Staples Increases Investment Toward Online, Same-Day Delivery Could Be Next

With e-commerce continuing to show its’ muscles in the business world, it is no wonder more and more companies are shifting their focus toward it. It use to be unthinkable to shut down your brick-and-mortar locations to make a greater investment into the web, until now. This is exactly what long-time office supply giant Staples is taking strides in doing, in order to keep up with the big changes overall that are occurring for companies to grow right now.

Staples, in fact, has plans to cut costs by $500 million and has a goal to close up to 225 North American locations by 2015 reported the Internet Retailer last week. This is about 12% of its’ 1,800 stores across the US, which as a whole, is a big move by Staples. The retailer clearly is serious about making the necessary changes to compete. Their number of products offered went up fivefold, however, sales only increases slightly by 1.4% in 2013. This equated to a total sales decline of 11%.

The interesting figures that could have sparked the shift by Staples is in spite of the low overall sales growth, Staples.com actually increased its’ sales by 10.4%. CEO Ron Sargent agrees that their retail sales are shifting toward online and that’s the direction the company is going in. He stated, “A year ago, we announced a plan to fundamentally reinvent our company. With nearly half of our sales generated online today, we’re meeting the changing needs of business customers and taking aggressive action to reduce costs and improve efficiency.”

There were some definite changes indeed that Staples implemented last year that showed its’ aggression to meet its’ online goals. The company ended the 2013 with 400,000 more online products available on their site then a year before. Staples also eliminated over one million square feet in space through various ways, such as store downsizing and relocating into more efficient space. Kiosks have been installed in stores to meet customer needs as well.

Ultimately, Staples wants sales to increase and it is making the necessary changes toward online business to make this a reality. E-commerce is something many other heavy-hitters in the retail world have made investments in to gear their business and services to what shoppers are attracted to. One of those measures is convenience, which companies like Google, Amazon, eBay, Target, and others have implemented same-day delivery, enabling them to deliver online orders to a shopper’s front door. Wal-Mart not only offers same-day delivery, but also store pick-up services for online orders. When a customer arrives, their order is already pulled and ready for them to easily pick up.

This can be another innovative change for Staples to be able to offer its’ online customers. The office company could offer same-day delivery as a shipping option at checkout and same-day courier like A-1 Express can perform their online deliveries. The Seattle Courier meets the demands that comes along with online retail, and shoppers can even be recommended by Staples to pick their online orders up for them.

Reference: Internet Retailer, Paul Demery, Staples shifts investment to the web