A home-improvement founder borrows a word.

Office Depot began in South Florida in October 1986. The Sun Sentinel, in a report of 20 October 1986 that it reprinted in 2015, said that Pat Sher, the founder of the Mr. HOW Warehouse home-improvement chain, had opened his first Office Depot on 9 October in the Lauderdale Lakes Mall. The paper described the company as headquartered in Boca Raton and named Sher as its chairman. English Wikipedia lists three founders: F. Patrick Sher, who became chairman and chief executive, Stephen Dougherty, who became president, and Jack Kopkin, who became executive vice president, all of whom had worked with Mr. HOW Warehouse, which Sher had sold to Service Merchandise in 1983.

The name came with a story attached. The Sun Sentinel wrote that Home Depot “may have once been a competitor” to Sher and that he had “adopted its last name for his new venture.” The two were run by different companies, the paper noted, and it quoted Home Depot’s corporate counsel, Larry Smith, as saying that Home Depot had no legal protection over the word “depot” in combinations other than its own name.

From the start, Office Depot described itself in plain words. In the same 1986 report Sher gave the company’s tagline as “All your business needs at warehouse prices.” He described a store that carried typewriters, chairs, desks and files alongside business forms, pens, typing paper and rubber cement, and even some household items for the office kitchen. The paper also noted that the first store had a copy center that produced letterheads, fliers and brochures, and printed vellum and blueprints for architects and engineers — an early form of the print-and-copy counter that still sits inside the chain’s stores.

The company went public in December 1988, according to English Wikipedia, which cites a New York Times business brief of that month.

Mergers, house brands and a print counter.

Office Depot grew largely by joining with others. In April 1991 it merged with Office Club, a chain that took it to the West Coast, according to English Wikipedia, which cites a UPI report of that month. In 1995 it entered Mexico through a joint venture with the retailer Grupo Gigante, and in May 1998 it bought Viking Direct, a mail-order business that carried its name into Europe and Australia; Wikipedia says Office Depot sold its European business, Viking’s parent, to an investment firm in September 2017.

Not every deal went ahead. In 1997 a federal court in Washington granted the Federal Trade Commission a preliminary injunction that blocked a planned merger with Staples, and in May 2016 the federal district court in Washington granted the FTC an injunction against a second Staples deal, which was then ended, according to English Wikipedia.

On the shelf, Office Depot sells its own ranges next to the branded goods it stocks. When it completed its merger with OfficeMax in November 2013, the company’s announcement listed its brand portfolio as including Ativa, TUL, Foray and DiVOGA alongside Office Depot, OfficeMax and Viking; English Wikipedia adds the Realspace furniture name.

The print counter has stayed part of the offer. In July 2020 Office Depot formed a partnership with the online design platform Canva, and English Wikipedia says the company incorporates Canva’s design platform into its printing services.

The name has also travelled on race cars. English Wikipedia says that in January 2005 Office Depot became the “Official Office Products Partner of NASCAR” and the primary sponsor of Carl Edwards’ No. 99 Ford for Roush Fenway Racing until the end of 2008, and that from 2009 it was a co-primary sponsor of Tony Stewart’s No. 14 Chevrolet at Stewart–Haas Racing until September 2012, when the company said it would not renew it.

Fascia, aisles and the house range.

An office-supply store is read from the car park before it is read from the shelf. The fascia carries the name in one or two colours, sized for a passing driver, and the same letterforms then reappear on entrance doors, trolleys, shopping baskets and staff uniforms. Inside, the identity shifts from shout to wayfinding: aisle blades and hanging signs label broad categories such as paper, ink, furniture and technology, and they rely on a consistent typeface, a short colour code and generous contrast so that a shopper can scan a long aisle quickly.

Private-label packaging is where a retailer’s graphic system does most of its quiet work. Reams of copy paper, boxes of pens, folders and storage boxes sit beside branded goods, so the house range tends to use a fixed grid, a recognisable colour band and plain product photography to read as a family from across the aisle. The print-and-copy counter adds another layer: service menus, order forms, sample walls of business cards and banners, and proof sheets all need to look like the same company as the fascia outside.

Two store names under one owner.

The chain changed again in 2013. Office Depot and OfficeMax announced on 20 February 2013 that they would combine, and the merger was completed on 5 November 2013, according to the companies’ announcement, which said the combined business would take the name Office Depot, Inc. and trade on the New York Stock Exchange as “ODP.” In December 2013 the Sun Sentinel reported that the company had chosen Boca Raton for its headquarters, rather than OfficeMax’s base in Naperville, Illinois, under its new chief executive, Roland Smith. Since then the business has run two store names side by side: some OfficeMax shops have kept their name, while others have been rebranded as Office Depot, according to English Wikipedia.

The parent company is now known as The ODP Corporation, which English Wikipedia describes as doing business as Office Depot, with its headquarters in Boca Raton. In September 2025, Wikipedia says, it agreed to be taken private by the investment firm Atlas Holdings, and on 11 December 2025 the trade publication The Recycler reported that Atlas had completed the acquisition. The report said Craig Gunckel, whose background is in the paper and packaging industry, had been appointed chief executive, and that the retail business includes the Office Depot and OfficeMax stores in the United States and Canada. Atlas Holdings has owned The ODP Corporation since December 2025.

For a design guide, Office Depot shows how a store name built on a borrowed word can carry fascia, aisle signs, house brands and a print counter for decades. Compare OfficeMax, the chain it merged with, and Staples, the rival it twice tried to join. For this guide we use a red, a deep red and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Office Depot’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.