Yes furniture team all laid off, print team 95 percent laid off and most of the top 50 sales people. Promotional team slashed. Retail is due in January upwards of 400 jobs are going to be cut. Also Corp hq is for sale.
has the retail thing been confirmed?
to the last responder I agree with you one million percent. I am a furniture AM and the writing has been on the wall in neon highlighter for a while. the teams will be a distant memory within six to twelve months I feel. not sure why we are hanging on
As for the furniture team, not everyone in furniture was laid off. About 150 give or take. The problem is not whether it needed to be done or not, it was the manner in which it was done. Since the Sycamore Group purchased Staples the Contract Furniture business has been led (I use that word graciously) by someone not from the Contract side of Furniture. She is secrective, poor communicator, manages like a 1950s boss in a glass office, unapproachable, and dictates from on high along with support from her superiors, Tom Heiseroff and Neil Ringle, who also have no understanding of the contract furniture business.
No consideration was given to customer impact in the reduction in support services, sales people that were meeting plan were laid off. The first time Susan addressed the entire remaining furniture organization since her joining furniture in March 2017 was a prerecorded call to poorly explain the layoffs to those remaining.
Even though Susan is the appointed leader, Heiseroff and Ringle are the responsible parties in this debacle, along with Leadership at Sycamore Group. Communication that is given is obvious a distraction and borderline falsehoods.
Since there is no communication on future plans, everyone left is struggling on whether to stay, jump ship, how to maintain the business, etc. In my opinion this is a phased draw down to a final closing of contract furniture. They could not pull the entire business unit out with out severely jeopardizing the Office Products, Facilities business since they are tied closely together. My prediction is another layoff of another 25-30%between now and June, then the remaining by this time next year as customer attrition and employees leave voluntarily. Staples furniture will revert to purely transactional business that can be easily ordered by SKUs thus removing the complexity of ordering furniture.
This is about profitability and contract furniture does not meet the criteria of profitability of the Sycamore Groups retail mentality.
At corporate we always jested that Staples is a diamond shape organization; on top the executives, a massive amount of middle management, and finally a few grunts that are actually getting some work done and know what they are talking about.
The leadership at Staples really has no clue about the systems at Staples. They still do not realize that most of their business is running on IBM iSeries (AS400). Until they realize this is focus on a true migration strategy they are going to fail.
They continue to build the systems with the assumption the AS400 does not exist they are making their system more complicated. Data is cloned, copy sent from the AS400 systems to these new systems make their systems more fragile. They need to refactor the AS400 applications before they begin to rebuild new systems.
Get ready for 60 minutes OP.
Regarding cheating in retail. The West Coast SVP knows, the East Coast SVP knows, the President of US Stores knows, The CEO knows, Human Resources knows, and the Business Ethics management knows. I think the press should know too. Stay tuned. This will make Wells Fargo look like a minor story.
Faisal Masud's first mistake was thinking he could get everything on the CLOUD...LOL....He really does not know BUSINESS DATA PROCESSING.... For Christ Sake there are still have IBM A-- doing a majority of the work and those are not going anywhere soon.....I like how some of these VP's, CTO's and CIO's think they are IT visionaries. Problem is they have no idea of business and accounting.....PERIOD
Got you beat...
The title of my new book
From Good to Bad: How a chance to be GREAT is Squandered.
Staples lasting legacy...
I know it doesn’t matter now, but I think the fiasco of a final conversion with Coastwide Laboratories was a key component too, maybe a bigger piece than anyone is willing to admit. Staples conversion team tried to make the final conversion seamless, but in the end it wasn’t.
The conversion involved moving customers accounts from one ordering platform to a totally different one. Old account numbers needed to be converted to totally new ones plus they needed to learn how to order supplies on a new system and use new part numbers with little to no training prior to doing it.
Tell me, how would you feel if on a Friday you placed your order like usual with no problems, but when Monday came and you tried to log on you can’t, instead a message pops up that says you need to call the number on the screen to set up your account? During the call you find out all of your shopping lists you’ve used for years are gone and previous history unavailable.
You might be patient and give them a chance to help you, but you really can’t afford to give them that much time because janitorial supplies and services aren’t something you can go without very long. In the end, you get so frustrated the decision is made to start ordering from a different vendor. For some customers, they didn’t even give Staples a chance to get it right.
Some of the Coastwide account numbers weren’t going to get converted properly and it was discovered about three weeks before the final conversion was going to take place. Larger customers had bill to and ship to account numbers, but only bill to’s were sent to Staples for conversion. By not including ship to accounts and information, the physical addresses where deliveries would to be made didn’t get sent for conversion. This happened in 2016.
Why does everyone cheat and do dishonest things in Staples stores? I just joined the company in 2017 and now I am thinking it was a mistake . My dad said it was a good place to work (????) .
My manager said he is being harassed to do things like they did at Wells Fargo ......doing wrong things to make sales numbers . He is very upset and said he wants to quit .
My boyfriend says I should call somebody and tell them , but I don’t know who would listen to a new employee.
I should probably call someone who works in Human Resources .
Does anyone else know of all the cheating that is going on ?
"Who is responsible for this meltdown?" This is shared by many. It started at the beginning with Stemberg. He created a toxic environment that still exists to this day. Then Ron took over and there was little innovation at the company. It became the company of "me". What can I get? What is my payout bonus? How much stock? With the failed merger with Office Depot, Ron left and was paid dearly to do so. Then came Shira. She is career Staples. She once made fun of the USPS expecting jobs for life and yet she has been at Staples most of her career. Ironic. Shira had no vision and was far from creative with how to pull Staples out of the ditch. Her biggest mistakes were who she appointed for many positions. The most glaring example is Faisal Masud as CTO. Masud has no IT degree and has little knowledge of how IT works. He is a business major who cons those into believing he can do what is promised. He said he would put the Staples platform on the cloud. It still isn't there and Masud has already been relieved of his duties. He only lasted 10 months in that position.
There is much blame to go around. The reality is those responsible are still getting paid and those at the bottom are getting canned. Staples is dying a slow death and taking many who don't deserve it with them.
Amazon.com happened. Staples lack of innovation, infection of corporate greed, entitled executives paid so much for so little work, self centered souls placed in positions of power, stagnant thinkers etc...
In answer to your question on what happened the answer can be summed up in 1 word/name...Ronald!
Furniture was not all laid off. Please be correct with the things you say.
Hello , I am a business writer and researcher. I often scan some of these websites to get a pulse on certain industries. I am particularly interested in the retail sector. I have read some of the threads here on this website . Wow . What happened to this once great company ? A lot of people very upset. Who is responsible for this meltdown ? Very interested in your opinions .
Thanks and Happy Holidays .