Staples saw a successful second quarter as its total company sales grew 1% and its North American B2B sales were up 3% in the quarter, driven by a 4% sales growth in contract and local currency.
“During Q2 we grew sales in facility supplies, break room supplies, furniture and promotional products, supported by the hundreds of category specialists that we’ve added over the past few years,” said Ron Sargent, CEO and chairman of Staples to analysts in an earnings call.
For Staples.com, sales were up 1% and the company achieved stable profitability over the second quarter last year.
“During the second quarter, we rolled out a new release of Staples.com to improve and simplify the customer experience and we are encouraged by early results,” said Sargent. “The site is now built for multiple devices; we’ve improved search capabilities and we’ve improved personalization features.”
Sargent added since the launch, customer conversion and revenue per visit has been up.
Staples continue to improve the contract customer experience, during the second quarter, Staples completed the refresh of staplesadvantage.com website. It is faster, optimized for business customers and designed to sell categories beyond office supplies.
“The traffic to the new site is up, customer conversion continues to improve year-over-year, and over the coming weeks we’ll expand our omnichannel capabilities with the launch of buy online, pick up in store on staplesadvantage.com,” said Sargent.
Sargent said this provides contract customers with the ability to buy products online, pick them up from their local store in only two hours.
Staples combined North American stores and online comparable sales declined by approximately 2%. This reflects 1% local currency growth in staples.com and a 3% decline in same store sales.