OFFICE DEPOT BEATS OUT LOCAL VENDOR …..

[Anonymous]

Office Depot Beats Out Local Vendors for City Contract
A
multi-year, $1.65-million contract for city office supplies will go to
Office Depot, pending approval by the City Council tonight. Beating out
four office suppliers—including two local vendors—Office Depot has won
a bid to provide the city with recycled paper and miscellaneous office
products, at $550,000 a year over three years. If approved, the
contract takes effect, retroactively, July 1. Office Depot was “the
lowest bid, and we also require being able to order our stuff online.
Anybody that had that we considered,” said Fran David, city director of
finance. The next lowest bidder, Office Max, came in about $35,000
higher than Office Depot. Corporate Express, Alko and Radstons, whose
Berkeley store closed Saturday, also submitted bids. Alko, located on
Shattuck Avenue, was the only company that did not offer sufficient
online ordering, David said. The city spends an average of $537,000 a
year on office products. The cost of paper and supplies has increased
by 6.8 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively, over the last year,
according to a staff report. This is the first time in nine years the
city initiated its own competitive bid process for office supplies,
David said. Until recently, the city had to piggyback on contracts of
other municipalities because it lacked the staff to generate
requests-for-proposals, she said. The process affords local companies
the opportunity to vie for the city’s patronage, the staff report says.
In 1983, the City Council adopted a resolution that gives preference to
local businesses for city purchases between $100 and $10,000 (now
$25,000). Over that amount, though, “we can’t give any preference for
local business, because it’s not legal,” David said. Office Depot
distributed most of the city’s office supplies from 1999 to 2005. Last
year, the city reallocated the bulk of its business to Corporate
Express, also an international company, because Office Depot failed to
offer recycled processed chlorine-free (PCF) paper. (Office Depot now
offers PCF paper.)
Office Depot, a Florida-based conglomerate that
operates in 23 countries, generates more than $14 billion a year in
sales. The company has a storefront in Berkeley and donates 5 percent
of its annual city taxes to the Berkeley Unified School District, the
staff report says. A company representative could not be reached to
comment by press time. Local suppliers who bid on the contract have
expressed frustration at losing out to a major corporation. “I think
it’s stupid they don’t consider the value of keeping resources at
home,” said Gary Shows, owner of Alko, a Berkeley business for 35
years. “I think it’s wrong.” The city contracted with Alko about 10
years ago but withdrew its support when Office Depot entered the scene,
Shows said. City dollars earmarked to Alko have steadily declined over
the years, down from about $15,000 in 2003 to $7,000 last year.
Radstons Owner Diane Griffin told the Daily Planet last month she was
hopeful of securing the three-year contract. Griffin had just announced
that the company, a Berkeley institution since 1908, would lay off
workers and close its downtown storefront in July, due to financial
hardships. (Radstons has a distribution center and retail complex in
Hercules.) “In my situation, I’m letting my employees go, and this
would have salvaged two of my longtime employees,” Griffin said in a
phone interview Friday. “If they understood the impact of buying from a
local vendor, they would understand the impact of where the money goes
and where the money stays.” Radstons contracts with other
municipalities and city departments including the Metropolitan
Transportation Commission, Oakland Housing, UC Berkeley and the city of
Richmond, Griffin said. Radstons was equipped to supply the city of
Berkeley with the gamut of its office needs, she said. “I’m
disappointed, safe to say,” she said. The contract is up for approval
on the City Council’s consent agenda tonight.

[Author]

July 24, 2006 at 10:38 AM