STOP & SHOP ROLLS OUT STAPLES SECTIONS

Renee Lucas

QUINCY, Mass. -- Ahold USA's Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. will roll out its Staples-branded sections to all 550 Stop & Shop and Giant Food stores by July, in time for the back-to-school shopping season, Stop & Shop has confirmed. The chain had been testing the concept in 60 stores in the Northeast.

"The planning works out very well. The timing, we think, is perfect," said Stop & Shop spokesman Robert Keane. "These will all be rolled out by July, right when back-to-school season starts and people will take great advantage of it."

The Staples aisles range from 40 to 80 feet, with 500 to 1,200 school and home office products, including national brands and Staples' private label. Beyond the traditional products found in such aisles, the Staples assortment ranges from copy and photo papers to ink cartridges and technology products.

Staples, based in Framingham, Mass., began testing similar aisles in about 20 stores run by Kroger, Cincinnati, in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas last spring.

Stop & Shop had a similar trial partnership with Office Depot, before switching to the Staples brand in December 2003. Office Depot now supplies products to some Albertsons stores, but did not respond to calls for comment.

Partnerships aren't new for Stop & Shop. Several of the company's stores include Dunkin' Donuts and Boston Market restaurants. Offering such services is for the customers' benefit, Keane said.

"The main goal is to give our customers just one more added service: an expanded office supply section of our store," Keane said. "Staples is a great, very well-tested name brand and the leader of their industry. We think this is a great partnership."

Maintaining the aisle will be simple, according to Staples. "What we've done is create a model that's extremely easy for Stop & Shop to execute," said spokeswoman Deborah Hohler. "We're providing expertise on how this can best work, the product assortment, the look and feel, and we've done it in a way so that it's easy for a Stop & Shop employee to reset and maintain."

The U.S. market for office products purchased outside of the office superstores is $40 billion, according to Hohler. For this reason, Staples wanted to branch out. "This is a way to be where our customers are," Hohler said.

It's also a way for customers to be near the product more frequently. According to data collected by Staples, the company's average customer visits one of its own stores only 12 times a year, as opposed to a supermarket customer who shops at least once a week.

Although the partnership makes buying office supplies convenient to the supermarket shopper, Staples does not expect it to take away sales from its own stores.

"It's a different customer segment that we will be serving," she said. "Our retail stores are very much focused on making it easy for small businesses and home offices to get the office supplies they need. By joining forces with Stop & Shop, we're able to offer school and home office products to a really broad array of consumers."