Staples Inc. is the world’s 3rd largest ecommerce site. Starting in 1985, when Tom Stemberg was not able to find a replacement printer ribbon on a holiday weekend, he came up with a way to make office supplies more accessible and affordable. Now, Staples is about much more than paper clips and pens. The idea for Staples originated in 1985, while Stemberg was working on a proposal for a different business. He needed a ribbon for his printer, but was unable to obtain one because his local dealer was closed for the Independence Day holiday. A frustration with the reliance on small stores for critical supplies combined with Stemberg's background in the grocery business led to a vision for an office supply superstore. The first store was opened in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston in 1986. Staples started with backing from private equity firms including Bain Capital; Bain co-founder Mitt Romney served on the company's board of directors for the next 15 years, helping shape their business model.
A Staples Business Depot located in a tradition building in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1991, Staples founded its Canadian secondary business, The Business Depot, and began opening stores under that name, though over a decade later, all stores were renamed as "Staples". The first store opened in…show more content… On September 4, 1996, Staples and Office Depot announced plans to merge. The Federal Trade Commission decided that the superpower would unfairly increase office supply prices despite competition from OfficeMax, because OfficeMax did not have stores in many of the local markets that the merger would affect. Staples eventually argued that chains such as Wal-Mart and Circuit City Stores represented significant competition, but this argument did little to sway the FTC. Following the denial of the merger by the FTC, a rivalry has formed between the two