Re: Staples Struggling for Growth. The rundown on the original article is basically: Staples must go to extreme measures to increase profits in times of market-share decline. The blog goes on to address specifically how competitors such as Wal-mart and online distributors ie Amazon are biting a little too much of Staple’s consumer base for their comfort. This issue, however, is obviously not unique to Staples. Even a decade ago, specialty stores co-existed with larger, multi-product distributors, due to their greater range of specialty products. Fast forward today, and information and transportation are exploding almost faster than the market can keep up with, and broad product-range distributors are gobbling up the opportunities to expand with greater ease than ever before. Retailers/wholesalers such as Wal-mart, Costco, etc, are finding it easier than ever to sell an ever-increasing variety of products: Wal-mart’s recent grocery department, for example. And many specialty stores that cannot so easily expand are feeling the crunch. People are increasingly opting to shop at places where they can get the majority of their shopping done at to save both time, and, if the retailer is know for fair prices, good value. It’s just more convinient. Specialty stores such as, but no limited to, Staples, don’t really have anywhere to go in terms of expansion, and so must fall back on cost-cutting to displace their loss in revenue. I believe retail “giants” are only going to become more powerful, until many now-prospering specially retailers are left consumer-less, unless they too can expand in some way and offer products of sufficient uniqueness and quality to overcome mega-retailer’s range of products and ease of shopping.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidprestage/2012/10/08/staples-struggling-for-growth/