"Are you a teacher or a student that needs back to school supplies but you don't want to shop at Amazon, Walmart or Target but you don't know where else to go? Don't worry, this has cut off the spigot where I take a look category by category to figure out where else to shop besides Target, Amazon, Walmart, other big corporations and private equity firms. The United Art and Education. They are a dedicated classroom and art supplies business based out of Fort Wayne, Indiana. United Art and Education is privately owned but I couldn't find much information beyond that. They have a ton of classroom supplies including decorations, certificates and awards, grading and planning tools and even the basics like dry erase markers and glue. United Art and Education also has a ton of art supplies as the name implies with basics like crafting and painting but also cool specialties like ceramics and printmaking. They offer bulk and school discounts but you can also order online without needing a minimum quantity. Woolie. Owned and founded by Carol Pankiew, Woolie makes fun art supplies. They're known for their scented glitter pens, color changing markers, water-based paint markers and gel crayons. I got a set of their Magic Puffy pens a while ago on a whim and they're super fun to play with. You can shop their website and they're also sold at independent arts, stationery and children's stores. Tombow. Tombow is a Japanese company that makes art, school, office and craft supplies. They are privately owned and support DEI. Tombow is a ton of well-crafted but affordable pens, pencils, markers, erasers for note-taking or drawing. Office Depot. I'm sharing these guys with a big grain of salt. They're owned by the ODP Corporation, which is publicly traded with institutional investors as their largest shareholders. Office Depot has not spent any money on lobbying in the last two years. And of the $60K donated in 2024 to political candidates by Office Depot management or employees, 71% of that went to Democrats. But they don't have a clear diversity policy listed on their website and on pages where they do have mention of it, those links are broken. However, they do seem to still maintain their supplier diversity program called HUB. HUB stands for Historically Underrepresented Businesses and focuses on partnering with minority women, veteran or disabled owned companies. I wouldn't have Office Depot as my first choice for school supplies because I'm pretty sure they remove their diversity policy. But if you are going to shop at a big box store or you need something in person and have limited options, I think this is one of the less bad ones. Follow me, cut off the spigot to see what I'll cover next. I go through a new category every week and check out my sub stack, link and bio to see other companies I researched and all sources."