High Wycombe, 08 August 2020 – Staples Solutions B.V. today announces that it has reached an agreement to sell its book of business in the UK (www.staples.co.uk and staplesadvantage.co.uk) to Banner Group Ltd. part of the evo Group.
“I am pleased we have found such a strong partner in Banner to support our customers and employees going forward’’ says Dolph Westerbos, Chief Executive Officer of Staples Solutions. “Following the sale of our UK retail business more than 3 years ago, our remaining contracts and online business has been burdened with a spectacular distribution centre and a systems infrastructure that was simply too large and costly. Despite winning substantial new tenders and a strong revenue performance over the past 2 years, the heavy fixed cost burden meant our UK business remained structurally loss-making.
Now as part of a larger company, the future support of our customers and many colleagues is on solid ground, and that gives me great satisfaction”, Westerbos continues. “Banner will inherit a strong business, which showed its resilience once more during the corona-crisis. In fact, over these first 7 months in 2020 we grew our UK book of business compared to 2019, and I think that is a remarkable success. Credit to our entire UK team.”
Staples will continue to support its 3PL business in the UK, but are looking for a smaller warehouse to serve those customers. Staples Solutions will also honour all its UK pension obligations. Although this transaction safeguards as many employee roles as possible, some future reorganisation may be made.
“We are delighted to have reached this agreement with Staples Solutions B.V and look forward to welcoming our new colleagues, customers and suppliers into the evo family. It has become clear during the past months that we share a common approach to how we do business and this approach together with the quality of the business that is being acquired make the conclusion of this agreement all the more pleasing. We look forward to the platform that the wider evo Group represents contributing further to the obvious progress that has been made in this business. ” said Steve Haworth, Chief Executive Officer of evo
About Staples Solutions
Staples Solutions is the leading provider of workplace products, services, and solutions serving small, mid-sized, and large businesses in Europe. Through our integrated offering, Staples Solutions is the partner of choice to meet the diverse needs of the workplace of today and tomorrow.
About evo Group
The evo Group of Companies connects manufacturers and brands to their business customers through its integrated multi-channel, sales, e-commerce, operational and transport platform. evo provides sales, marketing, sourcing, delivery, storage and fulfilment services to resellers via Vow and direct to corporate, public sector and SME organisations in the UK and Ireland through Banner. Deliveries to all of these customers are primarily completed by Truline, an in house fleet with 350 vehicles.