Who Owns Staples?

Staples opened its first store in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, on May 1, 1986. Founder Thomas Stemberg, a supermarket executive, conceived the idea of applying the grocery superstore model to office supplies after struggling to buy printer ribbon over a holiday weekend. He partnered with venture capitalist-turned-retailer Leo Kahn and former Bain consultant Myra Hart to launch the chain, backed by venture funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital.

The office supply superstore category proved immediately durable. Staples went public in 1989 and expanded rapidly through the 1990s, reaching $3 billion in sales by 1996 as rivals Office Depot and OfficeMax grew alongside it. The company added a catalog and delivery business, then an early e-commerce operation, and by the mid-2000s the three chains dominated American office supply retail.

Twice, regulators shaped the company's trajectory. In 1997 the Federal Trade Commission blocked Staples' proposed merger with Office Depot. In 2015 Staples tried again, agreeing to buy Office Depot for $6.3 billion, but a federal judge blocked the deal in May 2016 on antitrust grounds, leaving Staples to pay a $250 million breakup fee and face a declining retail market alone.

With e-commerce eroding store sales, Staples explored a sale and agreed in June 2017 to be acquired by Sycamore Partners for about $6.9 billion, or $10.25 per share. The deal closed that September, and the subsequent three-way split shifted emphasis from stores to the higher-margin B2B delivery business.

Under Sycamore, the US store count shrank from roughly 1,500 to about 830 by 2026, while the delivery operation, serving contract customers from about 40 fulfillment centers, became the profit center. The company refinanced about $5 billion of debt in June 2024 and has remained private with no announced plans to relist.