Leading U.S. stationery chain store to buy Taiwan soon

Taipei, March 22, 2005 (CENS)--School Specialty, the largest U. S. stationery chain store, is slated to make a buy-Taiwan trip late this month at the invitation of the government-funded Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA).

The buy-Taiwan trip is one of the projects promoted by TAITRA to help domestic manufacturers tap overseas chain store channels. During the three-day trip, from March 28-30, School Specialty is expected to purchase a wide variety of products, including electric-powered pencil sharpeners, drawing pens & paper, projectors, laminators & school binding machines, calculators, glue tapes, microscopes, pottery clay and school & office furniture.

Established in 1959, School Specialty provides mainly stationery products to kindergartens & elementary schools in the United States and Canada. The company has built up 11 brands for its products, which are now expanding to more than 85,000 items. Among the brands, ‘Sax Arts & Crafts' is for artistic manual work products, ‘Sportime' for gym teaching and exercise-use products, and ‘Children's Publishing' and ‘Frank Schaffer' are for auxiliary teaching products.

In addition to sales through its web site and chain stores, School Specialty sends more than 40 million copies of mail-order catalogs per year to potential customers and its annual revenue has in recent years averaged at around US$900 million.

TAITRA noted that the market demand for stationery products in North America is estimated at around US$7.2 billion per year, adding that it is good time for Taiwan's stationery manufacturers to further tap the market there through the channels of School Specialty.