16 January 2015

Healthy debate on the future of the Office Products Industry

The first ever BOSS Future of the Office Products Industry Conference took place this week (14th January) at the prestigious St Bride Foundation in London.

The day was free to BOSS members and consisted of presentations from a fantastic line-up of speakers who shared their views from all channels of the industry:

• Robert Baldrey, CEO of EVO
• Mark Cooper, VP of Avery Europe & Asia Pacific
• Angela Anderson, Head of Buying Papershop at Tesco
• Mark Monte-Colombo, Head of Web Trading at Tesco
• Elliot Jacobs, MD of UOE
• Luke Chapman, CEO of The BP Group
• Simon Drakeford, CEO of Euroffice
• Aidan Doyle, MD of Staples Advantage

Common themes throughout the day were the potential for further consolidation and collaboration within the industry, the importance of building customer loyalty, the need to embrace the digital age and the continuous challenge of competing with Amazon.

The event rounded off with a truly inspirational talk from blind ultra-marathon runner, Simon Wheatcroft, who battled through adversity by setting himself the gruelling challenge of running from Boston to New York only to finish off with the New York Marathon - a total of 260 miles. Simon provided attendees with advice on how to overcome industry obstacles with examples from his training "The obvious problem was road signs and lampposts - you have to learn where they are by running into them".

Phil Jones, Managing Director of Brother, said "The Future of the Industry Conference was an excellent platform for key figureheads and stakeholders to address the big issues impacting the industry landscape. It was a very good investment of time, providing deep insights and high quality networking." 

Watch this space to see a film of the event and please send any feedback to me at [email protected].