Diversity and Inclusion

Marketplace Diversity and Inclusion

Marketplace diversity at OfficeMax means taking into consideration our customers and their experience; our investors, vendors and suppliers; and our approach to going to market. It is one of three major Areas of Influence identified to help us fulfill our Diversity and Inclusion objectives.

In 2007, we made meaningful progress in addressing marketplace diversity through a variety of activities, including diversity and inclusion education and awareness training, community outreach, supplier diversity restructuring, our Multicultural Market Analysis and Retail Store Profile initiative and organizational sponsorships and memberships.

Community Outreach

When OfficeMax realigned its philanthropic and community affairs efforts in 2006 to focus primarily on helping public school teachers, grades K-12, we also viewed this new emphasis as a way to support Diversity and Inclusion initiatives. To this end, we integrated our community affairs function into our Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

In 2007, Community Affairs cooperated with a number of other internal groups to launch two new major initiatives: A Day Made Better and the OfficeMax Volunteer Program. Brief reviews of these initiatives are provided below, with more detail available in the Community and Education section of this report.

A Day Made Better – Launched in October 2007, this national event (United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), served to surprise 1,000 teachers at 1,000 elementary schools with a donation of classroom supplies made to the school on behalf of the teacher gift recipient. A majority of the schools were classified under Title I of the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is designed to improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged. A Title I school is defined as an in-need school where 40 percent or more of its student body are subsidized with a free lunch program.

OfficeMax Volunteer Program – Launched shortly after A Day Made Better, and based on a successful 2006 pilot program, the OfficeMax Volunteer Program is designed to support the volunteer efforts of OfficeMax associates in improving K-12 education in our communities. In support of our Diversity and Inclusion strategy, we focus, when possible, on helping schools-in-need as classified under Title I of the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Supplier Diversity Restructuring

In 2007, OfficeMax restructured its approach to supplier diversity by moving the function from our Merchandising group to our Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

One of our first major initiatives was to review the way in which we report our supplier diversity performance and how well it aligns with major diversity advocacy and certification organizations. As this effort is underway, we will refrain from reporting our “diversity spend” metric, as was provided in our 2006 report.

Multicultural Market Analysis and Retail Store Profile Initiative

With the goal of gaining greater market share, in 2007 our Office of Diversity and Inclusion and our Marketing department partnered on an innovative research project entitled “Multicultural Market Analysis and Retail Store Profile.”

The project focused on better understanding the demographics of the people who shop in our retail stores and how that correlates with store performance and the cultural characteristics of the surrounding communities.

The information garnered through this project will help us better serve our customers with products, signage, promotion and merchandising that best meets their business and personal needs, both in existing stores and through new store development. A simple example might be offering international telephone calling cards in stores in areas with significant Hispanic customer populations, which tend to place a large number of trans-border calls.

More detail on the methodology, findings and recommendations resulting from this study can be found in the Customer Value section of this report.