Client: Staples
Product: Annual Reports 1995, 1996, 1997

Staples is an outstanding retail success story. Founder Tom Stemberg built an empire by recreating his supermarket experience in the office-supply realm. In the years when we worked on the Staples annual reports, the company was growing and changing at a rapid rate.

Excerpt: Staples Annual Report 1997
Growth: People make it happen!
It’s the people of Staples who really make things happen. Throughout all of our businesses we have extraordinary associates who have helped Staples get to where we are today. The stories on the following pages are excellent examples of associates who are doing remarkable things for Staples.

Growing a retail store: George Whitehead
What does it take to run a Staples store? Execution. What does it take to run a Staples store in a transitional neighborhood? More execution.

That’s what George Whitehead discovered three and half years ago, when he took over as store general manager of the Staples store at 9195 Central Avenue in Capital Heights, Maryland. Capital Heights—about ten miles outside of Washington, D.C.—had long since fallen on hard times. Many storefronts in the Central Avenue business district were boarded up. Foot traffic and sales volume were low, and “shrink” (that is, pilferage from the store) was running at three times the company-wide average. Turnover was high, and recruitment of qualified personnel was difficult. By most measures, the store appeared to be in a downward spiral.

Whitehead had spent more than a decade in retail—most recently with a warehouse food club chain—and was convinced that he had to open up an urgent campaign on several fronts at once. He immediately called a series of monthly store meetings, and laid down some basic principles. First: Staples had clear rules about theft, and Whitehead planned to enforce them vigorously. Second: Retail was all about service to the customer. Unless this store was able to make its customers feel welcome and well-served, Whitehead cautioned, nobody (including himself!) could be sure that his or her job was secure.

Words were soon followed by action. Several thieves were apprehended in the act, and Whitehead came down hard on them. “Once things like that start happening,” Whitehead comments, “the word gets around, and the other bad guys decide to stay away.”

Shrink declined by a third in 1995, and was cut in half again in 1996. By 1997, Whitehead and his team had cut it to only slightly above the national average for Staples. “And you watch our next inventory numbers,” Whitehead says confidently. “We’re going to have more good news.”

Meanwhile, Whitehead kept up a steady drumbeat about the importance of service. His store and another nearby national retailer were the only stores in the neighborhood that opened early and closed late. Whitehead was determined to get the whole community to see Staples as a valuable resource. “Anything we could do to get us involved in the community, we did,” he recalls, sharing credit for this effort with his store management team, his associates, and even family members. “We got the Staples name out there, and we got the community in here.”

Slowly, foot traffic increased—not just during the mid-morning hours, but at all hours. The “resource to the community” strategy began to pay off—first little by little, and then in a rush. Between 1995 and 1997, sales volume had increased by a factor of two and a half times. “Local people walk in here today,” Whitehead says, “and they can’t believe how well we’re doing. All I say is, ‘Uh huh—and wait ‘til next year!’”

As for service, Whitehead still savors the day when a senior Staples executive paid a surprise visit to his store. Whitehead recognized the executive immediately, but was tied up with a customer and couldn’t greet his high-ranking guest. Several other associates—none of whom had any idea who their newest customer was—immediately stepped up to wait on him. “That executive and I were talking later,” Whitehead recalls, “and he said to me, ‘You know, George, I’ve been to several stores today, and I got my best welcome here.’”

“And that,” Whitehead says with evident pride, “is what this store, and these Staples associates, are all about.”