Company Overview

Massachusetts-based Staples is a superstore that caters to small businesses and consumers with reasonably priced office products and services such as photocopying and printing. The company was founded in 1985 by Thomas Sternberg and Leo Kahn, two veterans of the supermarket industry. By 1989, Staples had 23 stores and had made its initial public offering. Today, the company is the leading office supplies retailer, with 1,540 stores in the United States and Canada and more than 270 stores in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Along with its 20,000-square-foot-plus superstores, which typically sell about 7,000 kinds of products, the company operates smaller Staples Express retail outlets (6,000 to 10,000 square feet) in urban areas and even smaller airport locations (1,500 square feet). The company also sells some 45,000 products online at Staples.com and through its Staples Direct mail-order division. The online and small-business catalog divisions were merged in 2001 into one unit called Staples Business Delivery. The fastest-growing area of Staples is its Staples Contract, which delivers supplies to business clients. Staples also owns Illinois-based Quill Corporation, the leading direct marketer of office supplies and business products to schools, businesses, associations, institutions, and professional offices in the United States.