Cheaper products are made that way for a reason; they don’t last — or do they? The old saying, “you get what you pay for” has lead to many people developing an uncanny skepticism towards cheaper products and services as though they are naturally deficient and inferior. While this can certainly be the case, it is not necessarily the rule: here are a few tips and pointers to help Americans determine when to buy cheap and when to buy quality office supplies.
Personal Use
School and personal home offices alike rely on the same kinds of products more often than not. As a general rule of thumb, the amount of use you’ll have for something should correlate to a budget. Case in point: cheap spiral notebook graph paper has a more frequent tendency to rip easier (and not where you want), bleed through to clean pages, and fall apart at the binding than premium spiral notebook graph paper. Aside from this rule are adornments for desktop organization; up to 57% of Americans judge their coworkers by how clean and organized their desks are, as there is a correlation between cleanliness and productivity according to some studies.
Corporate Supplies
Businesses should always be looking for ways to trim the fat and save money — surprisingly, this tactic has worked in the past to miraculously increase profits. It is estimated that the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year, yet it is very unlikely that that average worker does anything productive enough to justify wasting 40 sheets of paper per work day. Businesses that are able to anticipate worker needs on an annual basis are able to buy cheap mailers, small binder rings, numbered dividers, and 1 inch binders in bulk to help keep costs down and decrease the frequent need to reorder products. Experts suggest that companies should anticipate spending $200 per year on office supplies for each employee — and to supplement the earlier statement about a clean desk: studies show that messy desks and the time devoted to looking for objects that have been misplaced costs corporate America $177 billion annually; so it pays to be neat!
