Staples Buying Office Depot For $6.3B

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According to Reuters, Staples is buying Office Depot for $6.3 billion. Thanks to cageymaru for the heads up.

Staples Inc , the No. 1 U.S. office supplies retailer, agreed to buy No. 2 Office Depot Inc in a $6.3 billion deal designed to help it better compete against Wal-Mart Stores Inc and online rivals such as Amazon.com Inc . The deal, which will likely come under close scrutiny from antitrust regulators, values Office Depot at $11.00 per share, based on Staples' closing price on Feb. 2, the last trading day prior to media reports that a deal was near.
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Since Office Depot and OfficeMax have already merged, there is now really only one big box, national office supply store. Hooray for lax oversight allowing for monster corporate mergers that destroy price competition!
 
Teenyman45 said:
Since Office Depot and OfficeMax have already merged, there is now really only one big box, national office supply store. Hooray for lax oversight allowing for monster corporate mergers that destroy price competition!
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These stores have the same issue, but to a lesser degree, that Radio Shack has, and this is the they no longer only compete with similar stores but also with general big box stores such as Walmart, as well as online sites.

I mean does Staples carry anything that can't be found at Walmart, Amazon or most other B&M, or online, large stores?
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
These stores have the same issue, but to a lesser degree, that Radio Shack has, and this is the they no longer only compete with similar stores but also with general big box stores such as Walmart, as well as online sites.

I mean does Staples carry anything that can't be found at Walmart, Amazon or most other B&M, or online, large stores?
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only stuff behind their service desk. like same day business cards, posters, bigger copies, etc. Kinko's kind of fills this niche, but they're not everywhere like staples and the like.
 
Also, unlike walmart, the lines and stores are not crazy so if you just need a ream of paper, staples is worth spending 50c more to not deal with walmart IMO
 
Uhg, Staples here is terrible. They don't even carry office furniture any more aside from a couple crappy bonded leather chairs and file cabinets. Not that you can find a decent chair at Office Depot either, but at least they have some selection and desks and stuff to look at.

Trying to find an office chair that doesn't start falling apart in six months is a PITA any more. Then you usually have to go online and get it because the furniture store that you find it at has a 200% price markup on it.
 
Wow, and to think that OfficeMax and OfficeDepot just merged in the last couple years. That's some rapid consolidation.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
These stores have the same issue, but to a lesser degree, that Radio Shack has, and this is the they no longer only compete with similar stores but also with general big box stores such as Walmart, as well as online sites.

I mean does Staples carry anything that can't be found at Walmart, Amazon or most other B&M, or online, large stores?
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Kind of sad one kind of monopoly, Walmart, justifies another.
 
All driven by internet shopping. Staples and Office Depot tried to merge awhile back and it was forbidden because of monopoly concerns. Now, that's not a problem; all three of these companies can merge with no objection because they're getting murdered by Amazon.

And you know why? I went to buy two office chairs from Office Depot about a year ago. The in-store process was absurd. I told a guy on the floor which ones I wanted, he handed me off to another guy, that guy handed me off to a desk off to the side where it was explained that one chair was in stock while the other one wasn't. I ran my credit card at that desk for the one that needed to be ordered, was given a printout and sent to the cash register to pay for the one that was in stock while that chair was brought up for me. Later that week, I got an email warning that I somehow hadn't paid for the one I ordered (so why did they run the credit card, eh?) so I was going to have to go back to the store and order it again. I went back, got a weird kind of reception in that they didn't want to set up that re-order like I had done something wrong, so I left and I'm never going back.
 
These stores still exist? 6.3B? lol

Save the money and just close already. Your business model is dead.

rip radio shack and these soon to follow dinasours.
 
Teenyman45 said:
Since Office Depot and OfficeMax have already merged, there is now really only one big box, national office supply store. Hooray for lax oversight allowing for monster corporate mergers that destroy price competition!
Click to expand...

All of these stores are/were struggling. Mergers for the purpose of preserving some competition are good for consumers. It's better to have at least Staples than have all three of the major office supply stores go out of business.
 
The biggest problem with this is just the sheer waste these stores promote by selling products that are basically made to be thrown away. I mean really people, use the other side of the post-it note for taking notes. It's blank okay? You're wasting it.

So yeah, I wish they all would go out of business. Good riddance to at least one of them.
 
Thats funny because in the houston area staples is almost non-existent but officemax and officedepot are rampant.
 
Just the Free Market assuring that Competition keeps it healthy. Nothing to see here.

But yes, Staples will be bankrupt in a couple years, blowing $$ in a futile attempt to fight a battle where it doesn't even know where the punches are coming from. Online purchasing will grow, their stores will become anachronistic and go the way of Blockbuster stores. Staples Online will not be able to compete with Amazon, etc .... and poof.

Anti-Trust is a little tweeting bird, who's song smells bad. :eek:
 
bloodypulp said:
with less competitors to match prices, less deals will be had
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What do you mean? Walmart or Amazon ring a bell? There's plenty of competition. Staples needs this to make them more competitive.
 
ViperGrendal said:
Trying to find an office chair that doesn't start falling apart in six months is a PITA any more. Then you usually have to go online and get it because the furniture store that you find it at has a 200% price markup on it.
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Look for second hand office furniture from a business park where a place is closing. I picked up a pair of all seating fluid chairs with all the options for $49 each. They are about $700 new and are in good shape. They will last far longer than any $100 new chair from a big box and are more comfortable to boot.
 
I like Staples, my favorite of the 3 office stores. Depot was my least favorite. Then Depot bought OfficeMax. Now Staples is buying DepotMax? All this just to compete with Wally World?

I think the 6.3 BILLION valuation is insane as well.
 
No mention if Staples will rename all the stores or leave them as they are.

I have not shopped at Staples in over 10 years, back when they were the only ones who carried HDD's before online stores existed.
 
heatlesssun said:
All of these stores are/were struggling. Mergers for the purpose of preserving some competition are good for consumers. It's better to have at least Staples than have all three of the major office supply stores go out of business.
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Um. Hate to say it, but, Office Max was profitable, when it was purchased by Depot. And of the three, Max usually had the better price...
 
evilsofa said:
All driven by internet shopping. Staples and Office Depot tried to merge awhile back and it was forbidden because of monopoly concerns. Now, that's not a problem; all three of these companies can merge with no objection because they're getting murdered by Amazon.

And you know why? I went to buy two office chairs from Office Depot about a year ago. The in-store process was absurd. I told a guy on the floor which ones I wanted, he handed me off to another guy, that guy handed me off to a desk off to the side where it was explained that one chair was in stock while the other one wasn't. I ran my credit card at that desk for the one that needed to be ordered, was given a printout and sent to the cash register to pay for the one that was in stock while that chair was brought up for me. Later that week, I got an email warning that I somehow hadn't paid for the one I ordered (so why did they run the credit card, eh?) so I was going to have to go back to the store and order it again. I went back, got a weird kind of reception in that they didn't want to set up that re-order like I had done something wrong, so I left and I'm never going back.
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lol you were surprised that an office store had a bunch of useless office bureaucracy you had to cut through just to do a simple job? How would they keep themselves in business if they showed all those office staff its a lot easier to do it all in one spot with one sheet of paper?


There is no brick and mortar place that really mirrors the office stores. People say Wal-Mart but Wal-Mart has a fairly reduced selection that is more targeted toward garage sales and home users. The real issue is online. Think about the people they service.

Offices are those places where nothing time critical or important gets done and there are a bunch of people who's sole job is supposed to be ordering junk at the appropriate time to not run out of it? Such people should easily be able to find anything they need online and order it enough ahead of time to not ever need to run out to staples to get the job done. You have office supplies at places like amazon but you also have places like uprinting and vistaprint. If office people are doing their job they shouldn't ever need to go to staples. What all these office stores needed to do was just lower their damn prices and start to fill their stores with more stuff. Then throw on shipping / deliveries. Basically become a bunch of distributed warehouses. Ironically Amazon will probably do this before they ever get around to it.
 
Paper and office supplies are on the way out it's all digital now same with HP printers the reason why they layed off. If Office Max stores were more like Best Buy this might not of happen.

They should sell Desktop CPUs there along with other gaming devices which are really big on the net.
 
Well, there goes the competition. From 3 to 2 and now possibly 1. That can't be good.

It's also a sign of the times and the digital age. Not everyone needs paper and pens as much anymore. Last time I went to a Office Depot, it was a ghost town. Not only that, the Staples up the street closed and consolidated with another store down the road.
 
I was at Office Depot the other day for a shipping box and was pleased to discover that they had exactly what I needed. If there's one kind of retail chain I'd really like to see, it's a shipping supplies one. Getting that stuff online is no good because they usually sell in bulk and I need the materials right away.
 
Last time I went to Staples I needed divider tabs for a portfolio. All they had on hand were assorted neon color tabs. I was looking for something more professional looking, such as clear. The sales associate said they stopped carrying clear ones because Staples was focusing on school students now, not business professionals. Stunned by that, I walked out and ordered what I needed from Amazon.
 
When were talking about office supplies, monopoly is not something I would worry about. There are planet of place to get furniture from, along with paper and numerous other supplies. Its office supplies people, majority if purchased by business at a special price anyway. Youll be fine!
 
jpm100 said:
Kind of sad one kind of monopoly, Walmart, justifies another.
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Walmart only controls about 11-12% of the total retail market ... how is that a monopoly ... realistically this is just more about scale ... bigger retailers can achieve better economies of scale with pricing than smaller ones ... not every merger or large company is a monopoly, nor is every monopoly bad ... only the abuse of a monopoly position is illegal anyway, not being a monopoly
 
I used to go into Office Max like once a week on my 2nd shift Walmart break looking for anything that would give me a edge in being a better comic book artist I picked up two 500 gig drives and one 1 terabyte drive which is in my current system backing up my Steam games.

The Chair I'm sitting in now is a Office Max chair I bought about 9 chairs though that place so I know what to look for now.
 
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