18. Evaluate Paper Supplies’ current strategy. What should Diane Chin do about Office Center’s offer? Explain.

Diane Chin, marketing manager for Paper Supplies Corporation, must decide whether she should permit her largest customer to buy some of Paper Supplies’ commonly used file folders under the customer’s brand rather than Paper Supplies’
own FILEX brand. She is afraid that if she refuses, this customer —Office Center, Inc.—will go to another file folder producer and Paper Supplies will lose this business.
Office Center, Inc., is a major distributor of office supplies and has already managed to put its own brand on more than 45 high-sales-volume office supply products. It distributes these products—as well as the branded products of many manufacturers —through its nationwide distribution network, which includes 150 retail stores. Now Ken Sawyer, vice president of marketing for Office Center, is seeking a line of file folders similar in quality to Paper Supplies’ FILEX brand, which now has over 60 percent of the market.