Staples Inc GroupB10

Staples Inc.
Case Analysis
Submitted to
Prof. Venkataraman K
In Partial fulfilment of the requirements of the course

Retail Management
By
Group B10
Anupam Piyush (166017)
Mehul Gupta (166080)
Mrinmoy Choudhury (166084)
Niyanta Chowdhury (166098)
Saumya Baldi (166153)
Venkatesh Janakiraman (166191)
Q1. Is furniture, at present, a liability to the company?
Staples Inc. mainly sells standardized furniture. They offer 200 SKUs of furniture. The shopper
visiting Staples inc expects high quality furniture at low price point. Also, according to table 3,
they think that furniture provided by Staples Inc. are of limited selection and poor quality. The
sales staffs are not trained well enough to sell the office furniture.
The most important factor is that the sales sq. feet for furniture category is very less for furniture
category as compared to the others as we can see from table 2.
Category Sales (Rs.) Floor Space (Sq. ft.) Sales/ Sq. ft
General Supplies 3,250,000 6,500 500
Business Machines 2,100,000 1,500 1400
Furniture 650,000 4,000 162.5
Combining all these factors, we can say that furniture section is currently a liability for Staples
Inc. As the Harry Nassela, President, Staples Inc. quotes, No one knows how to sell furnitures.
Q2. How should the merchandising of furniture be improved?
Ans) To improve the merchandising mix of furnitures in Staples Inc., we can use following
parameters:-
1. Variety and presence of assortments:- Though Staples provide 200 SKUs in the furniture
category, still customer complains about the limited selections of furniture. That means
people are not happy with the current mix. Staples Inc. can do a market research to
understand the current trends in furniture industry and starts providing those selection.
2. Customers (Purchasers) :- According to Table 3, 63% of purchasers of Staples Inc have
less than 7 employee. This also includes self-employed customers. Thus, Staples Inc. can
arrange their product mix accordingly with providing furniture for small or home grown
businesses.
3. Product Categorization :- As most of the furnitures sells in form of standardization items
such as Chairs, Banquet tables hence Staples Inc. should try to put more standardized
products in their stores.
Q3. Would it make sense to have free-standing furniture showrooms?
Ans) Currently in the retail store furniture section takes space of 17000 sq ft in a store with an
average area of 4000 sq ft. Also, the sales per sq ft are very low for furniture section. But at the
same time they are trying to solve the problem by renovating the furniture section by upgrading
the furniture setting by keeping it in more formal setting and including carpeting to give the setting
a formal furniture stores feel. Also, they are keeping wide range of product from $100 to $1000
rather than just keeping products equal or below than $300.
So, no it does not make sense to have free standing furniture showrooms. It is recommended to
follow up, what these upgradation are resulting in and after analyzing the end result they should
go for stand-alone showrooms. Also, management should add some staff trained in selling
furniture as the part of the upgradation as customers have complained poor customer service as
one of the major drawback.
Q4. If furniture is withdrawn from the stores, what should they do with the resulting space?
Ans) After withdrawing furniture from the stores the resulting space can be use dto keep products
which are giving highest sales per sq feet.
Category Sales (Rs.) Floor Space (Sq. ft.) Sales/ Sq. ft

General Supplies 3,250,000 6,500 500
Business Machines 2,100,000 1,500 1400
Furniture 650,000 4,000 162.5
As we can see in the above table, Business machines have the highest sales/sq feet, hence they can
keep these products in the free space.
Also, the gross profit per sq. ft. of Business machines is Rs.266 per sq. ft. and General Supplies
has margin of Rs.135 per sq. ft. hence it makes sense to keep Business machine.

Staples Inc GroupB10

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Staples Inc GroupB10

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Staples Inc.

In Partial fulfilment of the requirements of the course

Q1. Is furniture, at present, a liability to the company?

Category Sales (Rs.) Floor Space (Sq. ft.) Sales/ Sq. ft

General Supplies 3,250,000 6,500 500

Business Machines 2,100,000 1,500 1400

Furniture 650,000 4,000 162.5

Q2. How should the merchandising of furniture be improved?

Category Sales (Rs.) Floor Space (Sq. ft.) Sales/ Sq. ft

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