Word: sargent
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...SARGENT: The biggest complaint we got from customers was "I know it's here, but I can't find it." So this new format is much more of a low profile: you walk five steps into the store, and you can see the entire store. And we're upgrading the capabilities of our copy centers so we can really be competitive with Kinko...
...SARGENT: We found that 67% of our customers accounted for 90% of profits. Rather than continue to pander to everybody, we decided to focus on the 67% primarily small-business or home-office power users. Small-business customers don't want to have to wade through the pens with feathers and the Britney Spears backpacks...
...SARGENT: Anytime you tell your merchandising team, "We're going to get rid of 800 items," they'll say, "Our sales are going to go down." My argument was, If you can be in stock in the good stuff that people really need and look for, maybe your sales will go up. The end result: we just had our 12th quarter in a row of more than 20% earnings growth...
...SARGENT: It's amazing. You want to change people's behavior, change the way you pay them. So we decided to pay hourly employees a bonus every month. It is self-funding, so that if a store doesn't perform better, the bonus goes to zero. Now we pay out bonuses to an average of 70% of the hourly workers a month. People making eight bucks an hour can get $2 to $3 extra on every hour they work...
...SARGENT: Three years ago, it was 8% of our sales. Today it is 15%. There's not a lot of brand recognition in our industry. Now we're testing selling office supplies at Kroger and Stop & Shop. Down the road, I'd like for Staples to be the national-brand office product...