Staples Announces Plans to Close 70 More Stores

ktla.com ^ | Updated at 11:55AM, March 9, 2017 | Staff

[OldMissileer]

When I asked why he wouldn’t stock it, he said, “We no sooner put them on the shelf than they buy them and clean us out.” Honest to God; that’s what he said. Silly me, I thought that was the name of the game!

I encountered that same scenario several times throughout my life. It always amazed me because I always thought that a business that was selling a large quantity of an item would just increase their orders resulting in more sales and more profit.

I guess my lack of an MBA keeps me from seeing the logic of stopping sales of a product due to high demand

[WVMnteer]

I defy anyone to tell me the difference between a Staples, an OfficeMax, and an Office Depot. If you told me that they were all just different names for the same parent company, I would have believed you.

[Chickensoup]

So you are ok with dealing with what is rapidly becoming the only game in town. One that treats its workers terribly. And don’t tell the workers to go elsewhere. Because of people like you there is no elsewhere.

[Rebelbase]

Is there a secret alibaba about to open up? Every time I’ve looked there everything was sold in lots.

[Rebelbase]

I miss Spatula City!

[kennedy]

I defy anyone to tell me the difference between a Staples, an OfficeMax, and an Office Depot. If you told me that they were all just different names for the same parent company, I would have believed you.

And that is why Amazon is putting them out of business.

When you are selling a fungible product like office supplies, you can only compete based on price, convenience or service. Amazon has them beat on price and convenience and they are now also losing on service. Who wants to wait in line at an understaffed store to finally get help from an under trained kid who knows nothing about the products?

The big box stores killed off most of the mom and pop stores based on price and convenience. The mom and pops that survived will continue to do so based on service.

[WVMnteer]

I don’t pretend to understand how everything works - just 50 percent of how everything works.

I would like to know how Ace Hardware functions. Because - like every suburbanite - my first trip is always to Home Depot or Loews. And when they are totally incompetent, I end up at Ace, where an employee always solves my problem.

The issue with them is they just don’t have the bandwith.