Striking up a deal with Office Depot, China's Alibaba may increasingly face off with Amazon on the U.S. online giant's home turf
Office Depot and Alibaba's 'strategic collaboration' will target U.S. small and medium-sized businesses. Group may increasingly face off with Amazon on the U.S. online giant's home turf, office-supplies chain Office Depot Inc. and Alibaba's international wholesale marketplace Alibaba.com inked a “strategic collaboration” to create a one-stop shop that will go way beyond providing office supplies for small and medium-sized U.S. businesses.
For Office Depot, the deal reflects CEO Gerry Smith’s bid to focus more on services and on small and medium-sized businesses. The company and its larger rival Staples have struggled with faltering retail business demand, thanks both to the “digitization” of the workplace, which cut demand for traditional office supplies, and to increased consumer orders of commodity office supplies on Amazon.
The Alibaba collaboration marks “a bigger step” for Office Depot than even the CompuCom deal, Smith said in an interview. “It provides a new channel and new choice for our customers. It’s a whole platform of goods and manufacturers for businesses. ... We aren’t abandoning retail, but we need to have a B2B platform. … This is a sticky relationship.”
Office Depot isn’t the only traditional specialty retailer transforming its business model. Best Buy, for its part, is also increasing its service offerings to areas such as senior care toFor Alibaba, the move signals its ambition in the U.S. market and will put it more squarely in competition with Amazon’s growing B2B Amazon Business marketplace.
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