If you are a watcher or reader of the business news you have no doubt seen this phrase - Retail Ice Age - Amazon is eating you lunch and Wal-Mart picks up the scraps. It's going to get worse, much worse. However, knowing that is less important if you work for Staples because they have been so spectacularly, to the point of, felonious in their response to managing the company in the face of these challenges. Shira is probably a very good HR exec. However she finds herself in a job she is not well suited to and sadly was simply dropped on her because NO ONE REALLY cared. Everyone has done the math, calculated the date to failure and made their personal decision as to whether s---ing at the drying teat is in their best interest. Those that stay at this point either have done the math or are dullards incapable of figuring out where this is going. As every store losses another 5% this year and there are no plans that will have any impact to even slow it down. Raising prices?! When your competition already was undercutting you... yeah piss off the few left walking through the doors. Maybe you should just wish them a permanent farewell. Staples is not trying to swim upstream. Staples is swimming downstream.
8 replies (most recent on top)
I ran my own business, but that was nearly 2 decades ago. I like the reduced regulations and elimination of Obamacare as it relates to running a small business. However those things are still just talk. I would NOT be risking my money in a business venture at this point in time. I manage my investments and pick a few growing companies. It's a lot easier than running your own business and the "risk" may be less.
A side note. SPLS is propped up at it's current rate. This bubble will burst as soon as wall street figures out there is no there there in the growth plan.
"they are OVERPRICED"
LOL - Associates have been telling them this for years but corporate did not listen. A customer made a post on reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating showing the price in store on a 100' Cat5r cable for $73.99 and the same exact cable on Amazon for $9.33,
The post was upvoted 29,000 times and 1700 comments. The next day stores received urgent notices to print new tags for Ethernet cables as the prices dropped. So this 100' cable went down to $39.99, even though it could still be bough online for 1/3 the price.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/5ws92h/when_you_prefer_to_buy_things_in_person_but_its/
"They have pissed off too many associates and store management to the point that even they are throwing their hands up and saying the hell with it!"
Why should these people care? Ideally employees should care - but corporate continues to set stores up to fail no matter how much effort they put in.
"and then there is VS. Irrational, non supportive, caustic and insulting," - this guy is the most belligerent MF'r I have EVER come across in 30 years of professional work. He has NO BUSINESS running a region but he is buddy buddy with MD so he keeps his position. neither of these two would land a job outside of such a toxic company as Staples.
Staple's is TERMINAL, DOA, DECEASED in many customers eyes. Not because of Walmart and Amazon but because there is not enough service, the product lines s---, and they are OVERPRICED. I learned early in my career customers vote with their feet and the voting is not good for Staples NOW or in the future. They have pissed off too many associates and store management to the point that even they are throwing their hands up and saying the hell with it! Service is key if they want to stay around but the Einstein's at corporate, and I know a few of them, are too blind to see the forest through the trees. Corporate positions should be eliminated and those dollars spent at store level for service, if they don't do this they are like in ER on a heart monitor that is flat lining. Stupid, stupid people. I could run the company from my house better than Schira. Please if you work for this company get out, I did because the demands are too much and they expect you to work 80 hours a week if you are GM. Most of the DM's are useless and then there is VS. Irrational, non supportive, caustic and insulting, throw MD in that category as well. GET OUT!
The stores are a freaking joke. I was let go for "poor performance" after more than 11 years. Had solid performance appraisals up to 2014, then suddenly nothing I did was good enough.
As an Ops manager in a tier 2 store ($7.75 million at the time) I was responsible for hiring, payroll, logistics and merchandising, front end, LP and safety. With the payroll the store operated on it was impossible to get everything done. You could make plans, but they usually went to hell - someone would call out and either I or the O/S associate would have to cover. Tech or CPC would be busier than the one person DLP allowed for coverage could handle - again stop tasking to cover it.
Any suggestion for even the most bare bones off hours shifts just to get things done was rejected.
"You have plenty of time to get things done between 8-11am and 4-10pm"
sure - but no staff to do it.
Everything was focused on Primetime coverage. My IS was either on register or backing up CPC/shipping all morning while I was backing up tech. In the evenings there was often no one scheduled in office supplies so we could use the hours for truck day.
It was not a matter of incompetence or lack of effort - it was simply that I was not allowed to do my job.
If you still work for Staples - get out ASAP, if you are looking / job hoping, it may be ok short term, but do not plan to stay long.
They do not want good, long term people. Staples retail is a dead end, they want to save on severance costs. So they fire or drive out long tenured employees that would be eligible for 10-12 weeks of severance and replace them with less qualified short term people that will leave after a year or two, or only be eligible for a few weeks of severance at best.
Staples is focusing hard on their online business and that's one of the reasons their retail business is struggling. But the reality is that Staples online peaked in 2009 and is barely growing since then. Even over the past 5 years, Staples online only realized a single digit growth when Walmart and Amazon manage double digit growth per quarter.
FYI, online sales are only 10% of the total sold via retail. The "Online is eating bricks and mortar" narrative is just a cover story for the economy falling apart.
I'm sure some companies and industries are hit particularly hard by amazon, but as a whole, online is a drop i the bucket.
The economy never actually recovered from 2008, it was just propped up with the lowest interest rates in history, massive amounts of money being printed, and the loosest credit in history to sell houses and cars.
That kind of "recovery" is fake and will not end well. Now is the time it falls apart. This will be infinitely worse than 2008.
Watching from afar, do you have any good idea's is on a start up business I can start? Staples will not go out but we have no idea what jobs they will cut next or outsourced. It's all about the share holders and there profits. Upper management will take care of themselves and not worry about them below them. We can all hope that President Trump will help create more opportunities for small businesses and create other jobs.