Staples

Staples on Monday sent a bid to Office Depot's board of directors with an offer to acquire the rival office supplies company for $40 per share, or $2.1 billion, reports South Florida SunSentinel. Staples, which is now a privately held company controlled by the private equity group Sycamore Partners, threatened to start buying shares in…

Staples announced Friday that it's replacing Shira Goodman, its current chief executive officer, with J. Alexander (Sandy) Douglas, who most recently was president of Coca-Cola North America. The move takes place less than a year after private equity firm Sycamore Partners acquired control of the office products retailer. At Coca-Cola, Douglas led the $10 billion revenue business,…

Staples said on Thursday it was closing another 70 stores in North America amid sharp sales declines in its top market and a continued pivot to business services and away from brick-and-mortar for the leading office supplies retailer. Comparable sales, which excludes the impact of newly opened or closed stores, fell 7 percent in the fourth…

When the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and Staples announced a retail partnership in 2013, USPS said "it’s time to celebrate.” But now, that program has been shut down and it's postal labor leaders who are rejoicing. They're cheering the demise of a program that had been the target of a vigorous campaign by postal unions that…

Americans are more burdened by student loan debt than ever before. Statistics show that about 44 million borrowers owe a collective debt of $1.3 trillion, and the class of 2016 just graduated with an average debt of $37,172 — up 6 percent from last year. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that many of…

Staples announced yesterday a new beta test available on its mobile iOS app. The new feature enables customers to send a photo of their child’s back-to-school (BTS) list via the Staples Easy System on the app, and a store associate will populate the customer's online shopping cart with the best available items within 24 hours…

Office Depot announced CEO Roland Smith will retire when a new top executive is named, expected by the first quarter of 2017. The announcement follows the retirement of Staples CEO Ron Sargent following the failed merger of the office supply retailers in May. Smith, 61, said during a conference call Monday morning that he wants to pursue his…

Office Depot announced it will need to close 300 more locations to put itself in a better position as a stand-alone company. The office supplies retailer closed 42 stores in the second quarter of this year as part of an earlier plan to close 400 locations. The newly announced closing of 300 stores is in…

Learn more about why Apple Pay becoming available on the web is a potential game changer for online retailers; what Staples is doing to compete in today's instant gratification economy; and an unintended consequence for retailers’ generous return policies — lower pay for store associates.

Staples and Office Depot said Tuesday they're scrapping their planned $6.3 billion merger after a federal judge blocked the deal, saying the government had made the case that the combination would likely hurt competition in office supplies. The Federal Trade Commission had sought to block the merger of the last two national office-supply chains. It contended…