’s – largest cooperative for independent resellers in the business supplies community. In ...

10/09/2021

With 68 independent dealer members throughout the US, AOPD is an important player in the business products national accounts arena, both for the public and private sectors. In this episode of OPI Talk, the organisation’s Executive Director Mark Leazer explains how national accounts have been impac...

03/09/2021

The Business Solutions Association in the US recently named TOPS Products’ Bill Cardone as this year’s recipient of its Lifetime Achievement award. Cardone has been involved in business products sales since 1987 and has seen a lot of changes over the decades. One thing that hasn’t changed in a...

27/08/2021

With 2020’s important back-to-school (BTS) season hit by COVID restrictions and school closures, there are hopes that 2021 will see something of a return to normal. Whether that will now be the case – as the delta variant spreads in US – remains to be seen. Yet, as NPD analyst Leen Nsouli expl...

20/08/2021

With Paperworld set to return as a physical event in January 2022, OPI catches up with Messe Frankfurt’s Julia Uherek. You don’t need us to tell you that the business products events calendar has been turned on its head by COVID. One company that has been in the firing line is Messe Frankfurt, o...

13/08/2021

Tune in to this episode of OPI Talk to hear the second part of our interview with Yancey Jones and Mike Maggio of US wholesaler S.P. Richards (SPR). Following on from the previous episode, Yancey and Mike talk about how SPR responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and how they are encouraging more diversi...

06/08/2021

OPI Talk catches up with S.P. Richards’ Mike Maggio and Yancey Jones just over a year after they led the takeover of the US wholesaler. The first episode of this two-part podcast looks at the progress made on implementing their vision for SPR, the efforts made in moving from a catalogue-based whol...

30/07/2021

As this podcast goes out at the end of July 2021, we are right in the middle of the quarterly earnings reporting season. Many businesses are seeing strong improvements versus last year – when earnings were hit by COVID lockdowns – and one such company is ACCO Brands, where organic growth was mor...

23/07/2021

Stewart Superior Managing Director Geoff Betts shares his experiences of Brexit from a UK supplier’s point of view. In this episode of OPI Talk, hosted by OPI News Editor Andy Braithwaite, Geoff talks about the preparations the company made for the end of the Brexit transition period on 1 January ...

16/07/2021

Our guest in this episode of OPI Talk is Simon Drakeford, CEO of the UK’s EO Group. Simon has been at the helm of this multi-faceted but deeply technology-rooted company for about 14 years. Fiercely passionate about the business supplies industry, he also extends that involvement beyond EO Group w...

09/07/2021

The latest office breakroom trends with Office Snax CEO Todd Elmers. Pre-COVID, breakroom had developed into a key category for many office supplies resellers. The bottom fell out of the market virtually overnight when the pandemic forced most offices to close. Now, as offices begin to reopen, resel...

02/07/2021

This episode of OPI Talk takes us to the state of California, where we speak to Steve Danziger, the founder and CEO of AAA Business Supplies and Interiors, one of the US’s most successful business products dealers. Steve tells us about the impact that COVID-19 has had on his main customer base loc...

25/06/2021

Brother UK Managing Director Phil Jones explains how his organisation has been planning for a return to the office, why it is implementing a hybrid working policy going forward and what this means for the look and feel of the company’s headquarters near Manchester. He also issues a rallying cry to...

18/06/2021

The North American Office Products Awards are back! After a break in 2020, OPI is delighted to confirm that the 2021 North American Office Products Awards (NAOPA) will take place during Industry Week ’21 being held from 7-12 November in Orlando, Florida. OPI is now accepting entries and nomination...

11/06/2021

Discussing the importance of data with Lars Faustmann from HP Inc. In this episode of OPI Talk, OPI CEO Steve Hilleard speaks with Lars Faustmann, Digital Transformation Manager at HP Inc in Europe. The focus of their conversation is the role of data in driving the customer experience and what this....

04/06/2021

When UK wholesaler Spicers folded last year, it dramatically changed the balance of what had essentially been a duopoly in the market between Spicers and VOW. One consequence is that it has opened the door for another distributor, Exertis, to play a more prominent role. In this episode of OPI Talk,....

28/05/2021

This week’s episode of OPI Talk features two guests: Greg Gibson, VP and General Manager, North American Papers at International Paper, and Matt Dodd, Senior Executive Director of Corporate Philanthropy at City of Hope. Gibson is this year’s National Business Products Industry’s Spirit of Life...

21/05/2021

Acme United had another record quarter at the start of 2021 as its revenue surged by more than 20% year on year. Yet, despite this, the company’s sales to key office products customer groups – superstores, wholesalers and independent dealers – were each down by more than 20%. Why was that? In ...

07/05/2021

Our guest in this episode of OPI Talk is Darren Hayes, CEO of Quick Corporate Australia. Quick Corporate is the third largest B2B business supplies operator in the Australian market; it’s also the largest member of the Office Choice dealer group. OPI’s Heike Dieckmann spoke to Darren for an inte...

04/05/2021

On 4 May 2021, US-based independent dealer Guernsey celebrates its 50th year in business. To help mark the occasion, OPI CEO Steve Hilleard talks to Guernsey founder and CEO David Guernsey, a man who has had an immense impact on the business supplies industry, not just in the US, but globally. In th...

30/04/2021

In this episode of OPI Talk, OPI News Editor Andy Braithwaite catches up with two executives from Staples’ US Retail operations: Amy Lang, SVP Strategy & Insights, and Brian Coupland, SVP Retail Merchandising. Staples has approximately 1,000 outlets in the US and recently announced it was evolving...

23/04/2021

On 5-6 May, OPI will be holding its annual Global Forum, an interactive forum for key industry leaders in Europe, North America and beyond to debate and define the future of the OP sector. A virtual event this year due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Global Forum Online has been specially put together...

16/04/2021

Independent Suppliers Group (ISG) CEO Mike Gentile looks ahead to Industry Week in November 2021. With the physical events calendar having been pretty much obliterated by COVID restrictions, everyone is looking forward – and that’s an understatement – to catching up with industry colleagues an...

09/04/2021

The guest on this episode of OPI Talk is Alex Dunn, Managing Director of UK dealer group Superstat. Superstat has just introduced an initiative called the Sales Academy, which aims to help sales professionals in the business products industry develop their selling strategies and skills. The conversa...

26/03/2021

How did the pandemic impact the US office supplies retail channel in 2020, and what are the opportunities for resellers in 2021? In this episode of OPI Talk, Leen Nsouli, the Industry Analyst for The NPD Group’s Office Supplies division, discusses results of the firm’s research into the retail c...

19/03/2021

OPI speaks to Richard Scharmann, this year’s recipient of the Industry Achievement award at the 2021 European Office Products Awards. OPI News Editor Andy Braithwaite caught up with Richard shortly after he was presented with his award. They spoke about what the award meant to him, how PBS has nav...

11/03/2021

Watch the online presentations of the European Office Products awards 2021 on opi.net
https://www.opi.net/category/media/video/

11/03/2021

Winners announced for the OPI European Office Products Awards 2021
https://www.opi.net/news/region/002-europe/eopa-2021-winners-revealed/
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16/02/2021

At the end of January, Fellowes Brands launched its New Way of Working survey to understand how employees cope with working from home. The survey questioned 7,000 employees across Europe to discover how lockdown has affected them and the consequences on their physical and mental health. In this fina...

10/02/2021

In the second episode of OPI Talk with Fellowes Brands’ Head of European Marketing for Workplace Health Solutions Louise Shipley, the discussion revolves around hybrid working. The term ‘hybrid working’ is a relatively new phrase related to when employees will work in the office, home or elsew...

05/02/2021

Early 2020 saw the unprecedented mass migration to homeworking due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As many offices and businesses remain closed, just what are the implications for those remote working in terms of comfort, safety, and productivity? In this first of a series of three podcasts, OPI CEO Steve...

28/01/2021

Our guest in this episode of OPI Talk is Greg Liénard, CEO of Lyreco. Greg – a long-standing company executive – has been at the helm of the global business supplies reseller since July 2019. During the past 18 months or so, he’s certainly had his work cut out, first continuing on the transfo...

25/01/2021

OPI speaks to Mike Tucker about IOPFDA’s new relationship with cleaning association ISSA. Towards to the end of last year, it was confirmed that the Independent Office Products and Furniture Dealer Alliance (IOPFDA) – which includes NOPA – had merged with worldwide cleaning association ISSA. O...

15/01/2021

In this OPI Talk podcast, we feature part of an interview that OPI CEO Steve Hilleard and News Editor Andy Braithwaite conducted with Sean Shine, CEO of Ireland-based Paragon, and Steve Horne, CEO of OT Group, the entity created following Paragon’s acquisition of those SPOT assets. If, like many i...

21/12/2020

OPI's editorial team, along with CEO Steve Hilleard, take at look at the biggest stories and developments in the business products industry in 2020, and make their predictions for 2021. Episode produced by Andy BraithwaiteMusic by:Extreme Energy by MusicToday80: https://soundcloud.com/musictoday80/r...

16/12/2020

The guest in this episode of OPI Talk is Boris Elisman, CEO of ACCO Brands. ACCO has recently announced a significant acquisition, buying video games accessories manufacturer PowerA in a deal worth up to $400 million. This is part of a strategy to transform ACCO into a consumer products-oriented bra...

04/12/2020