We launched our dedicated online office supplies webstore in July 2020 (lucanofficesupplies.ie). It’s growing slowly but competition is obviously stiff from the big players in the online world. Here’s a typical conversation I get at least once a day:
Customer “I need a 12” Desk Fan (or AN Other seldom-sold office product)
Me “No problem, I can have it for you tomorrow morning”
Customer “No, I need it right now”
Me “Sorry, not something we stock in the shop but we have it in our warehouse”
Customer “Okay no worries, I’ll have a look around and get back to you”
The ongoing challenge for local office product resellers like ourselves is bridging the gap between the old retail-centric world, where you could walk into a stationery shop and pick up whatever you needed on the day, and the new online-centric world, where people expect a vast choice of products akin to what can be found on Amazon.
Unfortunately, the new online-centric world means less footfall for local bricks and mortar stores, which in turn makes it impractical for us to hold an overly broad range of items on-site. We stock about 2-300 lines of essential stationery in our Lucan shop but inevitably we often don’t have a specific item someone needs. Sometimes this can lead to frustration when people want a seldom-sold office product and they want it NOW!
Like many smaller local resellers, we rely on nearby distribution hubs for storage of the vast majority of products available on our webstore. Close integration with these hubs allows us to receive our deliveries during the night for collection by (or delivery to) our customers as soon as our store opens at 9.30am. For example, this means a 12” Desk fan ordered online at 5pm on a Monday is ready for collection at 9.30am on Tuesday morning.
We find this system works well for customers who need items urgently. Okay, they may not be able to walk in and pick up their order right away, but at least they know they can come down to Lucan and collect it first thing in the morning, instead of hanging around all day waiting on a courier to deliver their Amazon order. Also, they’re doing their bit for the local economy which local people really want to do where practical.
Who knows what the future holds? It may simply prove unviable to run an office supplies business out of a suburban village location, but our hunch is that local homes and businesses will always need office products in a hurry, and if they can source them locally, they will.
Here’s hoping we’re right.
