Slashdot Mirror
Staples To Buy Office Depot For $6.3 Billion
An anonymous reader writes: Today Staples announced plans to buy Office Depot in a deal worth $6.3 billion. This is a huge consolidation within the office supply industry. Office Depot and OfficeMax were the second- and third-biggest suppliers when they merged in 2013. Adding those to the enormity of Staples would effectively bring the U.S. under a single office supply chain. "The move is expected to draw scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, though regulators have been increasingly willing to approve retail mergers in light of burgeoning e-commerce competition. ... This isn't the first time Staples has tried to buy Office Depot. In 1997, the FTC derailed Staples' acquisition of its rival as anticompetitive. By 2013, though, the agency's view had shifted. When the FTC allowed Office Depot to buy OfficeMax, it said the advent of online retailing ensured competition in the market for office supplies. Consumers today also rely more heavily on big-box chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for office products, the commission said."
They'll just push the Easy Button and it will fly through the FTC, right?
Or my favorite, "Antique Supply Store"
As I recollect, Staples does huge business with small and medium companies, mostly on a delivery basis. Having been in their stores, I doubt walk-in customers are a large part of their revenue. One potential outcome here would be for Staples to close its retail locations (they suck) so that that the better-stocked Office Depot can handle individual/walk-in customers while the Staples brand focuses on the B2B market via internet & delivery.
That said, I don't have a good feeling about the decrease in the number of office supplies stores near my home, which WILL decrease my options.
I think if someone were to create a simulation model of a truly free market with no regulation, and seed it with hundreds (thousands) of little businesses to start with, given enough time, you'll end up single monopoly that controls every industry, service, and product.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
I get all my office supplies by stealing them from work.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
A Staples store is a warehouse for their office supply delivery business. The retail presence is more there for brand awareness and a showcase.
To contrast, Radio Shack is a cellphone kiosk that once sold electronics.
This is about like wondering how Bank of America can stay in business if nobody uses safety deposit boxes anymore.
Huh? They merged. The new company is called Office Depot. Office Max no longer exists. What is so hard to understand?
Imagine of you will a 224,000 square foot shangri la of office. An entire area devoted to a sea of elderly men browsing ink jet printers, remarking on how great a deal theyre getting, and haggling the price of toner cartridges. their revalry interrupted twice daily by the passing of a thunderous freight-train of 13 year olds wheeling through the store on castered office seating. Imagine a copier the size of a two story house that still cant manage to fax correctly. In one long aisle, a veritable modern art museum of van goghs who have tested billions of different markers and pens in search for the one true biro. Picture a moutain of paper manned by khaki clad teenage sherpas who will guide the worthy to the perfect gloss of 8x11 in a 12 man expedition, using the bodies of the dead to guide their way. This new realm of office will succor a distant memory of office stores of yore with its array of overly lit fluorescent display stands and vallies of fake laptops and monitors perched upon particle board desks assembled by a small factory of hung-over college kids. and when at long last you think it can offer no more, this store will offer the most pointless of all selections of office treats and candies in 600 pound bulk tyvek totes that can conveniently be stacked onto any customers shopping fork truck. This office store will be visible for miles from the thick rolling smoke emenating from the innumerable propped doors featuring a staff of thousands competing in a veritable olympic competition of cigarette consumption as they all collectively 'burn one' while having told a customer they will search a 'back room' that does not exist for a product that cannot be sold.
Good people go to bed earlier.