Office Depot reaches its last chapter, one of the giants of office supplies in the United States says goodbye to its history. After closing more than a thousand stores in recent years, the company is being sold to Atlas Holdings for about 1 billion dollars… And here ends the story of a giant of office supplies whose revenues ended completely on the ground…
How much damage online commerce and other big companies have done… Office Depot has not been able to compete against them… We tell you everything below.
A decade downhill
Office Depot lived its last big move in 2013, when it absorbed OfficeMax in a deal valued at 1.17 billion!!! Together they added up to almost 2,000 stores across the country and generated more than 18 billion a year, it seemed that everything was going smoothly and that they could stand up to Staples, but the reality was that they were not so lucky, the network began to fall until it was left with less than 900 stores in 2024 and with revenues reduced to about 7 billion… Any past time was better, certainly.
And think about it, we are talking about going from 1,912 stores in 2013 to only 869 in 2024. More than half closed in just ten years, an absolute catastrophe..
The entry of Atlas Holdings
Now it is Atlas Holdings who takes control, a conglomerate with presence in almost thirty different sectors (from automotive to building materials) and with revenues of more than 20 billion a year, Office Depot fit perfectly in its sector because they want to strengthen the B2B business, where Office Depot still has weight in areas such as hospitality or corporate services.
The deal was closed at 28 dollars per share, which caused a 33% rise in the stock market. Even so, it is still a value far below the more than 50 dollars the share reached in 2024, they needed to sell no matter what.
And what happens with the stores?
For now no further closures have been announced, but the future of retail is not something easy, certainly. ODP CEO Gerry P. Smith assured that with Atlas they will be able to strengthen B2B growth and maintain customer trust. However, the truth is that physical stores have been losing relevance for years and everything indicates that their survival will depend on the strategy defined by the new administration… Not having it easy at all with the online market.
The future under Atlas
They not only want to cut costs (as anyone would), now Atlas wants to turn Office Depot into a private company, without the pressures of Wall Street, and with room to restructure in the long term, without hurry. Of course that also means that its shares will no longer trade on NASDAQ, closing a cycle for a brand that was an absolute reference in the nineties, a pity.
The end of an era
What is happening to Office Depot is the reflection of a whole generation of chains that did not know how to adapt in time to electronic commerce. In the nineties it was unthinkable to go back to school without going through Staples, OfficeMax or Office Depot. Today, the same purchase is made on Amazon with one click.
The sale to Atlas is not a rebirth, but rather an attempt to save what remains of value in the corporate market. The company will continue to exist, but it will no longer have the prominence it once had in the daily life of millions of Americans.