If you are reading this article, then it means that some divine hand has guided you to this exact moment to hear about office supplies that you need to have in your place of employment. This article is written specifically for office managers and similar roles, because if you are in charge of the office supplies and work culture then you need to be on top of your game. Office efficiency can make or break the standard workflow procedures of your business, and too many times have I seen mismanaged time and poorly allocated resources in the workplace. One thing that I can say is that when it comes to office supplies, there are certain items that I think just about everybody needs to be using on a regular basis. I wrote this article so that you may take advantage of my business knowledge and entrepreneurship that I have accumulated over the years. I hope that this is helpful to you and that it will change the way you manage your office.

The first thing that you need to think about as you analyze what types of things you need in your office is furniture. Were you not expecting to hear furniture being under the umbrella of office supplies? Well, this is a huge part of any office, and I find in most cases managers greatly lack in providing good furniture for their employees to work in. I am not just talking about office desk chairs (which need to be good quality and have a lot of lumbar support), but I also mean couches, recliners, tables, and workstations that offer your employees and their teams pleasant, comfortable, and functional places to work and relax in. Yes, I said relax! Part of working means taking breaks when necessary, so it is good to have extra couches for a quick nap session during the afternoon. You know, foreign countries often take siestas on the regular, which is basically midday naps and rest times that will allow employees to come back to work more productive and satisfied. 

Other office supplies that you should be using are different stationary items. There are the obvious ones like pens, pencils, sticky notes, envelopes, paper, legal pads, notebooks, and other things like that. It is also important to have proper technology at your office, and I don’t mean old laptops and printers that take forever to function properly. Your employees should be outfitted with laptops, printers, scanners, fax machines, iPads, and other devices that can properly keep up with them and their work. Obviously, you do not need to go overboard, but at least offer your employees proper tools to do their work and to work efficiently. 

Another crucial part of office supplies that many people overlook is the importance of mailing and shipping supplies. Even if you’re not an eCommerce business and don’t usually ship things, having some shipping boxes and other supplies on hand is always a good idea. You never know when you might need to ship something off to a client or send a letter that you forgot about. Instead of having to go to the store quickly to buy more envelopes, packing materials, or shipping boxes, your life and your employee’s lives will be much easier if you have some of those things on hand.

If you are like me, then you are a bit confused right now. I mean, I have been working at home from my home office for more than over a year at this point. Due to COVID 19 restrictions, most businesses were shut down for the time being. While most of us were sure this was only going to last for a few weeks, we have now seen it become the new normal. It is really shocking to think about all the time we have spent in this pandemic and that many things we used to take for granted are now off the table. Personally, I am getting excited at the prospect of things opening back up again. Businesses are starting to return to normal working capacities and safety regulations are being lifted bit by bit. I am hopeful that we have crossed the worst of this pandemic and can put much of this behind us for the time being. However, I still find myself working from home at the moment. According to my coworkers, my company is going to keep us at home and working for the next couple of weeks still, and that maybe we will return to the office sometime soon if things keep looking up regarding the virus.

I know a lot of my coworkers that absolutely love working from home. I can definitely understand this sentiment, because there are a lot of good things about working from home. I too enjoyed working from home for a while; it was a nice break from the monotony of the office and it was a true joy to not have to take my long commute every morning. However, I have long since been tired of waking up in the morning just to go back to work in the same exact spot in this same exact home. It is a really depressing feeling to know that day after day I have spent in this house simply wasting away. I know that might be a bit dramatic, but honestly I am a pretty dramatic person. 

One thing that has come of this pandemic is that I buy almost everything online nowadays. Sure, things are beginning to open back up again, which is great. I enjoy going to the grocery store much more now that things have calmed down a little bit, but there is still a huge part of me that enjoys online shopping. I have gotten so used to buying things online that I have a whole stash of shipping supplies in my office in the event that I need to send things back. Buying things online has truly never been easier, and lots of companies have transitioned into more eCommerce during this crazy time. It will be interesting to see, as we revert back to some kind of normal life while transitioning out of the pandemic, how much of a presence eCommerce will continue to have on our markets.

One thing’s for sure, I’ll definitely keep shipping supplies on hand still. I know that most people are ready for this whole thing to be over, and I know that I am too. However, there is always a weird nostalgia for me associated with this year; something about a time so out of the ordinary is oddly fascinating and thrilling at the same time. Whatever the case, it is also time to get a move on and get back to normal life.

I have been owning and operating my own business for about 10 years now. I started out as a small business owner with a storefront located in my small nameless town in the American Midwest, but I have recently moved my business online to participate in the hype coming from eCommerce. COVID has been a perfect time to get started with my business online, because this is a time when people are stuck in their homes for an extended period of time and may be looking more for opportunities to buy things online. Since moving my business online, I have found a lot more success in eCommerce and being able to sell and distribute my products has never been easier. I was originally really worried about going out of business with my storefront being shut down, but I’ve actually made more money over this year of COVID from not having to pay for rent the past couple of months. 

Moving my business to an online store model was not a super difficult transition. While I was originally worried about being able to effectively translate my business into an eCommerce model, it seems that there has been a lot of softwares and products made in recent years that help older guys like me figure out how to run my stuff online and actually turn a profit. A lot of the initial problems associated with my eCommerce business were found in the allocation of my shipping and packaging resources to ensure that my products were being sent to where they needed to go. One struggle was having enough shipping boxes on hand to be able to keep up with the increased demand from the pandemic. It was also quite a process to identify what size shipping boxes work best for my products, as many of my products have a different weight and size and therefore need marginally more or less room to ship comfortably.

I also did not want to have problems with my products being broken or damaged during shipping, so I had to ensure that I was packing my items with lots of bubble wrap and packing material to keep everything secure. Owning an eCommerce business has its fair share of drawbacks, though, and I must say that I miss working in my actual store at times. It is not as rewarding to work hard and create products for people you will never see; it always brought me joy to watch people, families, or young kids come in to buy my products and see the joy on their faces.

With eCommerce, most of this is gone. Sometimes I get emails from happy customers or very nice reviews on my website from people who are satisfied with their order, but it’s nowhere near the same as before. I hope to continue working with eCommerce, but I eventually want to return to my physical store when things begin to open up and COVID restrictions become a little bit looser. If you are looking to start your own online business, just make sure you are paying attention to your customers and seeing how to best target your market. ECommerce business models can be relatively simple or surprisingly complicated depending on what you want to do, so keep that in mind as you venture out into that online world.

My company specializes in creating commercial plastic products that are shipped out to thousands of different companies from around the world. While it’s not a glamorous business, we do very well and have found great success in this niche market. There is a great need for commercial plastics in the business-to-business world, and we have made headway in innovating new methods of manufacturing plastic materials that are safe and practical. We pride ourselves on our customer service abilities and our dedication to serving our customers well. We have a high standard for our own products and delight in making products that are practical, necessary, and in high demand. I am an operations manager at one of our bigger plants, and I oversee the daily operations in this facility. 

One big change in the market that the world has witnessed is the start of the COVID19 pandemic. This pandemic has affected almost every market in the world and has changed the way many people are doing business. While we were worried about our own relevance during the pandemic while watching various businesses face struggling financial conditions, we quickly realized that we had an opportunity to create and sell products that are in desperate demand during the COVID crisis. We began by creating plastic parts for personal protective equipment, mainly plastic straps that can be used to attack masks behind the head. That way, long days of wearing masks will not be a strain on front line worker’s ears. We produced millions of these products and shipped them all over the United States. We found ourselves working overtime to keep up with the demand and buying shipping supplies in massive quantities to have enough to send our products out daily. 

While we continued to make great headway with the mask holds, we also began to create plastic shields that were in great demand during the pandemic. While many businesses were forced to shut down during the lockdown, some necessary ones had to remain open; however, it was important for these businesses to still be as safe as possible when it came to personal protective equipment and social distancing standards. One thing that many businesses were in need of was plastic shields that would be used between employee-customer transactions. We set to work in designing shields that could be quickly produced in mass quantities and easily shipped to grocery stores, department stores, banks, post offices, and hotels all over the country. 

Things have slowed down in recent months due to the threat of COVID being more under control at this point in time, and I am happy that these products were able to make a serious impact on our country and be helpful in a time of crisis for many people in the United States. We have recently started to wean off producing these products in such massive quantities and have begun to focus back on our regular products and projects. This period of uncertainty brought on with COVID has helped us to analyze our companies efficiency with production, shipping supplies, and ordering capabilities and narrow in on any ways to improve. I feel good about my company’s contribution to the economy with plastics and personal protective equipment and hope that we are able to continue doing good work in the future with manufacturing and shipping our various plastic products.