Price Is Carrying Office Supplies in 2026. Walmart Is Where That Plan Breaks.

The US office supplies industry is projected to reach $11.1 billion in sales in 2026, a decline of 0.1 percent from 2025, according to the Future of Office Supplies forecast released July 9 by Circana. The flat headline is the least informative number in the report. Beneath it, unit sales are projected to fall 2.8 percent while average selling prices rise roughly 2.8 percent, two forces canceling each other almost to the decimal. Circana’s Ben Arnold, industry advisor for office supplies, described the dynamic as “pricing acting as the primary growth lever,” and the firm forecasts the sector settling into a smaller, flatter shape through 2028.

The near-term mechanics are sharper than the annual figures suggest. Average selling prices are up approximately 5 percent year to date, actual unit prices are up as much as 7 percent, and total unit volumes have fallen 4 percent, per the report. Circana expects back-to-school, which captures a disproportionate share of the category’s annual spending, to grow just under 1 percent this season, with consumers concentrating their purchases inside promotional periods to manage budgets. The category is not stable. It is shrinking in units and repricing what remains, and the report projects that pattern holding for the next two years.

The category’s only growth lever is the one Walmart resists

In most of retail, a category where pricing does all the work is a manageable environment: suppliers plan ASP gains, retailers pass them through, and the P&L holds. Walmart is the exception by design. Everyday low price is not a promotional posture, it is the operating model, and the current environment has sharpened it. Walmart folded early back-to-school essentials into its Walmart Deals event that ran June 22 through 28, per the company’s June 9 announcement, and the shopper met the retailer there: roughly one-third of back-to-school shoppers had started browsing and buying by early June, the highest share since NRF began tracking the question in 2018, according to the annual survey from NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics. Competitors are signaling the same fight, with Staples and Dollar General both marketing school supplies at 2025 prices, as Retail Dive reported this month. The price sensitivity behind all of it is broad and measured: NRF finds 78 percent of shoppers expect higher prices on back-to-school items this season, and Deloitte’s survey shows consumers heading to mass merchants with affordability steering the trip. Set Circana’s forecast against that backdrop and the conclusion is hard to avoid: the category’s one source of growth is the input Walmart’s model, Walmart’s competitors, and Walmart’s shopper are all pushing down.

For 1P suppliers, the line review math just changed

What that collision means in practice is that a supplier cannot make the year at Walmart on price, because the retailer will not hand over the lever the category is leaning on everywhere else. Growth at Walmart this season is unit share: winning the modular placements, the promotional windows, and the feature space that move volume in a pool of volume that is 2.8 percent smaller than last year. The forecast also tells suppliers where the units still are. Writing instruments, specialty tape and self-stick notes, and creative and art-related supplies are the segments Circana expects to outperform in 2026, while office paper and presentation and reference products continue to decline. The implication for line review preparation is direct: a growth story built on ASP will read as a price increase request in an EDLP conversation, while a growth story built on share capture in the outperforming segments reads as alignment with where the merchant already needs help. Suppliers should also treat the just-under-1 percent BTS growth figure as the honest baseline for what the season hands them for free, which is almost nothing.

For Marketplace sellers, the report names the opportunity outright

The 3P read requires no inference, because Circana states it: third-party marketplaces are expanding their influence in the category, and hybrid work is shifting a portion of commercial office supply purchases into retail channels. Both currents favor marketplace breadth. A small business restocking through retail rather than through a commercial distributor is exactly the shopper a Marketplace seller with deep assortment in tape, mailing, filing, or writing instruments is positioned to win, and the category’s value-driven shopper comparison shops on unit price, which makes Buy Box discipline during the peak weeks and state tax-free windows the operational priority. The caution runs the other direction from 1P: in a category where prices are up as much as 7 percent and shoppers are trading down, a 3P listing priced above the shelf equivalent is not capturing the category’s price growth, it is donating the sale.

Arnold noted in the release that demand is holding up in tactile, creative, and analog products even as technology and AI investments divert traditional office supply budgets, and that seasonal moments continue to support the industry’s resilience. That resilience is real, but the forecast is explicit about its shape: it is concentrated, it is price-driven, and it runs through 2028. The disproportionate season the report describes is not approaching. Walmart put back-to-school on deal in June, shoppers were buying by early June at the highest rate NRF has tracked, and the units that will decide the category’s year at the world’s largest retailer are moving through checkout right now.

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