Monica Luechtefeld Makes the Net Click

The Long Road to Internet Glory
As refreshingly commonsense as Luechtefeld's strategies seem today, it wasn't always so. Indeed, she recalls the rocky transition from the early promise of the MIT site to the point where corporate America finally embraced the technology as a lonely slog through a clueless landscape. "It took two long years to get our first 500 customers connected," Luechtefeld says. During that time, she traveled relentlessly in a grassroots effort to sell her vision of how the Web would change how business worked. It was often an uphill battle. "We used to do training at corporations where 60% of the people in the classes had never touched a mouse," she says.

Keller recalls one meeting with 100 Fortune 500 customers that he and Luechtefeld had in 1998. He began by asking how many of the customers were buying on the Web. Four people raised their hands. Then he asked, "How many are thinking about doing it?" About 20 hands went up. Finally, exasperated, he asked, "How many people know what we're talking about here?" Less than half of the audience weakly waved back.

While those were trying times in the business, they were also grueling ones for Luechtefeld personally. A California native, she joined the company in 1993, when Office Depot acquired Eastman, the West Coast's leading contract office supplier, where she had been vice president. For several years, she ran the chain's southern California operations but was persuaded to move to headquarters in 1996 to handle marketing and new-business development and to oversee the development of the MIT site.

Reluctant to uproot her son, Christopher, who was a high-school senior, Luechtefeld let him stay behind with his father. For a year and a half, she spent her weeks in Delray, then hopped a flight on Friday night to spend her weekends in Valencia, California. "It was an ordeal," she says, "but it was worth it."

In 1997, Office Depot's planned merger with Staples was quashed by the FTC. The setback rattled the company, which had slowed its expansion pending the completion of the transaction. Suddenly, says Michael Kirschner, a VP in the IT business-services group, there was huge pressure to build a public Web site -- and soon. That was in October. By January 15, 1998, after more than three months of nonstop work and barely a pause for Christmas, OfficeDepot.com went live. Within a few months, Kirschner says, the site had logged its first million-dollar day.

Soon after, Keller stripped Luechtefeld of all non-Web-related duties. She was furious. "I took everything else away," Keller admits. "She was really honked at me. But e-commerce was more than a full-time job."

These days, Luechtefeld's 12-hour days leave little time for boredom. In addition to shepherding the Amazon deal, she has launched two special-interest Web sites: School.com for educational supplies and JanitationDepot.com for janitorial cleaning supplies. In 2001, she negotiated a deal to acquire 4Sure.com, an online computer-networking and software reseller, adding some 65,000 technology products to Office Depot's virtual inventory -- and giving the company a significant leg up on its competitors in the office-supply space. That same year, she struck a partnership deal with Microsoft to offer bCentral Web-based services on the Office Depot site.

Luechtefeld is currently working with colleague Jerry Colley, president of North American stores, to test potential in-store technology services, including kiosks and wireless devices. And she has ambitious plans to build an online businesswomen's network and to launch a Web site for the Hispanic marketplace.

Looking back, Luechtefeld credits her parents with planting the seeds that powered her pioneering spirit. "My mother always said, 'You can be anything, you can do anything,' and my father always told me, 'Figure it out.' I think those two scripts really helped me take risks and go where there was no road."

Asked what message he got from his mother, Luechtefeld's son, now a broker at Morgan Stanley in Los Angeles, says, "She always told me, 'Why not?' "

Sidebar: What's Fast

Virtual Sales, Real Experience
Monica Luechtefeld isn't the only Office Depot executive to experience firsthand what it feels like to work on the company's front lines. Two years ago, when Bruce Nelson took over as CEO, store sales were sluggish and employees were still dispirited from the company's failed merger with Staples.