Staples Inc.

Submitted by: Group 5

Aditya Jaiswal - 2011289

Chelsea Khandelwal - 2011055
Kamlesh Nayak - 2011340
Nitin Prabhakar - 2011312
Prakhar Pandey - 2011174
Sai Gowtham - 2011211
Siddharth Nahar - 2011243
Suraj Jain - 2011254
 It was founded in 1985
Case Facts ●
● Had opened their 155th store in Manhattan
● They were focused on expansion to benefit
from the first mover advantage and have
centralized distribution
● Their general furniture product category was
under $300
● Repeat customers come twice in a quarter
● 200 SKU’s in furniture
● Furniture covered only 3% Sales of an
Express store
● Customers faced problems of poor quality
and limited selection as uncovered by the
survey
● The cost effectiveness and Availability of
Ready to Assemble Furniture came into
picture by 1992
Q1 Is furniture, at present, a liability to the company?

Category Sales ($) Floor Sales/Sq. ● The furnitures category presents highest gross
Space (Sq Ft. margins percentages among the three
Ft)
categories.
● This however does not replicate into overall
profits as the revenue from furnitures is the least
Gen. 3250000 6500 500 even though it employs 23.5% of the space.
Supplies ● Per Square Ft sales of furnitures is very low

Business 2100000 1500 1400

Machines
Yes, at present, Furnitures category is a liability to the
Furniture 650000 4000 162.5 company.
Q2. How should the ● 16% people who have purchased feel that
Staples have limited selection
merchandising of ● 27% people who are non purchasers, have not
purchased staples product in last one year feel
furniture be improved? that staples quality is poor.
● 12% Purchasers even feel that the Staples staff
is not helpful, so it reduce repurchase chance.

Staple should work on:

● Increasing the selection base by doing market

research on recent trends in furnitures
● Work on providing better customer experience
with training staffs
● Work on quality of furnitures
Q3 Would it make sense to Yes, it would make sense to have free-standing
furniture showroom
have free-standing
furniture showrooms? ● Higher margins as compared to office
supplies

● The problem of limited supplies could be

solved as they would not be sharing store
space with other office supplies

● Staff can be trained specifically for

furniture stores, this will increase the
customer satisfaction
Q4. Whether Staples ● Can give it to a person who is an expert in

can go for selling furniture

concessionaire model ● Excess Space can be utilized for

for Furniture category Business Machines or Supplies

● Can give back the excess space to the
owners thereby decreasing rental charges
● Open new stores with less space
● Sales/Sq.ft. for furniture is the lowest
compared to General Supplies and
Business Machines