To the Point …

Dennis Cohen oversees the operating activities and strategy development for Office Depot’s $3.5B Private Brand business. His responsibilities include international logistics, product lifecycle management, vendor compliance, quality assurance, customs compliance and brand customer service.

STORES’ Editor Susan Reda recently caught up with Cohen at NRF’s first Global Supply Chain Summit, held last month in Columbus, Ohio.

As you look at the balance of the year, what do you consider to be the biggest supply chain challenges that lie ahead for Office Depot?
There are a lot of retail companies that have not fully recovered from the recession and remain challenged by ongoing economic uncertainty. We are one of those companies. Our chief goal is to increase our top line sales. Throughout the company, and particularly within our supply chain, we’re putting extra focus on what we can do to differentiate ourselves in the eyes of our customers.

Supply chain has a lot of input into that. For example, making sure that we’re in stock and that our inventory levels are set right is absolutely key for us. We want to be sure that when someone orders something or comes into the store to make a purchase, that it’s in stock and on the shelf.

Expense control is obviously extremely important in this economic climate. We look to streamline the supply chain to ensure that we can deliver products to our customers as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. The supply chain plays a leading role in the financial condition of the company. The ability to free up cash for Office Depot to invest in other important areas of the business is critical to our overall success.

Are fuel costs keeping you up at night?
I wouldn’t say that fuel prices are keeping us up at night because it’s really something we can’t control. We do have some strategies in place to mitigate the impact, but pretty much every retailer out there is in the same situation. We have little choice but to deal with it.

If something was keeping us up at night, I would have to say it’s the impact rising fuel costs could potentially have on consumer spending. Our chief concern is that customers will continue to rein in their spending on some of the discretionary products we sell. That’s the situation in which we all start tossing and turning.

What’s your personal metric for determining whether retail is on the road to recovery or slipping back toward recession?
Small- to medium-sized businesses are really the engine of economic recovery in our country. They’re also our main customers. When we see this group starting to buy again and using credit to make big purchases (equipment and such), then we know the economy is humming. Right now we’d characterize our customers as optimistic -- an indicator that our business is likely to improve. I watch spending patterns closely when I’m trying to determine where our business and others similar to ours are headed.

The File: Office Depot, Inc.
• Main Business: Global supplier of office products and services
• Headquarters: Boca Raton, Fla.
• Revenue: $11.6 billion
• Stores: 1,000 +,worldwide
• Operations: Office Depot does business in 53 countries throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America
• Stock Symbol : ODP (NYSE) Office Depot is included in the S & P Midcap 400