Is Staples Preparing For Battle With Amazon?

By Sam Lewis

Office supply chain takes some measures to secure its future

Just about every retailer you can think of is in direct competition with Amazon. America’s largest retailer of office supplies is apparently taking strides to make the competition a little bit stiffer.

Staples has been testing its ad effectiveness with customers on Staples.com’s feedback forum with taglines like, “Pay the lowest price every time you shop: We’ll match any competitor with an online and retail store — plus Amazon.” These tests seemed to be aimed at determining how often Amazon’s name will be shown in ads, and how inclined the reader is to choose Staples over Amazon, not necessarily any promotion towards Staples’ price-matching program.

Amazon and Staples have had a fairly innocuous relationship, perhaps because of the enormous gap in sales between them. In 2011, Amazon posted almost $50 billion in online sales, while Staples reported almost $11 billion. Even after Amazon offered customers a 5 percent off purchase coupon simply for using its Price Check mobile app in December 2011, Staples remained cordial. This move by Amazon had many retailers pulling Amazon’s e-readers from their shelves, but Staples let the Kindle stay. Staples even participated in a program from Amazon that put merchandise pick-up lockers in Staples stores.

But now it seems Staples has run out of amicability. As pressure increases from online competition as well as brick-and-mortar stores — Office Depot and OfficeMax are amidst a merger — the office supply chain has begun its own delivery lockers in its small-footprint, omnichannel stores it launched in June. Staples has also purchased Lonesource, an online supplier of business supplies based out of North Carolina. The acquisition, which finalized on August 26, gives Staples both Lonesource’s customers as well as its online purchasing platform.

Price-matching is becoming a more common practice among retailers. Toys ‘R Us announced plans to match prices of e-commerce domains of Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Amazon — but not Amazon Marketplace. As the holiday shopping season approaches, it’s becoming more apparent that retailers, like Staples, will be using convenience, as well as price-matching programs, to lure shoppers into spending money in their commerce realms.