Welcome Office 1 Panda Group to visit us

Background

Office 1 is an international franchise company, which is currently present in Bulgaria and France. Since 2018, the worldwide rights to the Office 1 brand have been owned by the Bulgarian company that took this huge step thanks to its successful approach as a franchisor for Bulgaria - Panda Cooperative.

The first stores outside the US were opened in 1989 in Spain. The chain entered our country in 1998. when "Panda" Cooperative received a master franchise for the territory of Bulgaria and in June 1998 opened the first store in Sofia. Gradually, the successful management and good results of the Bulgarian division become the reason why Office 1 Bulgaria plays an increasingly key role in the management and development of the international chain.

On February 20, 2018, Panda Cooperative officially acquired all rights to the trademarks from the Office 1 portfolio. Thus, from being the main franchisee for Bulgaria, Panda Cooperative became the sole owner and representative of the brands Office 1, Office 1 International and Office 1 e-shop, for the whole world.

Office 1 is the largest chain of stores for office products in Bulgaria. For over 24 years now, the company has been the undisputed market leader and preferred partner of over 130,000 business customers. On February 20, 2018, the company acquired the Office 1 trademark and became the sole owner and representative of the brand worldwide.

Today, Office 1 has a 40% market share, 64 stores in the country and employs more than 400 people. The product portfolio consists of over 110,000 products that can be purchased in-store, ordered online or over the phone.

On 18.10.2018, Office 1 Logistics was officially opened - the most modern warehouse and logistics center in South-Eastern Europe, with an area of ​​21,154 m². The base is equipped with the Austrian automated warehousing and order processing system OSR, which is the only one of its kind in the industry for this region. The impressive 22-story structure has the capacity to handle 12,000 items. The system provides an increase in productivity, minimizing errors to below 0.04% and allows the processing of 430 product lines per hour per workstation. The project has been certified by the Bulgarian Investment Agency under the Ministry of Economy as a class A investment.

ELECFREAKS was established in the year 2011, from the self-researching and developing business of Arduino, 3D printings, Drones etc., from the year 2017, we met the micro:bit and we thought this was a very good item to work on, thus, we’ve focused on the development of the kits and accessories for the micro:bit boards since then, till now we have almost over 40 different kits based on the micro:bit and we’ve created bountiful learning materials for each kit that are helping teachers and students to learn programming, and we also have a bountiful series of different sensors and accessories, such as the Octopus sensors and the planet X sensors. We are doing a worldwide business with more than 200 partners all over the world, our goal is to implement steam education with our resources in each corner of the world. We are one of the official partners of the BBC micro:bit foundation and the delivery partners in China, we have sponsored the “do your:bit challenge” in the year 2021 and 2022.

Now, we also develop another branch of our offer with the Laser engraving and cutting machines, with 10W/20W and all kinds of accessories such as the air purifier, the rotary accessory and camera…, we are also developing our own software besides the compatibility with Lightburn.

Business visit

Our researching and sales department is based in Nanshan district, the famous high technology center in SZ, and our factory and warehouse are based in Longhua district, which has about one-hour drive to our R&D center.

On 29^th, October, 2024, we received the visit from Dear Aleksi and Ilian from Office1 to our warehouse and factory based in SZ, China.

We’ve kindly showed around our factory with the production to shipment process, from the production of the printed circuit board, by calibrating to each of the sensor prototypes into bulk batches all from the automatic machines, to the testing and checking of the PCB prototypes, to the assembly of each components with the bare PCBs, and finally to the final work of each sensor; also we showed the packing procedure for each of the kit based on the micro:bit and also the assembly steps and checking of the laser cutting and engraving machines, finally, we stepped into the warehouse displaying the stock availability and the storage for each of the kit and how we arrange the packing and shipment.

It's a great honor and nice chance to work with our Office1 to help us achieve our goals of implementing the devices and services we have to worldwide, and it’s always welcomed to pay a visit to our factory to have a deeper understanding on our services and equipment.

With a 100% inspection on the raw materials, the assembly and the finished products, we are proud and confident to work as part of the educational sectors especially in the STEM teaching category, we are making sure that the teachers and students who receive our kits are all in a good quality and also with the environmentally friendly materials.

Also we have our course designers who will help to provide the learning materials for each kit with several building cases that are listed in our WIKI page, they are open source and are open to anyone who are interested in our items and services. Each year we will try creating new kits based on the understanding of the development of the technology and the education, we try to inspire the kids with the most advanced educational technology news and applications, and at the same time we are trying to create the best equipment that can allow students to understand the working principles and knowledges while having fun!

We are always open and welcome for partners to visit and for new customers to inquire, if you have any questions or requests please feel free to reach out at services@elecfreaks.com.