From brand concept to 25,000-product storefront in under 12 weeks
How Digital Scientists helped Office Depot relaunch Viking as a digital-first ecommerce brand at a critical strategic inflection point — and built the blueprint for an entire country’s online retail operation.
$14.4B
Client Revenue
25K
Products Launched
<12
Weeks to Launch
1
Country’s Blueprint
Relaunching Viking as a digital-first brand
In the mid-2000s, Office Depot was navigating a seismic shift in the $17–18 billion office supply industry. After shutting down Viking’s legacy U.S. catalog operations in September 2005 — a brand they had acquired for $3 billion just seven years earlier — the company needed a fast, low-risk way to re-enter the market with a modern, digital-first flanker brand.
Digital Scientists was engaged to transform the Viking concept into a fully functional ecommerce business with approximately 25,000 SKUs on the ShopVisible platform — all in under 12 weeks. Our work spanned digital strategy, ecommerce development, analytics, and performance marketing.
The Viking experience we built would later become the blueprint for Office Depot Canada’s officedepot.ca platform when that country exited brick-and-mortar retail entirely in 2011.
A $3 billion brand gets a second life
The Viking relaunch happened at a pivotal moment in retail history — and understanding the backstory reveals why speed and execution mattered so much.
Industry Under Pressure
Three major players — Staples ($16.1B), Office Depot ($14.4B), and OfficeMax — dominated an increasingly commoditized category. E-commerce was emerging as the critical battleground, with Office Depot’s web sales already reaching $2.1 billion by 2002.
Competition from Walmart and early Amazon was intensifying margin pressure, forcing consolidation across the industry. This was before Amazon became the overwhelming force in office supply e-commerce — traditional retailers still had a window to establish strong digital positions.
The Viking Shutdown
On September 12, 2005, Office Depot announced it would close Viking’s domestic operations — a brand acquired for $3 billion in 1998. The stated rationale: 80% product overlap between brands, higher cost-to-serve for Viking’s “higher touch” customers, and consolidation economics.
The restructuring totaled $82.2 million, including closure of two warehouses, multiple call centers, and 27 stores. Industry analysts predicted Office Depot could lose up to 40% of Viking’s customer base.
The Flanker Strategy
Despite shutting down legacy operations, Viking still held strategic value: 20+ years of brand equity, relationships with higher-spending small business buyers, and continued success in European markets.
A digital-only Viking brand could target specific customer segments and test new approaches without risking the core Office Depot franchise — a flanker strategy that anticipated the later market fragmentation toward segment-specific digital experiences.
The Digital-First Vision
Viking 2.0 was fundamentally different from the legacy business: no catalog, no call centers, no warehouses — purely digital commerce. The new brand targeted a younger demographic with a vibrant, fun personality.
Office Depot selected ShopVisible for its speed to market, built-in marketing features (ratings, reviews, comparison shopping integration), and proven performance with other retailers.
Enterprise ecommerce in under 12 weeks
Office Depot had a brand concept and a platform choice, but lacked the internal capacity to execute quickly. They engaged Digital Scientists with a specific, time-constrained mandate: transform Viking into a fully operational ecommerce business with ~25,000 SKUs in less than 12 weeks.
The aggressive timeline served multiple strategic purposes: launching ahead of peak season for immediate revenue, enabling a real-world market test before committing major investment, and moving quickly before competitors could respond to Office Depot’s catalog consolidation.
Demonstrating fast execution would also build organizational confidence in the digital-first approach and validate ShopVisible as an enterprise commerce platform.
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Four parallel workstreams, one launch date
The aggressive timeline demanded parallel execution and rapid decision-making. We organized our delivery into four simultaneous workstreams that converged on a single launch target.
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Brand & Experience
Developed full user interface, visual design, information architecture, and customer journey aligned with a younger, digitally-native demographic. Created a vibrant, fun brand personality distinct from the core Office Depot franchise.
Commerce Implementation
Built out the complete ShopVisible platform integration: catalog management for ~25,000 SKUs, checkout flow, payment processing, and order management — creating a fully functional online storefront from scratch.
Data & Integration
Connected Viking to Office Depot’s product information management, pricing systems, inventory feeds, and fulfillment infrastructure — ensuring tens of thousands of SKUs with accurate pricing, imagery, and real-time availability.
Performance Marketing
Architected a digital acquisition strategy from day one: paid search, Google Shopping integration, remarketing, affiliate programs, email marketing, social media, and a full analytics/optimization framework to drive ROI.
End-to-end delivery
Services
- Digital and brand strategy
- Ecommerce storefront
- Analytics & optimization
- Front-end development
Marketing
- Pay-per-click & paid search
- Social media & contests
- Email marketing
- Affiliate marketing programs
Technology
- ShopVisible ecommerce platform
- HTML5 + CSS3 frontend
- Google Analytics
- Google Shopping integration
Ecommerce storefront
Working with the search-optimized ecommerce platform from ShopVisible and their crew of store-building experts, we created the user experience for Viking.com. The store’s 25,000 products were properly grouped and easy to navigate, with ratings, reviews, and comparison shopping integration baked in from launch.
The platform choice proved critical — ShopVisible’s speed to market and built-in marketing features meant we could deliver a complete ecommerce experience, not just a website, within the compressed timeline.
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Performance marketing from day one
We partnered with Office Depot to architect and manage the complete digital acquisition engine — paid search, display advertising, affiliate marketing programs, Google Shopping integration, remarketing, social media, and email marketing campaigns.
Having live customer acquisition from launch day was essential. The Viking relaunch was both a brand test and a business test — Office Depot needed real traffic, real conversions, and real economics to validate the flanker concept.
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Conversion optimization
We implemented Google Analytics and evaluated key conversion rates across the site. By implementing specific changes and improvements we turned more site visitors into customers.
We monitored site performance on a rolling weekly basis to identify popular products for merchandising and promotion. All traffic segments were assigned a dollar value and ROI was tracked monthly, achieving rapid user growth in only a few months.
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Viking became the blueprint for an entire country
The strategic importance of the Viking work became clear in 2011 when Office Depot Canada made a dramatic operational shift — closing all remaining Canadian retail stores and shifting to an entirely online-only business model.
Platform Selection
Office Depot Canada chose to build its new officedepot.ca flagship on ShopVisible — the same platform Digital Scientists had implemented for Viking. The confidence came directly from the successful Viking experience.
Feature Parity
The Canadian site emphasized the same capabilities we had prioritized for Viking: modern UX, product ratings/reviews, comparison shopping engine integration, and digital marketing optimization.
Architecture Validation
The technical patterns, integration approach, and feature set proved robust enough to power an entire country’s ecommerce operation — validating Viking as more than a one-off experiment.
Measurable impact at enterprise scale
Digital Scientists delivered a fully functioning ecommerce platform with integrated marketing from day one — proving that enterprise-scale ecommerce can be executed in weeks, not months.
<12
Weeks
From brand concept to fully operational ecommerce business
25K
Products
Launched on the ShopVisible ecommerce platform with full catalog integration
1
Country Blueprint
Viking became the template for Office Depot Canada’s national online-only platform
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