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Office Depot is one of the world's largest office supply retail store chains, with over 1,000 stores worldwide in 23 countries. It has a strong catalog and e-commerce operations which cater to both the general public and to large corporate clients. It is headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida.

Office Depot was founded in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida (near Fort Lauderdale) in 1986 by three partners: Pat Sher, Stephen Dougherty, and Jack Kopkin.
Sheer, the company's first CEO, died the next year from leukemia. The company retained professional executive recruiters (so-called "headhunters") to find a replacement for
Sheer. The new Chairman and CEO turned out to be a Sherwin-Williams executive named David
Fuentes.

At first reluctant to take the job, Fuentes embraced the concept of an products superstore and immediately launched an aggressive nationwide expansion program. To finance it, he arranged for an initial public offering of stock in 1988. In 1991,
Office Depot expanded to the West Coast region with the purchase of competitor
Office Club. By 1993, it was operating over 350 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

The company began to run into problems in the late 1990s when many key North American markets became saturated with too many of the big three
office supply chains: Office Depot, OfficeMax, and Staples. In 1996,
Office Depot attempted to merge with Staples, but the deal fell through when the Federal Trade Commission refused to approve the merger on antitrust grounds. In search of new opportunities,
Office Depot began to expand overseas to many more countries. In 1998, it launched its public Web site and merged with the catalog company Viking
Office Products.
A typical Office Depot store
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A typical Office Depot store
During the dot-com collapse in late 2000, the company's sales took a dive. Over 70 stores were closed and
Fuentes was reportedly forced out of his job as CEO; he was replaced by the head of the company's international operations, Bruce Nelson. On October 4, 2004,
Office Depot announced that Neil R. Austrian, former President of the National Football League, was succeeding Nelson as Interim Chairman and CEO. Succeeding Austrian was Steve
Oland, formerly CEO of AutoZone.
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