Were the events of 2020 a definitive turning point for the global office products OP industry? Will 2021 continue the upheaval seen in the market in the last 12 months or will it settle back into something resembling what it used to be?

Senior business supplies executives all over the world now have to define their strategies to successfully navigate the next few years by asking some key questions: 

• Are traditional ‘core’ office supplies (OS) items now just legacy products?
• Will the OS industry continue to see exponential growth in sales of janitorial and PPE items?
• Will demand for catering supplies through OS channels begin to revive?
• Will demand for office furniture return to pre-COVID levels?
• Will the online players – and in particular Amazon – now lose share as lockdown retreats?
• Will Managed Print Service (MPS) arrangements reclaim the share recently lost to transactional sales of printer consumables?

These questions demand reliable answers from trusted sources.

“The State Of The OP Industry 2020-2021”, the eighth edition of Martin Wilde Associates’ (MWA) and OPI’s annual research study, provides those answers by asking some of the best minds in the industry – the senior executives running the major OS companies around the world – these and many other vital questions.

Based on 53 in-depth and online interviews with senior executives in Australia, Benelux, Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the USA, the survey this year focuses particularly on the crucial KPIs that the COVID crisis has been affecting:

• What were respondents’ overall revenue and margin trends in 2020 and 2021?
• What share of distributors’ sales were accounted for by JanSan supplies, breakroom/catering supplies, workwear/PPE and MPS in 2020 and 2021?
• What share of resellers’ sales were via the web in 2020 and what will this share be in 2021?
• What were resellers’ average order values in 2020 compared to 2019 and what will this be in 2021?
• What share of resellers’ deliveries were to home addresses in 2020, and what will this share be in 2021?
• What was Amazon’s share of the core OP market in each country in 2020 and what will respondents do to fight back against Amazon in 2021?
  What was the value – and growth trends – of the core OP market in 2020 and 2021?

The survey also investigates the adaptations respondents have made to their businesses to weather the storm in 2020, including vendors’ use of ‘new’ channels, as well as the changes they expect to make to recover in 2021, such as partnering with other companies.

As always, the research also reports on respondents’ perceptions of the main growth (and declining) product categories and channels in 2020 and 2021, as well as detailing the 2020 financial performance of the key 15 OS distributors in the US, Europe and Australia.

The office supplies industry – and your business – may now be at a crossroads: more than ever, your future business strategy needs reliable, informed input from peers and competitors which The State Of The OP Industry 2020-2021 can provide.

The report is available for £899.