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| - I have to give it to Office Depot. They are a truly dying breed of a retailer in a particular niche market that has largely been devoured by the Internet, Staples, and stealing from work (with the latter probably being their biggest competitor). Office Depot manages to survive offering select business services like laminating, faxing, and photocopies for those that don't have a job that offers these things for free. They also offer a large selection of overpriced office supplies for those who don't want or can't wait for Amazon to deliver their items at about a 50% price reduction.
My daughter is about to start school and she wanted to get some drawings laminated. As this is one of those unique situations where my work doesn't have a laminator nor did I want to wait for some online service, we took a trip to Office Depot. There once was an Office Max in this shopping center I believe, but it closed at some point.
We had 3 items laminated. Total came to just shy of $10. Yikes. Pretty pricey, but it made her happy so whatever.
I took a look around and was surprised at how many people were there. Clearly, most people there were not there to shop for office supplies or anything. They were there for business services. The aisles were all empty and the place looked like it was staffed with a total of 3 people.
Brick and mortar retail is a hard hit industry due to modern Internet shopping and few industries in retail are harder hit than the office supply places. Walmart, Staples, and Amazon pretty much own this market and once WM starts offering laminating services, I really see no reason to ever go to Office Depot again. Sad but true.
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