It’s one thing to offer techno-savvy small offices the means to buy note pads, paper clips and the like over the Web. But one cyber-stationer is going a step further, offering not only supplies but access to such services as accounting and recruitment.
Fairfax, VA-based Onlineofficesupplies.com-on the Web since August-joined forces with DigitalWorks. com last month for a partnership it hopes will help set it apart in a world dominated by office superstore chains. CEO Paula Jagemann sees the alliance as an effective means to reach the estimated 12-million-strong small office/home office (SOHO) market.
Under the deal, Rolling Meadows, IL-based DigitalWorks will co-brand its Web site with that of Onlineofficesupplies. It will furnish the latter’s customers with links enabling them to take advantage of services like executive recruitment and public relations, says DigitalWorks marketing vice president Randy Grudzinski.
Onlineofficesupplies, which expects at least $6 million in revenue this year, recently kicked off a campaign to reachSOHO markets through Web banners, direct mail and direct response space ads in association journals that target professional, military and government markets, says Jagemann.
“We’re going for the second-tier publications,” she says.
Late last year, the company had sent mailings to a handful of high-tech companies in greater New York, Los Angeles and Chicago-largely because those markets all have high sales taxes. Onlineofficesupplies is exempt from new sales taxes for a while, thanks to the tax moratorium signed by President Clinton that bars state and local governments from imposing new taxes on transactions conducted via the Internet.
If neither the DigitalWorks alliance nor aggressive marketing to associations succeeds, Jagemann says, Onlineofficesupplies has another ace in its hole: a substantial contract with a major corporation.
Although non-disclosure protocols still apparently apply at this writing, Jagemann hints a deal might be forthcoming with one or more of the companies that employ its board members.
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