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OfficeMax
Type	Public NYSE: OMX
Founded	1988
Headquarters	Naperville, Illinois
Industry	Retail
Products	Office supplies
Revenue	$8.9 billion USD (2006)
Employees	35,000 (2005)
Website	http://www.officemax.com/

OfficeMax (NYSE: OMX), is an office supplies retailer founded in 1988 and headquartered in Naperville, Illinois. It is the third-largest office supplies retailer in the USA, behind Staples and Office Depot.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Kmart 1.2 Boise Cascade 2 OfficeMax Impress Print and Document Services 3 MaxPerks Customer Reward Program 3.1 Financial Rebound 4 OfficeMax Ink Refilling Kiosk 5 OfficeMax Ink Recycling Program 6 False Rebate Claims and other controversy 7 See also 8 External links 9 References

On April 1, 1988, OfficeMax was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, by Michael Feuer (who served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) along with seven other associates. On July 5 of that year, OfficeMax opened its first retail store in Golden Gate Shopping Center in Mayfield Heights, Ohio (the location remains open today as store #1).

OfficeMax grew by acquisition, including its 1990 takeover of Office Square stores, previously owned by KMart, in exchange for a 22% equity stake. In 1991, Kmart increased its stake in OfficeMax to 92%. The company acquired BizMart, its largest acquisition to date, in 1992.

The company was acquired by Boise Cascade in 2003, and has undergone numerous internal changes since then, including rebranding its copy and print centers from CopyMax to OfficeMax Print & Document Services. This change was primarily to prevent customers from getting the idea that it was only a copy service. In Q4 2006 the company rolled out a new branding for their printing and finishing service after finding that OfficeMax Print & Document Services was too sterile of a name. The current name for the printing department is OfficeMax ImPress [1].

The furniture section of the retail stores is often marketed separately as FurnitureMax, though officially only a few stores have true FurnitureMax sections, characterized by much larger selections than normal OfficeMaxes. OfficeMax has 867 retail stores in the USA (including Puerto Rico) and 43 locations in Mexico (through a joint venture), in addition to an on-line retailer in the USA (OfficeMax.com). In October 2004, Boise Cascade completed its sale of its paper, building products, and timberland assets. It then renamed itself OfficeMax.

OfficeMax offers many print and document services to customers at a reasonable price. Impress was first named CopyMax, but was changed to Impress in late 2006. Impress has a wide variety of services such as printing, copying, faxing, self inking stamp creation, stapling and binding, lamination and Desktop Publishing. Aside from printing, Impress can also create custom made business cards, with numerous designs and print qualities. OfficeMax also debuted a new business card creation kiosk in 2007 called Design Center. With Design Center, customers can come in at their leisure, and create a custom made business card to their liking, with a dynamic, user friendly interface. Customers have the option of having their business cards shipped to their home or business for a small shipping fee, but if they choose to have them shipped to the store, the shipping fee is waived.

OfficeMax offers a free customer reward program, called [MaxPerks]. The MaxPerks program does not provide instant savings. Instead, customers can earn cash back for future purchases, along with valuable coupons in the mail and other sale advantages. There are two types of MaxPerks programs: MaxPerks for Business and MaxPerks for Teachers.^[1]

The MaxPerks for Business program is intended for every customer. Whether you own a business or not, the MaxPerks for Business progam allows all customers to obtain a percentage back on every $300.00 they spend in the store (excluding Electronics, Computers or MaxAssurance) at the end of each quarter with a limit of 2% back. In addition to a monetary reward, MaxPerks cardholders receive valuable coupons in the mail, allowing them to receive a discount on a future purchase. The MaxPerks for Business program is completely free of charge, and can be obtained at any OfficeMax store, or on OfficeMaxPerks.com.

The MaxPerks for Teachers program is a reward program especially designed for teachers, however cardholders receive $10 for every $75 they spend, instead of a percentage back like MaxPerks for Business. The MaxPerks for Teachers program also allows teachers to get extra school supply money by allowing them to give their MaxPerks number to their students, which allows them to receive extra benefits throughout the school year. Teachers can earn up to $500 dollars with the assistance from student purchases.

In Q1 2006, OfficeMax closed 110 under-performing domestic stores, and is opening 70 new stores with the new award winning "Advantage" store layout.^[2] The "Advantage" store design is supposed to be more customer friendly and includes improvements in all major departments inside an OfficeMax store. The company plans to remodel most or all of its stores to the new Advantage layout.

In 2007, the average price per share of OfficeMax stock has risen to $50+.^{[citation needed]}

Starting in 2005 and ending early 2006, OfficeMax tested a semi-automated ink refill station in their stores in the Chicago area. Customers could bring in old HP, Lexmark, Dell, or Compaq cartridges, and have them tested and refilled at a discounted price than brand name cartridges. As of July 2006, OfficeMax outfitted all of their high profit stores with the ink refill machines. Due to the complexity of Canon cartridges, the OfficeMax Ink Kiosk is unable to refill them. This is mainly due to the fact that Canon uses a colored dye in their cartridges, not ink. The electronic contacts are also digitally altered in such a way that the Ink Kiosk cannot read them.

In 2005, OfficeMax began accepting any empty HP, Dell, Compaq, Lexmark or Canon inkjet or toner cartridges in exchange for a free OfficeMax brand ream of paper, with a limit of 5 per customer, per day, or an option to take $3.00 off their current purchase. (The same limit of 5 applied to the $3.00 off, with a minimum of purchase amount that matched or exceeded the coupon). This was then changed in October of 2006 due to many customers abusing the program. At that time, OfficeMax only offered the $3.00 coupon, with a limit of 5, for only HP, Lexmark and Dell. The cartridges must also be brand name, and cannot be previously recycled cartridges.

In 2005, OfficeMax was investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in regards to "accounting for vendor income." According to OfficeMax, the company had falsified $3.3 million in rebate claims owed by its suppliers. Six employees were fired in connection with the issue. In early November, 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission completed the probe and recommended no enforcement action.

In late 2007, OfficeMax pulled advertising from the Mike Savage show. Their sponsorship was criticized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, which called for a boycott of the show.^{[citation needed]}

• Grand & Toy

• Official site
• SEC findings.

• MaxAssurance Complaints
• MaxAssurance Complaints
• False Rebate Claims