Staples Reinvents The Use For Its Stores

As consumer needs around commerce are changing, commerce hubs are reimagining and redesigning their physical locations to meet customers halfway, so to speak. Staples is joining in on that trend, and is thus converting some of its retail locations for office supplies into temporary office spaces for rent.

Staples, in conjunction with office-sharing startup Workbar, is looking to open three Boston-area communal workplaces. The hope is that the affiliation will draw more small business owners and mobile professionals into Staples locations. Staples needs the customers, as foot traffic has been on the decline since 2009.

“Obviously, it drives traffic for us,” said Peter Scala, Staples head of merchandising. “Our goal here is to continually focus on making large stores more productive.”

The co-effort with Workbar will feature office space that will eat up around 2,500 to 3,500 square feet within Staples’ locations, a little over 10 percent of the 20,000 or so that the stores usually average.

The reinvention comes as Staples has also been pruning its physical locations list. Like many retailers, Staples has been closing lots of doors lately, though the redesign is an attempt to reconceptualize locations, instead of merely closing them. So far Staples has shut down 5 million square feet of retail space and is looking at plans to shut down another 50 stores this year.

“Most big box retailers have realized they can’t grow stores any bigger and get more business from them,” Paco Underhill, founder of international retail consultant Envirosell, told The Wall Street Journal.

Workbar is not the only company looking to serve the part-time office space niche, but Workbar Chief Executive Bill Jacobson noted that Staples’ partnership is part of her firm’s determination to better serve the suburbs.