With everything else that your business spends money on, office supplies may seem like small change. However, when you add up the costs over the time span of a year, your business could be spending a lot more money than it needs to. When left unchecked, these expenses can significantly cut into your profit margin, which is something no CEO wants to see. Luckily, there are a number of great ways to save money on your office supplies. Let’s take a look.
Buy Generic Products
Name brand supplies may have name recognition, but often, they’re not any better quality than the generic products you will find. Instead of shopping for Faber-Castell and Staedtler products, check out the generic items instead. You can compare like for like on the packaging and pick up something comparable for a fraction of the cost.
Shop Online
When shopping for stationery products, have a look online to see if you can find what you need for a cheaper price. Because online stores don’t have the same overheads as traditional brick and mortar stores, they often don’t have to markup their products as highly to make a profit.
Buying products in a large quantity will often lead to free shipping deals, and you can receive next day delivery on most items too! If the products are bulky a large item courier is the ideal choice for you.
Supplies like ink cartridges can be a big expense for some companies that do a lot of printing. There are sites online that specialise in providing deals on ink refill services or printer cartridges – use these sites over regular supply stores in order to save money. Printer ink is something that is not always best buying in bulk as it does have an expiry date.
By shopping online you can also use coupon codes at the checkout for more savings. Office Depot discount codes can be found on sites like Groupon.
Eliminate Paper Waste
Do you know how much paper your employees waste every year? Are your employees even aware of the cost of paper these days? Eliminating waste is vital if you want to lower your expenditure. If a document doesn’t need to be printed out, don’t do it. And unless you are delivering a presentation to a client, is there any reason why you can’t print on both sides? Encourage your staff to think about whether they really need paper products, and before long it will become like second nature to them.
Negotiate
If you have a specific supplier that you buy all your office supplies from, why not negotiate with them to see if they’d be willing to provide a discount on your orders? It’s highly likely that your supplier is aware of their competitors, and will be willing to offer a regular discount to prevent you jumping ship. This puts you in a great negotiating position, especially if you order frequently or place large orders. Just make sure that you negotiate on the items your business needs on a regular basis, and don’t be pulled in by free products you won’t ever use.
Set an Example
Finally, it’s important to set an example to your staff on how to use stationery properly. If you’re printing out dozens of worthless documents, your staff are going to do exactly the same thing. However, if you start sending emails instead of handing out printed documents, your staff will copy your example.
Running a business can be expensive, but stationery should not be a forgotten area of your company. Have a look at where you can reduce waste and cut costs and you should see your profit margins start to increase.
