Office supplies giant Staples, Inc. has beaten the competition, topping rivals Office Depot and OfficeMax to become the largest office supplies retailer. So the company management has set its sights on new competition: Kinko's.
During a recent investor conference, the president of U.S. stores, Demos Paneros, announced that Staples is going after the copy-and-print center market dominated by FedEx Kinko's and plans to open four small Copy & Print Shops in the Boston area in the next month as an initial U.S. test.
The shops will take Staples's existing Copy & Print Center store-within-a-store concept, which offers faxing, photocopying, color printing, engraving, document design and shipping services into its own boxes. The Copy & Print Shops will be stand-alones containing between 3,500 square feet and 4,000 square feet of space. Staples expects each location to bring in from $600,000 to $2 million in annual sales.