Alliance between Office Depot and Alibaba

American Office Depot and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba have set up a joint e-commerce platform aimed at small and medium-sized companies.

Win-win despite trade war

Office Depot and Alibaba will be catering for American small and medium-sized enterprises through a co-branded site. This partnership will gain Alibaba access to Office Depot’s ten million B2B clients and its distribution network that contains 1350 stores in the United States and can deliver to 99 % of all clients within 24 hours.

Conversely, Office Depot will be able to offer more products thanks to this partnership, offering its clients access to Alibaba’s worldwide network of over 150,000 suppliers in order to find more product options or to get in touch with a reputable manufacturer to produce their product.

Office Depot has been suffering from heavy competition from online giant Amazon. The company is now refocusing on providing business services to its clients, rather than trusting in the traditional sale of office supplies. In 2018, turnover from B2B evolved into Office Depot’s biggest revenue generator, while retail sales have decreased over the past two years.