Office Sense owner Bob Taylor put it perfectly when he said, “We’re quite happy to fly under the radar,” during this Dealer Spotlight interview. Taylor and Sales Director Mark Watson have been quietly building a business with a sharply defined vision and a growth trajectory that has seen them go from a standing start to forecasting £3.3 million in sales for this financial year.
To understand the story of Office Sense, you need to understand the history of its predecessor, Everything Office, which Taylor bought in 2002 and which was based in Lowestoft in Suffolk. The impact of the pandemic was swift and brutal and the financial shock forced the business into liquidation. As Watson, who had joined Everything Office in 2016, explains: “When Covid hit, we lost 90% of our revenue virtually overnight. That forced us into making a number of logistical fixed-cost changes.” The collapse of Everything Office could easily have marked the end of the journey, but rather than walk away, the pair reassessed the entire business operation and developed a blueprint for something better.
Starting from scratch
Office Sense was born from that clarity – stripped of overheads, rebuilt around efficiency and customer responsiveness and launched in mid-2020 as a leaner, more agile business. “We realised we had a really good business at the core of it, but we had a huge amount of fixed cost within the operation that just wasn’t able to support the massive drop in sales,” says Watson. The answer was to start again with a fundamentally different operating model: “We managed to retain a few of the customers we’d had under Everything Office and re-emerged with just a couple of us – but now we were more agile to adapt to any change.”
One of the first and most important decisions made was to partner with Office Power from the outset – a move that Watson describes as “transformational”. For a dealership built on agility and low fixed costs, the model was a natural fit.
“If we didn’t sell anything through the platform, we weren’t charged anything,” Watson explains. “It was a no-brainer. Office Power has done an unbelievable job for our business as a whole.” Taylor, who admits that he was initially sceptical, has since been won over entirely, stating: “It’s not a dealer group, so it works really well and is a super set-up for us.”
The partnership has allowed Office Sense to punch well above its weight. Office Power handles the back-end systems – negotiations with VOW Wholesale and other suppliers, logistics infrastructure, website management and an ever-expanding SKU range – leaving Watson and his small team free to focus almost entirely on the customer. Around 90% of deliveries flow through VOW Wholesale and its Truline network, while Office Sense also maintains a local logistics partnership on behalf of a few particular customers for their bespoke stockholding and deliveries.
Quality over quantity
That customer-first approach is supported by a tight-knit team of three: Watson himself, Samantha Johnson – Finance Manager and Everything Office veteran – and Demi Leigh, who joined three years ago as Account Manager. Taylor, who is pretty much hands-off nowadays, leaves Watson to run the day-to-day business. Office Sense clients order online 85% of the time – a figure Watson describes as “really high for our industry” and one that frees him up to conduct structured account reviews with key clients rather than processing routine orders.
“We are purely customer focused,” he notes, and the client base itself reflects that philosophy. Rather than chasing volume through hundreds of small accounts, Office Sense has built deep relationships with a select group of largely national, multi-sited organisations. “We don’t have a base of 500 businesses that all order £80 a year,” Watson explains. “We have a smaller, select number of clients that are extremely loyal. Most of the big ones are contracted, so as they grow and acquire other companies, we grow with them.”
This loyalty is not something that the team takes lightly and the strategy has created a business with unusually high retention rates. “We don’t lose customers,” Watson states. “And I don’t say that glibly. I honestly can’t remember the last one we lost.” Growth comes largely through reputation. “Most of what we win in terms of new business is through word of mouth and through referrals. We’ve just taken on a multi-sited firm of solicitors and that was through word of mouth. That’s how we’ve typically grown – organically.”
That customer base – predominantly from the logistics and services sectors – has also shaped how Office Sense has weathered evolving market shifts. While many dealers have seen their WFH sales tail off as employees return to the workplace, Office Sense has bucked that trend. “We’re national,” Watson explains, adding: “We actually have very little customer focus in Lowestoft and the Suffolk area.” The firms that make up much of its base operate around the clock, with a significant proportion of the workforce permanently home based. “We found that’s been hugely lucrative for us,” he reveals.
Making the difference
It has also reinforced a proposition that now extends far beyond traditional OP. Like many progressive dealers, Office Sense has evolved into a broader workplace solutions provider. Watson prefers to describe the business as a procurement partner – a role that he believes gives Office Sense an edge that the contract stationers simply cannot replicate: “What they’re not so good at is what we are great at – and that’s specials.” This ability to source “the weird and wonderful stuff”, as he puts it, has become a major differentiator. “Absolutely anything that you want to buy within the UK, we will find it – and we deliver extra customer service, bespoke stock management and complete flexibility too.
“I think it’s where we have a massive USP against the likes of Lyreco, RAJA, Viking and Staples, and why we’re riding high. Furniture, garden furniture for communal areas, office fit-outs, promotional ranges – if a customer needs it, Office Sense will find it.”
In terms of the biggest category growth driver for the dealer, facilities supplies is currently the fastest-growing category – from around £250,000 three years ago to nearly £750,000 today. Meanwhile, Specials now account for 15-20% of total business. The expansion of Office Power’s supplier network has helped to fuel that diversification. Watson points to the recent addition of Diverse Fine Food as a particularly valuable enhancement. “We were selling probably 7,500 SKUs last year,” he says. “We’re now up to nearly 9,000 SKUs across the range.”
Meanwhile, the categories in decline are those which you’d expect: inks and toners are down 40% and paper has slipped around 11%. For a business that has deliberately diversified, neither trend keeps Watson up at night. What he does think about is the gap between aspiration and execution when it comes to sustainability reporting. While Office Sense holds ISO 14001 accreditation, Watson believes that the ability to present granular, per-customer sustainability data during account reviews is becoming an essential requirement.
He is also acutely aware that sustainability is rapidly shifting from a secondary consideration to a major purchasing driver – particularly among younger buyers, who he says are increasingly choosing suppliers based on environmental credentials rather than price alone. For them, he notes, sustainability is “becoming such an important part of their decision-making, not just an add-on”.
Eyes on the horizon
Like many dealers, Office Sense is facing mounting pressure from inflation, rising costs and ongoing economic uncertainty. But rather than retreat, the business is preparing to become more proactive in its approach to sales. Ironically, that means going decidedly old school. Having tried telecanvassing and leaning into social media, the team is going knocking on doors.
Explaining the rationale behind this approach, Watson says it’s because no one’s doing it anymore. “Let’s go back to actually talking to people, leaving a little freebie, conducting a very soft sell and seeing what happens,” he says.
Looking further ahead, acquisitions may also form part of the company’s future growth plans – provided the right fit emerges. According to Taylor, the ideal candidate would be “a dealer with a similar culture to us that wants to get out of their business, with a good sales order book and a diverse range of clients.”
He is also characteristically measured about the timeline, adding: “We’re always looking at acquisition opportunities and it’s a good route for us to expand, but they’ve got to fit with how we operate. We haven’t found many that have just clicked with us yet, but our door is always open.”
