How Party City And Stanton Optical Are Taking Staples Beyond Office Supplies

Staples, the nation’s leading brick-and-mortar office-supply retailer, is turning its 900 stores into a community services hub by expanding beyond its office-supply roots. It’s giving Party City a new home in about 700 stores and testing Stanton Optical shop-in-shops in the Philadelphia market.

It’s all part of Staples’ focus on a community-centric, services-led business model bring complementary products and services to meet the needs of its core small business customers and everyday shoppers alike.

“Retail is highly competitive and ever evolving so we must keep adapting,” shared Marshall Warkentin, president U.S. retail. “For us, that’s meant leaning into a services-led strategy.”

He explained that journey started with print service—“which has become the heart of our stores,” he observed—and from there its expanded into other complementary services, like UPS shipping, online product returns, TSA Precheck, and now into party supplies and eyeglasses.

“That’s what makes the store-in-store model so powerful: when we bring in a partner whose offering complements our own, customers immediately understand the value,” he said.

Differentiating When It Really Matters

Staples is competing in a retail sector that is about half the size it was a decade ago, shrinking from $14.2 billion in 2015 to $7.4 billion in 2025—no other category besides department stores (-63%) declined more.

Staples has been privately owned since a $6.9 billion leveraged buyout by Sycamore Partners in 2017.

Its closest brick-and-mortar competitor is the nearly 800-store strong Office Depot/OfficeMax duo, now owned by Atlas Holdings after a $1 billion acquisition last year. In ODP’s last public filing in 2024, sales in the Office Depot division fell from $4.5 billion in 2022 to $3.4 billion in 2024, a 25% slide.

Both chains are up against the Amazon Business juggernaut. In 2023, CEO Andy Jassy revealed that Amazon Business had reached $35 billion in global GMV, after growing 40% over two years. Currently, it serves some eight million customers, including 97 of the global Fortune 500 companies and 90 of the top 100 largest local governments, with expanding reach into education and the healthcare industry.

Against that backdrop, both Staples and Office Depot offer a similar range of office-supply products and services to local small businesses needing hands-on support, including printing and scanning, graphic design, promotional products, tech repair and shipping—Staples via UPS and Office Depot with FedEx.

But the strategies diverge at the consumer level. Office Depot stays primarily in its business lane, while Staples has broadened is scope for everyday shoppers. For example, it is a designated no-box, no-label Amazon returns location and, through its partnership with Happy Returns, provides the same hassle-free return service for some 1,000 retailers and brands.

With roughly one in five online purchases returned—more than double the in-store return rate—Staples has a steady stream of potential customers walking into its doors every day. And now Staples has more to offer those everyday shoppers with Party City in roughly 700 stores. And, if the Staton Optical pilot in the Philadelphia area succeeds, it will have even more in the future.

Complementary Products And Services Strengthen Staples’ Core Business

After Party City’s 2024 bankruptcy and the closure of its 800-plus stores in early 2025, Staples wasted no time in testing the shop-in-shop opportunity. It began trialing Party City outposts last summer, while the brand was still familiar and recognized by consumers. Party City was an attractive add-on as it folded into Staples printing services with personalized invitations, party banners, signs and balloons.

“We understood the power of the Party City brand—it was still very much in people’s minds as a destination for party supplies. We felt the complementary nature of the brands within our store would make an instant connection,” Warkentin said. Party City has proven a valuable addition with more than 700 Staples stores and Staples.com now offering Party City products and services.

An unexpected benefit has been Party City’s pop-culture connection. Warkentin points to Spider-man and Moana character licenses as recent hits. “You can do a full kid’s birthday party with personalized balloons, custom invitations and banners—all featuring the child’s name and their favorite character. It’s been a powerful continuity opportunity to layer on licensed brands customers are looking for,” he shared.

Stanton Optical follows a similar shop-in-shop model to meet an expanded range of needs. It provides full eye-care services, including in-store eye exams and prescription glasses at affordable prices starting at about $40. And Staples made room for Stanton Optical not just on the selling floor, but in the back room to fill single-lens prescriptions. Many customers can walk out the door with their new glasses in an hour or less.

Warkentin praises Stanton Optical for its innovative approach to eyecare and Stanton Optical returns the praise for its willingness to think outside the box.

“Since opening our four locations in the Philadelphia area in February, their teams have been a genuine collaborator from day one, bringing operational expertise and a willingness to innovate alongside up, not simply provide space,” shared Daniel Stanton, founder and CEO of Now Optics, which is the parent company of Stanton Optical.

Both partners say they are looking down the road to where the partnership could lead.

Staying In Focus

Warkentin describes Staple’s as operating a services-led, community-focused strategy—one that started with its core small-business customers but has steadily expanded to meet a broader range of customers’ needs.

Party City and Stanton Optical broaden that scope and build foot traffic, but perhaps the biggest driver of repeat customer visits is its Amazon and Happy Returns services. Staples doesn’t provide the numbers, but with e-commerce shoppers returning products at far higher rates than in-store shoppers, the volume alone must create a steady flow of customers to its doors.

Staples has made the returns process even more sticky by offering what it calls “Bins Wins”—in-store bulk bins of returned merchandise that are sold on a rotating discount schedule. On Fridays, a new batch of return items is put out, all priced at $15 each—early bird shoppers can snag some pretty impressive deals that day. Prices drop daily until they hit $2 on Thursday when the cycle repeats.

Bin Wins are now in a “couple of hundred of stores,” and vendors decide whether items should be shipped back or sold on. “We’re seeing pretty positive results from this treasure-hunt experience in our stores,” Warkentin shared.

“Our North Star as a retailer is to make it easy for our customers—we’re known for our Easy button. We’ve identified a meaningful need for expertise, customization and a personal touch in the retail experience. That’s what we’re aiming for in our services-led store strategy.

“The small business customer is buying for his or her business, but also for themselves and their household. That is where we are evolving in terms of services and products for our customers,” Warkentin concludes.

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