Staples to Shut 140 Stores This Year as Sales Decline

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

By Matt Townsend Aug 20, 2014 11:50 AM ET

Staples Inc. (SPLS) will shut about 140 locations this year, part of a store-closing plan announced earlier, as the world’s largest office-supply chain responds to online competition.

Staples shut 80 outlets in North America in the fiscal second quarter. Net income in the three months ended Aug. 2 dropped 20 percent to $82 million, or 13 cents a share, as $101 million was spent on closing locations, the Framingham, Massachusetts-based company said in a statement today.

Expansion by Web-based rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. has spurred reorganizations across the retail industry, including the merger of stationery suppliers Office Depot Inc. (ODP) with OfficeMax Inc. Staples outlined plans in March to shut as many as 225 North American stores through next year, amounting to 12 percent of its outlets in the region, and to reduce costs by as much as $500 million.

“We have more work to do to stabilize our retail business, and we’re taking action to improve customer traffic, reduce expenses and close underperforming stores,” Chief Executive Officer Ron Sargent said in the statement.


Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-20/staples-plans-to-shut-140-north-america-stores-this-year.html

[redwitch]

1. A friend was recently fired unjustly by Staples. They suck.

I knew when she told me her story that they were trying to save money. I won't share her story as I believe in her right to privacy but I am convinced they wanted to save the cost of a long term full time employee. Now they can hire part time new workers for less money. They suck.

[Politicalboi]

2. They support the GOP

Goodbye assholes.

[Sanity Claws]

3. I wonder if the boycott is a reason for the slow sales

I'm referring to the boycott based on their taking over some USPS services.

[freebrew]

4. More likely high prices and drug free idiots working there...

screw staples.

[randr]

5. Staples is an arm of Bain Capital

Romney had hoped Staples stores would replace our US Postal Service after the Republicans had driven the system into bankruptcy.

[olddad56]

6. I don't know how they stayed in business as long as they have.

[starroute]

7. Oh, yukk

Online sales are all very well if you know what you want and it's a single large item. But if you need to replace a watch batter? Or buy a bottle of ink for a fountain pen? Or want to try out the feel of a half dozen different wireless mice?

If both Staples and Radio Shack vanish, we'll really be stuck.

[jtuck004]

8. The nation is buying less. In an economy that is built on people buying. Circling the drain...

Mi$$ RobMe's strategy was working. Get rid of the old jobs, close up the companies, ship the jobs overseas, employ those left still alive at much lower wages.

But then when your economy doesn't pay people enough to shop, and you have only recovered the jobs you lost to 2008, and then with much worse quality, what does one expect? His model falls, and this is the result. Maybe they are having trouble with the financing this is built on, so this may not be over, and it will affect other places, and many of those people may well wind up on aid programs of various kinds.

The country is getting poorer, and tens of millions are about to be surprised by finding out what it is like to like to live most of their life as middle class citizens, to end it with the last 10 or 40 in the poverty of living on SS checks, because all those assets that were going to feed them and house them and clothe them in their old age are gone.

His is not the only one closing doors.

[Paper Roses]

9. Over priced and over rated. You can do better elsewhere.

Not sad to see them go except for the fact that people will lose jobs. The Staples store in my area usually has a very empty parking lot.

[Ruby the Liberal]

10. Couldn't happen to a better outfit

Haven't darkened their doorstep since their founder verbally felated Romney on stage at the RNC convention in 2012.

[Iamthetruth]

11. And how many of the 6,000 employees

Would you say that to their face? Its easy to scream at a faceless corporation but actual people are the ones that feel the pain. Happy you can cheer that.

[Amonester]

12. He is not cheering that, he's just exercising his "free-market" choice, and he's prolly not the only

1.

Neither do I (ever intend to shop there for the same reasons).

You either accept the damn "free-market" rules, or you don't.

Nothing you can do about the (too-many) minimum wage jobs there.

I wish them well. Happened to me also years ago.

[Ruby the Liberal]

13. Welcome to DU

To answer, every last one of them actually. One-on-one if needed.

I gave up a 6 figure career in my 30s because I couldn't sleep at night. Now, I have less disposable income, but sleep like a baby.

They can find another job with a more responsible firm - because -as the Free Market dictates - those will be the survivors. This is merely ethics and the "free hand" cleaning house, right?

[Iamthetruth]

18. I'm pretty sure

If they are working at staples in the store they are not making six figures and don't have a lot of options. I would rather not sleep at night because of a job I don't like than not sleep at night because they are about to for lose on my house because I just lost my job.

[roody]

14. I can't help. I'm boycotting them on behalf of the postal union. nt

[mackerel]

15. Online competition? They own Quill which has very competitive

price points to Amazon. In our office we've scaled down our purchasing. We ran a year long study of our office supply purchases
and now have solid scheduled order points and we've reduced the amount we order. Most offices are running this way now. Plus so much is paperless now and that used to big our biggest lump in Office Supplies.

[Arugula Latte]

16. Dunder Miflin has its revenge.

[oberliner]

17. Is this due to the BDS movement?

How does this connect with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

[daleo]

19. Bought a Surface tablet there

I don't know who disappointed me more - them or Microsoft.