📋 Office Depot / ODP Corporation — Key Facts
| Parent Company | The ODP Corporation |
| Stock Listing | NASDAQ: ODP |
| Office Depot Founded | 1986, Fort Lauderdale, Florida |
| OfficeMax Merger | Merged with OfficeMax in 2013 to form Office Depot, Inc. |
| Headquarters | Boca Raton, Florida, USA |
| CEO | Gerry Smith |
| Revenue | ~$7–8 billion (annual) |
| Major Shareholders | Institutional (Vanguard, BlackRock, etc.) + no single controller |
Office Depot is an office supply retail chain owned by The ODP Corporation, a publicly traded company listed on NASDAQ (ODP). The ODP Corporation is the parent holding company of Office Depot, OfficeMax, and several B2B services businesses. As a public company, ODP has broadly distributed institutional ownership with no single controlling shareholder.
Who Is the Owner of Office Depot?
Office Depot is owned by The ODP Corporation (NASDAQ: ODP), which formed when Office Depot Inc. rebranded itself in 2020. The company is publicly traded with institutional shareholders including Vanguard, BlackRock, and various funds holding significant stakes. No individual or family holds controlling ownership. The company is led by CEO Gerry Smith, who took the helm in 2017 with a mandate to transform the business from brick-and-mortar retail to a technology-enabled B2B services company.
Office Depot’s History and the OfficeMax Merger
Office Depot was founded in 1986 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by F. Patrick Sher, Stephen Dougherty, and Jack Kopkin — initially focused on selling office supplies at discounted prices in warehouse-style stores. The concept was modeled on the successful “category killer” retail format that Costco and Home Depot had pioneered. The chain rapidly expanded throughout the US. In 2013, Office Depot merged with OfficeMax (itself a 1988 spinoff from K-Mart) to create a combined entity of approximately 2,000 retail locations — positioning it to better compete against Staples and the growing threat of Amazon.
The Staples Merger That Never Was
In 2015, Office Depot agreed to be acquired by Staples (its main competitor) for $6.3 billion. The deal would have effectively unified the two dominant office supply retail chains in North America. However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) blocked the merger in 2016 on antitrust grounds, ruling that the combined company would have had excessive market power in the B2B office supply market. The blocked deal forced Office Depot to chart an independent path, leading to its current strategic pivot toward B2B tech services and away from traditional retail.
