Staples

Sit down, Coco, sit down, good dog. In this episode, we will take a look at Staples. Staples was founded 39 years ago in 1986, in Brighton, Massachusetts, by Thomas Thenberg, Leo Kahn and Mira Hart. The idea of creating a national chain of large office material stores occurred to Thomas Thenberg in 1985, when he was working on a project for another business and needed a printer tape, but he did not find any local distributor open because it was on July 4. Since he opened the first Staples store in 1986 in Brighton, Massachusetts, they have grown to have 860 stores in the United States with 40 stores and logistics centers. They also have a presence in Canada, but it took me a lot to calculate exactly how many stores they have in Canada. Staples began with the support of some private capital companies, including Vayne Capital, and the co-founder of Vayne Capital, Meet Romney. In fact, he was part of the company's direct group for 15 years. Throughout the years, Staples has acquired other smaller companies related to office material, but I think my favorite acquisition attempt by them is Office Depot. Staples has tried to acquire Office Depot several times. The first time was in 1996, and during that acquisition attempt, the Federal Commission of Commerce intervened and said, no, you will not do it. That will create a monopoly on what concerns office material stores. Then they tried to acquire Office Depot again in 2015 and, again, the Federal Commission of Commerce said no, they could not do it. A few years after that second failed acquisition office Depot, Seekamore Partners bought Staples in 2017 for $ 6,900 million. 1. 6% of that amount was financed as capital, but the rest, a little more than $ 5,000 million, were re-cowded as debt. Also, during that purchase, Seekamore Partners took the company Staples and divided it into three management entities and capitalized independently. That would be the business-to-business business, the minority stores Staples in EE, UU and the minority stores Staples in Canada. And the three entities share the name Staples. The 2017 Palankada purchase is, in fact, one of the reasons why I would decide to make a video about Staples, because it is another example of a great national minority that is forced to ass Another reason why I When I entered this Staples store a few weeks ago, it was the first time I went to a office material store for several years. And the first thing that caught my attention, well, not so much the sight, but the nose, was the unique smell that only seems to have the office material stores. It is a scent of paper and ink, perhaps a touch of ozone from the laser printers and photocopiers from the shopping mall. It is a scent that is definitely exclusive to the office material stores and they all have that smell. If you take a store office material with your eyes closed and you are not told what kind of store it is and you wonder what it is, just because of the smell, you probably know it is a store office material. Returning to the issue of the purchase of Staples by Sikomor, remember that I mentioned that the acquisition was for $ 6,900 million and that only 1,600 million of that amount were financed as real capital. Well, just a few years later, in 2019, Sikomor Partners was able to recover most of that investment of $ 1,600 million. They managed to do it through something called divide recapitalization, which I do not understand at all what it is about because I am not a financial advisor, but it allowed them to refinance $ 5,400 million of that debt against its property of Staples, and that produced a single divide of $ 1,000 million for the private capital company. This surprised many financial analysts because in the end Sikomor allowed to recover approximately 80% of its capital investment in Staples in less than two years. It also increased the debt that Staples has a little less than $ 7,000 million in total. That was six years ago, so at this point, it is But, again, Staples also has more than $ 6,000 million in debt hanging from the neck at the moment. Two years later, in 2021, even with all that debt, Staples tried for the third time to buy Office Depot. However, that offer was rejected, even before the FTC had to intervene again. Now, approximately a year ago, in June 2024, Staples was able to refinance all that debt he had, which was important because they had a loan of $ 300 million that he won very soon, and then another $ 5,000 million that they won in 2026. That refinance of last year basically postponed the payment until 2029, when they will win $ 2,375 million. And that takes us to the day of today, where we are in a basic item store looking at a very dirty screen model of a mechanical keyboard. They should really clean it up. I have used the term postpone the payment to refer to refinancing because it really looks The sales in basic stores have fallen in recent years. And why is there a Nintendo cartel here on the printing cartels? Have they ever sold Nintendo products in Staples? Because all of this is just a toner cartel. How weird. Let's take a look at the software section. And this used to be a great section in offices of their ministers And now it's just a small set of shelves. And in reality, there are only keys that you can buy to download these programs. And there is only Microsoft Office and Antivirus. And that is the problem with the office minister's industry in general. The offices simply use many less ministers. Many offices have gone through without paper, which means that they would have archivators with file folders and separate papers. And now many of those things that they would buy in a office minister'store are all in a USB memory of $ 15. This was filmed at the end of the week and this store was practically empty while I was here. And it's not just a Staples problem. I was in an office max a little while ago and something similar happened. There really was no one else there. So I understand that the sales business between Staples companies is better than their small stores. And I think that makes sense. I think that now many people, since they don't buy so much office material with so much frequency, it's easier to ask for some things and get them once a month with a few things they need. I like that you can buy Christmas cookies in Staples in the middle of s Those butter cookies I only see them in Christmas stores. As for the clients who don't have business and come to Staples just to buy a specific print color for a school project or something And it's easier to buy a couple of things you need for a school project while you're at Walmart buying other things you would normally buy. They also have a lot of supplies for the return to school and for teachers here specifically. Although I know some teachers and I never heard them mention that they buy things in Staples, Office Max and Office Depot. Unfortunately, teachers have to pay for their own pocket for many of those things, so I think they try to find the cheapest offer they can for that kind of thing in places Well, I bought something while I was here. I really So I bought them. I also saw the famous easy Staples button. I had forgotten about it, but some of them were in the exhibition here, but unfortunately they didn't work. In general, I would say that things look a little bit Now, let's get out of here, but the video hasn't finished yet. These images are from a few weeks ago, but I have some of them from five years ago, from when I started working on a Staples video and I couldn't finish it. So let's make a trip in time five years ago. Well, here are images I took from a Staples store five years ago, when I was originally working on a video because I discovered that Staples had a large n However, since then, they could finish that refinancing I talked about earlier and postpone things until 2029. But I thought that these images from five years ago would still be useful And so I can see here and what I remember when I filmed this, the store was very, very dead, as it was in the previous images. And I don't know if Staples will really go better when it comes to 2029 and many of those debts will come. Unless something drastic happens that increases the influence of the public to its minority stores and sales are shot. I think that 2029 could be the end of Staples. If they can't pay more than two thousand million dollars they owe, I don't see that there is a way to make another refinancing and then postpone things for later. This is something you wouldn't see in a Staples store or nowadays. One of those small line-up demand quotes. Those are not really necessary anymore. And just Now, as Staples was divided into three entities, one of which is the B2B part of the business, that part of the business seems to be working better than the business of the minority stores. So, even if all the Staples stores close, I don'think that means the end of the name Staples. Simply, there will be no more stores that are called Staples. They will be strictly dedicated to the delivery office material and sales between companies. It's interesting to see this small blog to test the bolu00edgrafos, because it'something that disappeared during the Christmas season. According to my notes, these images are from March 2020. It's interesting to see that even five years ago they had those cans of butter cookies all year long. So, if you ever have a doubt about those cookies, and it's not during the Christmas season, you can always come to Staples to buy them. We can also see some inflation, because in 2020 those cookies cost $ 4. 99, but in the previous images, a few weeks ago, they cost $ 629. It's also interesting to see in these old images that there is still some color in the store, But if you look at the newer images, the store is very monotonous. They have eliminated the last remaining color and they are all neutral colors. And I have to say that I prefer the look of the store in 2020. Much better. Now, there is something that I didn't see in the store when I was there a few weeks ago, but that I did see in 2020, they had a whole section office material from the brand Martha Stewart. That engraving is incredible. It may not be a red line, but I They even had Sharpie markers from Martha Stewart. Now that there are so many office workers who work for you and don't go to the office, I'm sure there is less demand for decorative office material. I always pay attention to look at the price of some of these ink cartridges, and this was five years ago, and some of those games cost more than $ 100. And even then, they had cameras and monitors to make sure that you don't steal cartridges. Isaac was in the paperware stores in 2020. And I think it's a real-sized cardboard cutout. I asked Mark to put it next to him, it's almost 2 meters long. So yes, it's probably real size. However, according to these old images and the most recent ones, I think the business of the office minister'store could be over. But leave me your opinions in the comments below. I think if things don't change drastically for 2029, when you have to pay all that money, Staples could end up declaring himself in a mess. But I think we'll end here with the 2020 podcast team, when everyone started with the podcasts. 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