Staples: The Retail Industry

The group that my group and I choose to focus on was the office supply retailing large corporation Staples. For now Staples is publicly traded company with the ticker symbol of SPLS however this may change in the next year due to Sycamore Partners acquiring Staples which in the long run may make their stocks private. Staples were created in 1986 by Thomas George Stemberg who is considered to be pioneer in the retail world because of his ideas and innovations. One of Stemberg’s most innovative ideas was completely cutting out any wholesaler’s interference in his company and selling directly to the consumer. He did this by having his own large warehouse like superstores where he was able to have all office supplies on hand to sell at a moment’s

These services play a major part in the competitive and long term plan that Staples has developed to compete in the stacked retail industry. One common thing that most of the retail industry has in common is being consumer friendly, and continuously making their services more accessible and easy for people. We first saw this back in the beginning of the century with companies becoming more social by creating websites where they would show their upcoming events and sales to the consumer before they would even come to the store. The internet was around far longer than just 2000 during this time there was a transition where the internet was no longer just some niche thing that only a few people had. It instead was a household thing that most people owned and creating a website and advertising the company you worked under on a website was a way in adapting to this change. The same thing that happened back then is occurring in 2017 but this time with social media. Staples like most companies in the same industry understand that being social on platforms such as Twitter, or Instagram can help them remain competitive. Staples also created an app named Staples – Shopping App which shows how progressive they’ve become because of the change in the industry in the last 10 years. Staples created this app because they want to make their service more convenient for the common

The reason for this is because consumers can either shop online, or in store and Staples will provide their products to them. And Staples also recently launched their new B2B strategy which is their ecommerce site. This allows 3rd parties to buy products for specific industries, in which they plan to expand their variety of industry products. And in an effort to show that their impact stretches further then just office supplies Staples works alongside some very well meaning organizations. One of these organizations is The Boys and Girls club of America in hopes to keep the children on the path to success by making sure they’re prepared to go to school and succeed. They’ve done this by pledging over 10 million dollars to the organization and helping the unfortunate kids who can’t afford books, pens, and bags go receive their