Office supplier building new home

A full-service copy center, more greeting cards, better furniture displays and a better back-to-school selection will all come with Custom Office Supply's move to a new location this summer.

Owner Gene Dickinson hopes to open a much larger store by the end of July across from the Meek's building supply store and Carson-Tahoe Harley-Davidson.

"We wanted to stay on the north side of town," Dickinson said. "The majority of our customers are on the north and west side of town."

Custom Office Supply thrives on the manufacturing community on the north side and the professional office clients like doctors and lawyers on the north and west sides.

"We feel that's more our customer base," he said.

The store has operated from the Frontier Plaza, 1851 N. Carson St., for the past 11 years, but Dickinson has had his eye on building his own store for about the last two years.

"We've been growing out of this building," Dickinson said. "We have nowhere to warehouse anything. We need more room. It's taken us 10 years to get to that position. When we moved in here I never thought we'd fill the building up."

Custom Office Supply will leave a 9,300-square-foot building for a 17,500-square-foot structure that has not started taking shape yet. Grading began at the beginning of April on a little more than one acre with framing expected to start in the next week or two.

Dickinson expects the stationary story to occupy 13,300 square feet with the other 4,200 square feet leased out for now.

"In five years we may need the rest of the building," he said.

Custom Office Supply, which has a second store in Sparks, arrived in Carson City in 1981 with a 3,200 square feet on William Street across from Smith's Food and Drug. Eight years later, the store moved to Frontier Plaza but Dickinson looks forward to the move.

"Our exposure with the move will be better," Dickinson said. "We still have people calling us to ask where we are."

The $1 million block-and-stucco building will give Dickinson the room to display office furniture in an office-like setting rather than simply lining up desks one after the other. Furniture sales have grown from minimal to 30 percent of Custom Office Supply's annual revenue, he said.

More room will also allow Dickinson to open a full-service copy center with color copiers, binding and laminating.

The new store will also have a larger selection of greeting cards. Dickinson said a number of customers come to Custom Office Supply specifically for the selection of greeting cards.

Dickinson takes pride in surviving and thriving with Office Depot in town since December 1996. The Sparks and Carson City stores saw a 20 percent decrease in 1997 because of Office Depot and also the New Year's Flood swamping the Sparks store, but Dickinson said the following year saw a 30 percent increase in sales.

Growth continued in 1999 with a 16-percent jump and Dickinson projects an 8-percent gain for this year.

"I think we've always done a fair job with customers and we're still competitive with Office Depot," he said.

Custom Office Supply can offer mostly comparable prices with Office Depot because the local independent belongs to the largest office products buying group in the country, having roughly the same number of stores as Office Depot.

"I think people like personal service," Dickinson said. "We have (sales) people that go out and make calls on people. We do special orders. Our philosophy of offering personal service will keep people coming back.

"I think (the new store) should tell people we'll be around for the long haul. I've lived here for 16 years. We plan on being here."