How to Sell to Staples & Become a Staples Vendor

Learn everything you need to know to become a Staples vendor

Staples Vendor – Hey everyone this Karen Waksman, Founder of Retail MBA. And today I want to talk about selling your products to Staples and becoming a Staples Vendor. So if you have a great physical product and you’re trying to sell to retailers and Staples is on your mind, this whole training segment will just give you some tips and strategies on what to think about in regards to going after them. So with that said, let’s talk about Staples.

The advantage of becoming Staples supplier

They have over 1500 stores they’re responsible for. That is tremendous buying power. One chain store order from Staples can mean millions of dollars to your business and your bottom line. Just think about it. If they buy, say, 30 units of your products per store and they have 1500 stores or so. Again the number of stores vary based on the time you hear this. But ultimately, to say 1500 stores, and they have 30 units for product, I mean that can conceivably be a tremendous amount of opportunity. And I mean, if that’s around 45,000 units of your product, I’m not saying that they’ll buy for all of their stores. But think about how many units that is—45,000 units per sale for these stores. And then what if they reorder the product over and over and over again?

What you can sell to Staples

I have clients who have sold to retailers for 10 to 15 years straight. And again, it varies per retailer and so forth. But once the product sells and it converts in their stores, they tend to reorder it and so that could be tremendous business to you. The other thing to think about Staples is they don’t just buy office supplies.

• They buy consumer electronics.
• They buy janitorial supplies.
• They buy furniture.
• They buy school supplies.
• They buy food. 

I mean, they buy so many snacks and all these different things, health and beauty products. I mean stuff you would never think to sell to an office supply store. So my recommendation is to go and to walk their stores and see what stuff is in their stores today.

It’s a little tricky to become a Staples vendor

Retailers have changed. They’re not the way they used to be. Before, it used to be very cut and dried. They would buy the only very specific things that matter to that particular retailer like office supplies and so forth. But not anymore. Now they’re filling up stores with a variety of different things hoping that the customer will not only just buy whatever they typically buy from them but add all sorts of different things. The other thing to think about with Staples is the buyer at Staples is different from the buyer at staples.com.

The online buyers are typically different from the physical store buyer.

Those are two different buyers and that happens with most retail chains like Walmart and walmart.com. Those are different buyers.  And the way that you sell to them is a little bit different. The reason I mentioned that is because, you know, if you get rejected by Staples you can go after the staples.com buyer. And a lot of people don’t know that. And so you know, the thing to think about, again there’s so many different ways to sell to Staples.

Another thing to think about if you want to sell to Staples

 is you can sell to them through their corporate buyer which buys products for all their stores. You could sell to their online buyer which buys for their online store. Or maybe you have a private label product that you can put under their brand name. Most retail chains have a private label buyer or a company-owned buyer. And basically what that means, is that it has the Staples name on it but they typically buy from someone like you. So they buy products from a manufacturer and then they just have you package it under their name. And so every retailer has kind of a privately-owned product. And they actually have buyers specifically who buy stuff like that.

Once you become a Staples vendor other retailers will accept your products

People make millions of dollars selling to Staples

So if you’re trying to sell to Staples and they’re not purchasing from you, one thing to think about is do I care whether or not my brand is on the packaging. And if so, maybe I can reach out to a privately-owned buyer, corporate-owned buyer and so forth and see if I could put my product under their brand name. And again, people make millions of dollars with Staples but a lot of times, the private label buyer can really just buy a large volume of your product because again it’s under their brand name. So just something to think about. There’s so many different ways to sell to Staples.