Inkstop Sued in Ohio Over Wages Following Shutdown of Chain

I worked for the company for 9 months. Got out befor all this happened thank god. They had a great idea but was poorly implemented and made so many bad managment and buying decisions and things they did were very shady.

Example of what they did: When investors would come to view the stores they would only show certain stores of which the stores not being showed would transfer product to in order to make the investor visited stores look full. Also they would have employees come in on their day off to pretend to be customers to make it seem as if the stores had more traffic. I also heard that they showed on the weekly tracker that was showed to investors that the stores would do 2000 to 5000 a day in revenue. The average my store did was maybe $300 a day. If we had to do $5000 a day we would have been out of products in less than a week. The highest revenue store only did $900 to 1100 a day. Very shady. Glad i got out.

This is only the tip of the iceberg...

hmmm they probably did pay the alarm bill either

WTF happened here?

wtf happened here????????

this has also happened to a lot of us in the Northern,Va. and Southern,VA. DC market working for Inkstop.

After going thru three Cheif Financial Officers and me questioning the legitamcy of some of the product as area manager. I was let go .. thank god but still when you have owner who was let go from OFfice Max under shadey circumstances what do you expect.

Leave it to the guys who couldn't keep OfficeMax in Cleveland to blow up another business. Please, don't let these guys fool anyone else.

I used to work with the founders of InkStop when they were at OfficeMax. Oh yes, Dirk & Dawn. None of this surprises me. Not because of what I personally knew of them but what I know of where they came from.

This thing (InkStop) sounded like a good idea but was not any different than any other office supplies products store. I feel awful for the invetors and employees. How can you have people work for nothing and know you aren't going to pay them or provide their medical coverage?

What ashame. Basically another scam. Put them in jail the Bernie M.

"Shady" is an understatement for this company.

-Originally they had stores reporting sales in gross sales, before subtracting returns.
-They let electricity bills float in some stores, untill it was shut off, and then explained to the store manager that they were switching to Atmos (a local gas company!?) energy.
-They required all managers to work overtime without pay.
-They made managers work extra days durring 4th quarter and promised extra days off, "comp days", in February. Those "Comp days" then "expired" without notice.
-One exemplory manager was fired when he asked for a for a performance exavluation. No evaluation was done.
Two Managers were fired for not hitting sales goals. Neither store had a sign at that time.
-Numerous sexual harrasment situations.
-They opened several Dallas stores in October without any kind of store sign, and those stores didn't get signs untill March. they ran out of ink (Inkstop?) in April because they couldn't pay venders.

Jester2913 wrote:

I worked for the company for 9 months. Got out befor all this happened thank god. They had a great idea but was poorly implemented and made so many bad managment and buying decisions and things they did were very shady.
Example of what they did: When investors would come to view the stores they would only show certain stores of which the stores not being showed would transfer product to in order to make the investor visited stores look full. Also they would have employees come in on their day off to pretend to be customers to make it seem as if the stores had more traffic. I also heard that they showed on the weekly tracker that was showed to investors that the stores would do 2000 to 5000 a day in revenue. The average my store did was maybe $300 a day. If we had to do $5000 a day we would have been out of products in less than a week. The highest revenue store only did $900 to 1100 a day. Very shady. Glad i got out.

Ok, my first visit to Inkstop was my last. I predicted their demise the day I walked in, looked at the prices and talked to the store clerk (NOVI Michigan). With Office Depot, Staples and a miriad of online options for Ink, why would I pay $2-3 more per cartridge for Ink. Buying Ink and only Ink for consumers and calling yourself the INKSTOP brings to mind lower prices and a higher selection, NOT. Doomed from the start and everyone who did not see this coming was a sucker.