Industry Voices: Tony McGinley

In the workplace supplies industry, the word ‘coping’ is often used to describe managing change or challenges. However, Tony McGinley, BMG Office Supplies, believes it’s time to rethink how we use that term

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in Dealer Support

This article is a shortened version of Tony’s interview with Dealer Support, originally published in the January 2025 issue, where he shares his thoughts on resilience, adaptability and shifting mindsets in the workplace supplies industry.

“One of the words I hear a lot of people using is ‘coping’. Everybody’s ‘oh, we’re coping well’, and ‘we’re coping with this’, and ‘we’re coping doing that’. But cope isn’t a positive term. Cope is standing still, treading water – just doing enough to keep the wolves from the door. Any business mentor or coach will tell you, if you stand still, you’re going backwards. The industry really needs to shift its mindset from talking about getting back to normal to embracing the new normal.

The advantage of being a small business is that you can adapt quickly. There’s an old analogy about it, using the Titanic as a metaphor. It’s about comparing big companies to small companies, and how the Titanic was so big, it couldn’t change direction when the iceberg was there, but a smaller, speedier boat would have just turned and kept on its jolly way.

Our industry can change by the day – you can make the best plan in the world, but the next day, you’ll have to change that or go and do something that’s come up overnight. I don’t like using the term adapt or die, but we all know what happens to businesses that don’t.

There’s certainly challenges out there. We’re seeing people becoming slower to make decisions. I’ve done quotes for people and not heard back from them for five weeks, so I’ll send them an email to check they received the quote, ask if everything is alright and then several days later, we might get a reply to say they need more time. This seems to be across the industry. People are being more cautious. But I always say that no news is good news and if nobody else has got the job, it means it’s still live.

From my experience, most of the companies we are working with are actively trying to get people back into the office. It’s funny how a few years ago we used to measure how many people were in an office by how much copier paper they ordered. These days coffee and toilet paper are what gives us a guideline that offices are busy!”