Now it looks like Coles is being sold. I wonder what will happen about Officeworks. Harvey Norman, Wesfarmers and Woolworths are interested in buying Officeworks.
Wesfarmers is likely to be given access this week to Officeworks figures supplied by Coles note they have to sign an extensive confidentiality agreement. Soon the others will get the figures, I bet it will cause them all to do some real number crunching.
For newsagents, I suspect that Harvey Norman purchase is probably the best. They handle at least half of Officeworks products already. They are not into office stationery selling. Woolworths also will be more of the same. Probably the worst is Wesfarmers. I have dealt with them before and they are an extremely professional company. With their stress on technology, huge stock inventory shops, high volume and low prices they could be a real challenge.
However whoever buys Coles and if they lose out on Officeworks will probably be tempted to try to get back some of this stationery market.
Also, both Harvey Norman and Woolworths are saying if they don’t get Officeworks they are considering starting a rival stationery supply chain.
So it is quite likely in what is already a competitive stationery market at least a few new players will enter.
Newsagents have to work out where they want to position themselves in the market.
