Remember when Staples was the crown jewel of Mitt Romney’s business experience? It was the one example he could point to where he actually helped create new jobs rather than destroying them in leveraged buyouts. Well, even Staples isn’t looking so hot these days.
Staples will close up to 225 stores in North America by the end of next year as it seeks to trim about $500 million in costs annually by 2015.
The nation’s largest office-supply retailer said Thursday that nearly half of its sales are now generated online, so it will aggressively cut costs to become more efficient.
Company shares dropped more than 10 percent before markets opened.
That’s a lot of lost jobs. Thanks, Romney.
Still doing better than Funder Mifflin
You mean Dunder Mifflin?
I’ve never heard of them.
Sent from my tablet so typing is tricky. Ever thought of making a mobile site?
Staples/Radio Shack are victims of the GOP job killing free market. The GOP free market that allows Amazon to sell stuff without the sales tax Staples/Radio Shack are subject to….and possibility of free over night delivery.
Much of that is true, but I’d argue that Radio Shack is more a victim of higher prices and stiff competition from the likes of Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Things have changed drastically since I worked for them as a salesdroid back in ’85: you can buy stereos, TVs, DVD players, and telephones from any store, generally at lower prices, and you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a store that sells mobile phones. Where does that leave the Shack? Parts, which likely aren’t big sellers in this age of “if it breaks, throw it away and buy a new one” disposable electronics. You can’t stay in business for very long selling batteries and resistors, nor will you make much money selling DVD players at higher prices than Joe Average can pay at Kmart.
There’s room in the market basically for one vendor in that niche, and Mouser is it — and they’re on-line.
That’s where Radio Shack used to be, before their early success with selling stereos and computers (remember the TRS-80? That’s what I cut my teeth on in the late 70’s and 80’s) led them to believe that their future lay in consumer electronics. Thirty years later, they’re paying the price for all but abandoning their core electronics business, as the Best Buys and Wal-Marts (and yes, Amazons) of the world undercut them with better selection and lower prices in The Age Of The Internet. It was all but inevitable, when you look back on it.
My allowance went down the rathole of a Radio Shack parts drawer for most of the ’70’s.
During my serious electronic hobbying days of the 1970’s, Radio Shack was looked at as the place you went only when you had an urgent need for some common electronic component that had inconveniently failed (or when you had inadvertently “let the smoke out of it”). They did make a little hay in the early computing days with their TRS-80, which we called the TRASH-80. Hobbyists largely purchased components by mail or phone or directly from larger local distributors, if you were fortunate enough to have one close by. Honestly, I have never figured out how Radio Shack has survived this long. They really didn’t have a wide selection for the serious hobbyist, and the larger items they sold weren’t that attractive if you had other options available to you.
I doubt very much if anyone puts off immediate delivery of items under $100 because of 10% (Illinois) sales tax. $1000 maybe. Radio Shack has junk that’s why they are dying. Their nickname “Radio Shaft” tells it all. Best Buy was killing them long before Amazon and eBay.
Don’t know about Staples, I never shopped there and doesn’t that fact make a statement?
What? The Mighty Mighty 1% don’t buy enough toner, paper and desk staplers? You mean GASP screwing over the 99% for 30 years MIGHT NOT WORK???
Can’t be, must beat them harder, and cut the 1%-ers taxes. That’ll fix everything!
Romney has always been about vulture capitalism and job destruction.
http://willblogforfood.typepad.com/will_blog_for_food/2011/04/contrary-to-republican-hogwash-wealthy
-individuals-are-job-destroyers-not-job-creators-take-mitt-rom.html
And this classic by Matt Taibbi
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capi
tal-20120829
Of course, it isn’t only Romney.
http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/romney-style-economics-behind-decline-of-hostess-but-wo
rkers-are-paying-the-price/
I wouldn’t blame Romney for this one. This is more Bezos’ doing.
I helped open a “franchise” store in the late ’90’s. It was all “peaches and cream” for the first couple of years…there was a change at the top that changed the whole “feeling” of RS…they treated us like a red headed step child…and the “company” stores were given top priority at the expense of the franchises…I went to the meetings, I participated in their sales events, etc…I left because the “Big Squeeze” of the little stores hit us hard…Corporate blew it…they lost the message…they gave in to greed…they tried to force certain bait and switch on the little stores…they all but squeezed us out of the business…my friend who owns this franchise is really worried as he has bucked the system, just to keep from losing everything…it is sad that the leadership of this corporation was so full of themselves that they lost the edge…