South Florida Tech HubSouth Florida Tech Hub

By Nikki Cabus

CITY Furniture announces equity stake in Palm Beach County-based PeakActivity

Read Time 3 Minutes

Broward-based CITY Furniture, a family-owned American furniture and mattress retailer, fine upholstery manufacturer, and one of America’s Top 20 furniture retailers, announced it has recently taken an equity stake in PeakActivity, a digital acceleration and technology services company based in Palm Beach county that enables progress for businesses at every point of their digital journey through modernization, optimization, innovation, and engineering services.

As long-time partners, CITY’s equity stake, which represents a minority position, is a win-win for both parties. For CITY, this investment solidifies their position as a pioneer in Home Tech, integrating technology into everything they do. PeakActivity will use this investment to accelerate their overall growth and fund further innovation in the home furnishings category.

With shared goals and shared financial outcomes, the partnership between the companies will be strengthened to a level they have not had previously and is a testament to the quality of the work they have done together over the past five years.

“CITY is working hard to build a world class organization that is best in class in technology. The future of the home industry and all industries hinge on technology and innovation,” said Andrew Koenig, CEO of CITY. “Our partnership with PeakActivity is more important now than it has ever been. We are convinced that taking a position in PeakActivity will accelerate our technological advantages in the market and result in a better customer and associate experience overall.”

CITY Furniture operates over twenty-two showrooms from Miami through Vero Beach, and in Southwest and Central Florida, as well as fourteen Ashley Home Store showrooms as the brand’s Southeast and Southwest Florida licensee. The company is one of the country’s top furniture retailers and continuing to grow.

As technology becomes more and more fundamental to everyday business and everyday living, CITY looks to embrace it and actively learn about the opportunities that tech provides businesses. CITY looks to be a driving force in taking the home furnishing world from “old school” to “industry cool” by investing in their long-time tech partner, PeakActivity.

As part of its investment, CITY looks forward to their ability to share knowledge, ideas, and strategies, while leveraging both companies skilled tech teams to work on some of the best home projects in the industry. Given their long-standing client-agency relationship, the companies are already working on several projects together in the areas of ecommerce, AR Design, CITY Moves, and more, that will continue to grow and expand as their relationship advances in the months and years to come.

“CITY has been one of our longest standing and best clients, driving us to innovate, to think, and work both faster and better,” said Manish B. Hirapara, CEO of PeakActivity.

“With this investment, our relationship becomes even more significant and is unlike that of any other client relationship we have. I expect that we continue to grow together and thrive together in the future. We are stronger than we’ve ever been before now as true partners.”

PeakActivity is a digital strategy and implementation company, partnering with businesses to accelerate their growth through eCommerce, Digital Marketing, and Technology solutions. By leveraging its unique methodology of Dream, Deliver, Elevate, PeakActivity simultaneously focuses on short-term wins with a constant eye towards longer-term innovation and business growth.

This relationship with PeakActivity just further reinforces CITY’s long-time commitment to being tech forward for both their internal stakeholders and external stakeholders. For CITY, seamless technology integration is just as important to a customer looking to furnish their living room in Miami, as it is to a warehouse worker in Orlando and a corporate employee in Tampa. Over the years, the company has enjoyed significant success building out their own tech department, making all of areas of the company better, faster, easier, and safer, while building out teams for e-commerce, data analytics and cybersecurity.

With tech at the forefront of CITY’s business strategy from the start, this relationship is an investment in the success of CITY’s tech-focused future and a step towards achieving their long-term goals.

By Nikki Cabus

Office Depot’s back-to-school Start Proud initiative kicks off

Read Time 4 Minutes

It’s official, Start Proud!, the national back-2-school philanthropy campaign of ODP (parent of Office Depot) kicked-off on August 6th, 2022.

In Summer 2018, Office Depot launched Start Proud! to help foster brighter beginnings for schools in low-income communities, nationwide, and to give students, parents and teachers the supplies they need to start the year confident, prepared and proud.

Start Proud! is hosted at elementary schools in underserved communities in the 15 largest markets across the country: Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California, and right here in South Florida, where the Office Depot headquarters are located. 

Through its banner brands Office Depot®, OfficeMax®, ODP Business Solutions™, Varis™ , and others, the company offers its customers the tools and resources they need to focus on their passion of starting, growing and running their business. . . or classroom.

The program kicks-off in July with Backpack Bundling Bashes, where associates, friends and family members come together to assemble backpacks full of school supplies for the deserving students of the select Start Proud! schools. 

August through September, Start Proud! comes to life at Celebratory Assemblies across the nation. These inspiring campus celebrations include an exciting program and inspiring event for all with remarks from Office Depot’s senior executives, school’s principals, the district’s superintendents, National PTA representatives and other special guests.

The special day includes hundreds of excited students gathering, cheering, and receiving brand-new backpacks and school supplies; classroom supplies donated to all the teachers of the school; and one ‘All-Star Teacher’ from each school celebrated for their extraordinary efforts in the classroom and surprised with a package of premium classroom supplies including new furniture, teaching supplies, technology and tech services from Office Depot valued at almost $2000.

In 2021, over $3.8 million worth of educational supplies were donated. Associate volunteers assembled 18,000 premium backpacks filled with over $1.8 million worth of school supplies like notebooks, composition books, crayons, pencils, highlighters and more, to provide to students at more than 25 Title I schools nationwide. With support from Boise Paper and Domtar Paper, each backpack also included one $20 Office Depot gift card for families to purchase additional supplies for their child. Let’s see what 2022 will bring!

“After the great challenges of these past three years, nothing could be more important than supporting and celebrating our public school students and teachers as they head into the 2022 back-to-school season,“ said Alex Price, National Director of Community Investment for The ODP Corporation (parent of Office Depot),

“As we traverse the traverse the U.S. adopting Title 1 schools, supporting families in need, and celebrating teachers who are our superheroes, this Start Proud! campaign will shower the most economically distressed schools with everything they need with a special commitment to our home community of South Florida,” added Price.

Did you know that YOU can help make a difference this school year just by purchasing the supplies you need from Office Depot? Simply make a purchase of qualifying school supplies, provide your school’s ID at
checkout (in store and online) and your designated school will receive 5% back in credits for FREE supplies! It’s a small act that can make a huge difference and anything that can help stretch a school’s budget allows them to provide the best education possible.

Office Depot also leverages its retail footprint to provide customers with the opportunity to support a local Title I school in their area, through a partnership with Round It Up America® (RIUA). Simply round up your purchase to the nearest dollar. With these additional funds, selected school representatives can enjoy a shopping spree at their local Office Depot or OfficeMax store to get additional learning essentials, technology and personal protective equipment (PPE) into the hands of the teachers, students, and school administrators who need them.

The Start Proud! campaign is part of Office Depot’s community investment initiative called #depotdifference. As our company continues to change and evolve in exciting ways, so too has the way in which we support the communities where we live and do business. #depotdifference brings an employee-centric, hands-on approach to empower us all to make a difference through robust employee volunteerism and philanthropic giving. To learn more about Office Depot’s investment in local communities nationwide, visit depotdifference.com

 

CITY Furniture announces equity stake in Palm Beach County-based PeakActivity
Office Depot’s back-to-school Start Proud initiative kicks off