15 Things You Didn’t Know About Euroffice

On the eve of #Euroffice’s 15th Birthday, we thought we’d share some fun facts about our company.

1. Euroffice was first called Euroffice Express. Maybe if we start using drone delivery, we can revive the name.

2. Our IT system has a Latin theme. When we raise a support ticket it’s called a TAPAS, and one of our internal databases is called TEQUILA. Has anyone else got a sudden craving for Mexican food?

3. The Euroffice staff is made up of over 20 nationalities. We have staff members from England, Italy, Jordan, India, Australia, New Zealand, France, South Africa, the United States, Mauritius, Somalia, Wales, Northern Ireland,  Nigeria, Germany, Latvia, Scotland, Greece, Zimbabwe, Slovakia, Bangladesh, Denmark, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Russia. (We should see if we can become the UN’s official stationery supplier. )

4. Euroffice started out in Putney, then moved to Vauxhall – just a few minutes from the MI-6 – and we’re now based in beautiful, funky offices in Spitalfields. Our building is called the Dome House, named after the huge dome located in the ceiling that’s lit up with red lights.

5. As cool as the Spitalfields area is, it also has a darker side – we’re a stone’s throw from the Jack the Ripper site.  The company even attended the Jack The Ripper tour in 2013. (Small world: I know someone who’s related to one of his victims.)

6. This summer, we hired an ice cream truck to come around to the office and give everyone their ice cream of choice. (Fun fact: in some parts of the UK if you wanted strawberry sauce on your 99, you had to ask for monkey’s blood. Top tip: don’t ask for that today.)

7. There is a spiral staircase in the middle of our office, right underneath the Dome. Many employees have tripped walking up and down the stairs while carrying cups of coffee, phones, bikes and more. It’s almost a rite of passage.

8. Our bean counters are working this out right now, but we believe we’ve sold enough paper to reach the moon and back 15 times. Our next goal is to sell enough to reach that comet everyone’s been going on about. I mean, I don’t see what the problem is – it’s right next to the McDonald’s.

9. There is a Tupperware Thief amongst our ranks. He/she has never been caught, but tupperwares go missing from our two kitchens like socks disappear after laundry. (I suspect HR knows who it is and just keeps replacing tubs for them to ‘steal’ – employee happiness is important here.)

10. Euroffice has won a handful of British Office Supplies and Services (aka BOSS) awards, and it was named one of the Sunday Times’ International Track 200 companies in 2014. (But we didn’t tell them about the staircase.)

11. Our mascot is a dog called Henry who belongs to our Head of Design. We made Henry an offer he couldn’t refuse – a big bone and a bigger blankie.

12. Our User Experience Designer went through 6.5 full packs of sticky notes to plan a recent project. Thankfully, our stationery cupboards are always stocked up.

13. Euroffice has expanded to Italy and Germany. I think there’s a great opportunity here to sell delicacies along with desktop stationery, but I’ve been told that’s unlikely to happen. Perhaps my lunch of sauerkraut pizza put people off?

14. We write on our glass walls and coffee tables during meetings. With water-based markers, of course. That’s a lesson we learned after our first permanent marker accident – it turns out there are some moustaches that can’t be shaved, or washed, off.

15. Anyone who joins the company writes up a short bio to be included on our Intranet, which must include three facts about themselves: two truths and one lie. Whether some of the facts are true or false remains a mystery.

As silly as this list is, 15 years really is a #HappyBirthday for Euroffice. We’ve been through a lot of changes in that time, always in pursuit of delivering the best experience to our customers.

Thank you so much for shopping and staying with us. We’ll continue to do our utmost for you in the years to come.