Blue Mountains dealer ends long relationship with OP industry.

 

Blue Mountains-based dealer Bennetts Office Supplies will close its doors at the end of this month, ending the Sturgiss family’s long association with the office products industry.

 

Allan Sturgiss told Office Products News that the decision to sell down stock and close the business, which has retail outlets in Katoomba and Springwood, comes after a two-year effort to sell the business, which saw several expressions of interest but no confirmed buyer.

 

“We had one buyer lined up but for a variety of reasons it (the sale) did not happen,” Sturgiss said. 

 

Consequently, Bennetts Office Supplies will officially close on 29 June.

 

Trading as Blue Mountains Office Choice from 1996, Bennetts switched camps to the ASA group in  2018 and changed the name to Bennetts Office Supplies, a reference to the family’s former newsagency business in Katoomba.

 

Regarded as one the best shopfronts in the industry, Bennetts’ Katoomba store was also for five years a Leading Edge Computers outlet.

 

Sturgiss said the Blue Mountains region, while still a popular tourist destination, had never really recovered from the Covid pandemic with a “ripple effect” impacting on local businesses with several closing and others “just hanging on”.

 

Sturgiss and wife Lyn, who were respected members of the OP community for nearly 30 years, have re-settled in Mittagong in the Southern Highlands.

 

OPN understands that a number of OP dealers in the Penrith and western Sydney region are likley to fill the gap left by Bennetts "up in the mountains" .