Staples Inc will promote its month-old online store to a fully fledged business unit, and will invest $10m in it over the course of the next year. The company has also agreed to pay $140m for Claricom Holdings Inc, a provider of voicemail and paging. Claricom should help Staples expand its small business base and should provide it with a good place to host its site. The site, called Staples.com, is targeted at the small business sector. To address the needs of medium-sized companies, Westboro, Massachusetts-based Staples acquired QuillCorp earlier this year. Large companies can use EDI to buy office supplies from Staples. Those big corporations can also take advantage of software created by Agentics Inc (CI No 3,553) to integrate catalogs from a variety of office supply companies, including Staples’ more established rivals Office Max and Office Depot Online. Staples has the slight advantage of an informal relationship with Agentics; Staples founder Paul Rodman came out of retirement to act as VP or marketing sales for Agentics.
