Office Max!

American Eagle Outfitters recently AJAX-ed up its web design including its navigation menu. What’s different about AE’s flyout menu that’s different from Office Max’ and Eddie Bauer’s navigation redesign is that it actually merchandises within the flyout. Here’s what I mean:

Makes me long for the Office Max Rubber Band Commercial and the Staples commercials....

When buying paper goods, always look for recycled notebooks with a high post-consumer waste percentage. For school-aged kids, there is recycled construction paper, and Mead makes recycled-content spiral notebooks, as does Ampad Office Max and Office Depot sell recycled printer paper, and New Leaf Paper company sells a wide variety of recycled printer and notebook paper. For grown-up notebook junkies (like myself) Boulder, Colorado stationary company Vickerey has several gorgeous notebooks made of recycled or tree-free paper. 3-M makes a variety of recycled Post-Its and Rebinder makes recycled binders.

The other printer I’m considering is the Samsung CLP-300 (and maybe the CLP-300N). OfficeMax has it for $229, without rebates. This printer beats the 1600 and 2600N on size and price of consumables. Staples has the 300N version, which includes a network port, for $300.

In Levy v. OfficeMax, Inc., the Third Court of Appeals has reversed the dismissal of class claims that OfficeMax and Best Buy must assign tax refund rights to customers who mailed in product rebates.

If there isn’t a crafts store where you live, try office supply stores like Office Max and Office Depot. If not, there’s always Ebay! See how far the frenzy has gone !?

This article’s got me thinking about ways I could start recycling paper products more, so I think I’m going to make the switch for my printer paper and envelopes. You can even pick these things up at the major office supply stores. Office Max sells 100% recycled paper (here, too), and Staples has their recycled paper products organized almost painfully well (just enter your good ole zip code).

A breach associated with bulk-goods retailer Sam’s Club last autumn likely resulted in millions of debit-cards potentially being put at risk, according to financial-industry insiders. A second, smaller breach affecting hundreds of thousands of debit cards has been connected to office-supply retailer OfficeMax, although that company has denied any breach of its systems. And, the most recent data leak occurred in an ATM network and likely affected millions of debit-cards as well, banking executives told SecurityFocus.

Yay! So I finally got approved today for my PayPerPost account. I have been waiting about a week for them to verify my account. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be working with PPP in my blog. Yes…of course I get paid for my reviews on products…which always helps out, especially during the holidays. But to have the opportunity to write about products and services and reccommend them to my friends is fun. I used to work at OfficeMax and ALWAYS went out of my way to reccommend products (even if we didn’t sell them and the competetors did!).

Today, he felt better. I ran out and got a Sunday paper because, well, we’ve still got a few people on our list who can’t just get earrings. I am done with my shopping, except for C himself, but we still have his family to accomplish. I shouldn’t talk so big — if I don’t get to knitting, I’ll be behind. Anyhow… OfficeMax had a SanDisk 2GB flash drive on sale. Since we both love flash drives — him for music, me as a back-up — we went and picked us up two.

Its sunday and as it turns out, weather is great! Its been beautiful here in Union City last 3 days or so after some hot days. My mom-in-law lives out in Sacramento and its been really warm there. Spent the morning running around with my daughter and made the mistake of taking her to an Office Max store. She seems to truly love looking at different pens, pencils, paper. So after I got my stuff, we spent some time looking at all the different types of paper, coloring pens and crayons.

I looked at two less expensive chairs that I initially intended to choose between but chair #1 from Staples was made of the same coarse, stiff leather that I didn’t like in my old chair and chair #2 from OfficeMax only had four massage motors and no program features at all. Both were mid-back models besides and the true deal-killer was that Staples had a much nicer massage chair with heat for fourty bucks more. That is the chair that I decided upon and that I am now enjoying.

What else did he think differentiated the blogsphere from tradition websites? Forgiveness. Readers know that bloggers are writing quickly and may say things that given more time, and reviewers, might be changed or toned down a bit. Readers forgive typos. Also, blog authors tend to reference other blogs – saying in essence, go look at what someone else has to say about this topic. You would not expect Home Depot or Staples to tell you to go check out Lowes or Office Max.

That makes 13 in a row, but I know he’ll be off tomorrow at least because the plant has a rule that you can’t work a longer stretch than that. Why they called at such an odd hour I don’t know. They normally call before or right at the beginning of a shift and this was several hours after but it doesn’t matter to John. If I know him, and I should after 23 years, I know he was thinking- “If I go in that’ll cover everything I spent today at Office Max.”

The recent media coverage of Citibank debit card theft should really get retailers thinking. It appears that the theft came from a hack on OfficeMax. It appears that the debit card PINs were stored somewhere along with the key to decrypt the PIN codes! This outlines two needs:

Last night we visited the Taco Mac at Perimeter for free pint glass night. It was a bit difficult to find, since the shopping center is so new that the road doesn't show on any maps yet. Once there I was amazed at the amount of STUFF they had. I counted at least seven restaurants, and that was just in the section with the Taco Mac. There's also a Super Target and an Office Max. I imagine I'll be visiting there more in the future for the variety of food.

Look, for example, at Pershing Square Capital Management and McDonalds, Carl Icahn and Time Warner, Kirk Kerkorian and General Motors, or K Capital Partners and OfficeMax. In each case the suitor is looking for a say in the operation of the company, with the threat of a nasty fight. For sure, talk of dividends, share buybacks and divisional divestitures is rattling boardrooms across Corporate America.

PINs, along with some other customer details were stolen through a security breach of computer files at OfficeMax, the office supply chain. It’s not really obvious, how could OfficeMax obtain these PINs from Citibank, what was that strict necessity to provide most sensitive data to a third party.

In a post yesterday, I guessed that Walmart may be involved somehow in a current investigation into the theft of ATM cards. CNET provides an update today which indeed shows that Walmart is involved, as is OfficeMax.

Office Max had a major security breach, and lost 200,000 Debit Card numbers. Radio reports I heard said that many people had already had their bank accounts cleaned out, mostly in Northern California. All 200k cards have apparently now been cancelled by the banks.

In preparation for the game I’d printed out the Click and Locks on heavy cardstock and slicked them up with some self-stick laminating sheets. BTW, I recommend OfficeMax over Office Depot. Cutting out the pieces was a pain and I’m not even completely done trimming them, but the result was worth it. I like having semi-permanent modules to play with so that I don’t have to worry about printing up fresh modules every time I play. Of course I could just have people write down their stuff on a sheet of paper like every other roleplaying game on the planet. Even if we did that, a Capes character is still less writing than most of the rpgs out there. I’d rather have the clicks, though. They’re fun!

Office Depot and Office Max are reported to be testing the concept in a limited number of their stores.

I was really nervous about it, but wasn’t getting anywhere with Windows Mobile so I tried it. I went to OfficeMax, bought some notecards and made a holder out of duct tape. It isn’t a completely pencil-based solution. I use GTD Tiddlywiki to print out computer based todo lists on index cards, print out a daily calendar from Microsoft Outlook onto index cards and also use pages from the Do It Yourself Planner which features downloadable PDF index cards. It’s a really nice system. It’s very efficient. If I lose them I can just print out another set and works very very well.

I just realized yesterday that the guy who plays Darnell on NBC’s My Name Is Earl is the Rubberband Man from the Office Max commercials. I saw one of those Office Max commercials, and I was like- crab man! The character’s name is Darnell and they call him crab man because he works at the crab shack.

I say Bravo OfficeMax because they apparently have some principles, as indicated by the indignation over at JihadWatch. For those who care not to go there, and who can blame you, they apparently refused to print some business cards that advertised the type of hate sites we’re talking about here, including JihadWatch.

Keeping your energy and your focus is more likely to be consistent if you have a clear workspace with only the essentials on it. Piles of work and office supplies, are desk top distractions that do not add to your focus equation and could have you feeling like you have double the workload to complete. If you’re looking for great resources to help you get more organized, check out Staples and Office Max.

Now, if I was using the new Froogle Mobile, I might have discovered that the price difference was negligible and that I should just walk out the door with my new purchase. Even better, I might have found out that Office Max, which was right next door, had the bag for less. As a searcher, that’s one nifty tool.

Off to Office Max we go! Pull up to the store…”OH look! Lots of up-front parking!” YAY! Park the car and head in with our buggy. We’re ON A MISSION! Find notebooks for 49¢…get 2 cases, that’s 48 notebooks! YAY! We find staplers, paperclips, pencils, elastics, scissors, stickers, pens, and a whole buncha other stuff on sale. No crowds. No kids darting here and there like heathens! YAY! We’re feeling great about all of our purchases. I even purchased a computer book for myself. Lovely shopping trip. Got a gob of stuff for $150. Shove the items in the trunk and we’re off to home to wallow in our array of school supplies. We are feeling good!

Anyway, Office Max has rolled out their back-to-school ad campaign featuring the "Rubberband Man" and his theme song...he wanders around finding kids enjoying the last days of summer at the beach, skateboarding, selling lemonade, etc. and hands them some school necessities.

Tota called me Monday afternoon and informed me that I would be taking her to OfficeMax to buy a new computer. I’d just returned from work, and I was pretty tired, but I hadn’t made any other plans yet, and I hadn’t seen Tota in a long time, and I’d instituted a personal policy sometime last year that I would never pass up an opportunity to spend time with office supplies. Also, she was baking pizza to make up for all the pizza I’ve bought her. Therefore (all these things considered), Tota, Amy, and I went computer-shopping.

After visiting Walmart - 8pm on a Sunday - BestBuy, OfficeMax, OfficeDepot and finally Radio Shack (Tandy as was in the UK) I accumulated enough bits of wire to power and connect my BT Broadband Voice box (Cisco ATA186). I am connecting the laptop wirelessly to the hotel hi-speed internet and a crossover ethernet cable connects to the ATA186. The laptop is on an external IP address and the ATA gets a 192.168.0.x address from the laptop. I took a photo but seem to need yet another bit of wire to get it onto the laptop - there is no GPRS signal for the Treo600 to email me the photo it took. Watch this space.

Executives at office supplies company OfficeMax strengthened their hand against Hub hedge fund manager Abner Kurtin yesterday when quarterly results showed what could be a significant turnaround.

Itasca-based Office-Max says it's begun a tender offer to buy as many as 23-point-five (M) million common shares for up to 799 (M) million dollars.

The purchase represents about 25 percent of the outstanding stock in Office-Max -- North America's third-largest office-products company.

The investigation began in December 2004 and was conducted under the direction of the company's audit committee. Subject to final review by the company's auditors, OfficeMax currently estimates that it overstated operating income in first quarter 2004 by approximately $7 million and understated operating income by approximately $1 million in each of the second and third quarters of 2004. The cumulative net operating income overstatement for the first nine months of 2004 is estimated to be approximately $4 to $5 million. Accordingly, the company expects to restate quarterly income for each of the first three fiscal quarters of 2004 and believes that its previously issued interim statements of operating results for those periods should no longer be relied upon.

OfficeMax Inc. reported a 90 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings to $700,000 Monday, but its chairman dismissed the need to consider splitting up the beleaguered office products retailer, as a shareholder group has proposed.

George Harad, who also became interim CEO last month when Christopher Milliken resigned in the wake of an accounting scandal, said this would be "a particularly inopportune time" for the company to change direction since other strategic steps already are being taken.

Those actions, he said, include reshaping top management, integrating contract and retail operations, being more selective with promotions, reducing debt and committing $775 million to $815 million toward a planned share repurchase.

Sales for OfficeMax Contract were $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004, an increase of 16%. Sales for the full year of 2004 were $4.4 billion, an increase of 17% from 2003. But the division’s fourth-quarter operating income fell 42%, to $19.8 million from $33.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2004. For full-year 2004, OfficeMax Contract reported operating income of $107.0 million, compared with $118.6 million in 2003 before a special item.

Courtney Wilson, 18, of Lancaster, is like many teens her age, keeping busy in her own world of school, activities, a part-time job and church.

By volunteering at a local nursing home, she was able to step into an unfamiliar world in which a number of senior adults live, and received as much as she gave.

Wilson was one of eight high school students honored last month by the Lancaster LaSertoma Club for their volunteer service to others.

An investment firm with a sizable stake in Itasca-based Office-Max says in a regulatory filing today that it favors the break-up of the office products retailer.

The firm also says it might take action to ensure the company considers such a step.

OfficeMax Inc. on Tuesday announced completion of a two-month internal investigation into its accounting for promotional receipts from its vendors, and said it will restate downward by $4 million to $5 million its 2004 nine-months earnings. The company previously estimated overstatements in this range. In December, after a vendor notified the company of improper documentation on the part of OfficeMax, its audit committee began looking into the company's payment requests to its vendors .

You might call him a Ronny-come-lately, but Staples, Inc. CEO Ron Sargent isn't dallying any longer. He's invading Chicago this week in force.

In one of the more puzzling omissions in American category-killer marketing, the world's originator of office superstores -- and now the largest in the field -- had blithely bypassed the second largest market in the land. In fact, for 20 years, it gave a free pass to its two arch competitors, Office Depot and Office Max, which established 33 and 47 stores respectively to dominate the Chicago area market. Now has come the great awakening.

Office products retailer OfficeMax Inc. said Tuesday it overstated net income by an estimated $4 million to $5 million for the first nine months of 2004, the result of an accounting scandal that already has resulted in six employees being fired.

The company expects to report the revised results on March 14, when it also is scheduled to release fourth-quarter and full-year earnings. It said Feb. 14 that the earlier results were misstated.

OfficeMax made the announcement after completing an internal investigation into its accounting that began in December after a vendor's allegations that some employees had demanded promotional payments and falsified documents.

The Itasca-based company said it overstated operating income in the first quarter of 2004 by approximately $7 million and understated operating income by about $1 million in each of the second and third quarters.

CNN's Bob Losure was the headliner at the recent OfficeMax National Convention at Mandalay Bay, in Las Vegas. Grass Shack reports:

The 1100 attendees learned the ‘news’ about OfficeMax from fun and informative interviews of four of their top executives, covering different aspects of their business. The talk show interview setting offered a relaxed, more conversational approach to disseminating needed information.

Fun videos of the Office Max Rubberband man. Follow the link.

I've talked about the commercial before, but if you haven't seen it, or you want to watch it obsessively, like I've been doing, here it is. (WMP required)

I'm working on finding out who the guy is that plays the Rubberband Man, and I hope to interview him soon. I'll keep you posted.

The Best Buy rebates always work for me. Haven't tried Office Max. Maybe I shouldn't. Here's a story from a Utah TV station about trying to get a rebate.

So, to see just how hard it is to get a rebate from Office Max, I sent my producer Kelly into a store, and watched with a hidden camera. We bought an HP Photo smart printer for $149.99. It came with a mail-in rebate for a $15 Office Max gift card. We also got a $39.99 cent micro-cassette recorder with a $5 mail-in rebate.

The very next day, Kelly filled out both rebate forms, and followed the rather involved directions. She had to cut out each UPC code, and mail the receipts to the same place in two separate envelopes -- one for each product.

Then we waited and waited. And finally, nearly two months later, we did not get our promised rebate. Instead, Kelly got two cards from Office Max thanking her for participating in the rebate promotions, but read "unfortunately we could not honor your request due to the following reasons: invalid postmark date, missing receipt, missing purchase location, missing purchase date, invalid customer state or purchase."

What? But we followed the directions. One look at the copies we made of those forms reveals we did provide all of that supposedly missing information: receipt, purchase location, purchase date -- all of it.

In case you didn't notice, Office Max made a lot of changes to its website late in 2004.

Simplicity and convenience for the customer is what OfficeMax hopes its redesigned Website that was launched this past summer will achieve.

The site now includes customized rules to comply with specific customer needs and flexible cost-center controls to differentiate purchasing activity and assist purchasing professionals with internal procurement processing. Using a single log-in, a purchaser can order products for multiple departments and arrange billing to different cost centers.

The launch of the new site for the office product suppliers reflects a transition for BoiseOffice.com's business-to-business customers to OfficeMax.com, in the aftermatch of Boise Cascade's 2003 purchase of OfficeMax and the corporate name change this year from Boise Cascade to OfficeMax.

There's nothing bland about the board room at Office Max. Maybe that'll spill over into the brand.

Is there anything more depressing than bland brands?

A category that comes to mind that is incredibly vanilla is office supplies. Office Max and Office Depot suffer from utter sameness across the board (names, logos, stores, ad circulars, websites). Staples, while it has a more identifiable, memorable and likable name than the other two, also suffers from the "me, too" complex when it comes to their website and flyers. And all three blend into the background using the same color palette (red, white, black).

After four months on the job, CEO Christopher Milliken stepped down amid allegations that the company cooked up $3.3m in rebates revenue that didn't exist.

Chicago Sun-Times: OfficeMax CEO Resigns Amid Turmoil. A widening scandal at Itasca-based OfficeMax spurred its chief executive to resign Monday, and the company revealed it would restate its profits from the first three quarters of 2004.

I’ve added OfficeMax contracts - mostly employment and severance agreements - to the site.