Grocery executive founded Staples
‘Dynamic visionary’ established the largest U.S. office-supply retailer
Thomas Stemberg, a former grocery business executive who founded Staples Inc. and revolutionized the office supplies retail business, died Oct. 23 at his home in Chestnut Hill, Mass. He was 66.
Venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners, which Stemberg joined in 2005, said he died of cancer.
Stemberg was a New England grocery executive but left after a dispute with his bosses. He came up with the idea of Staples after driving around the Boston area searching unsuccessfully for printer ribbon on the July 4 holiday weekend in 1985 when stores were closed.
Staples, based in Framingham, grew into a chain with $22.5 billion US in revenue and 83,000 employees last year. The chain today is the largest U.S. office-supply retailer and has more than 1,600 stores in North America. It was among the first big-box stores that applied price pressure on competitors and lured shoppers from downtown stores and shopping malls.
Stemberg served as CEO until 2002 and chairman until 2005. That year he joined Highland Consumer Partners, a Wellesley, Mass. based venture capital firm, where he was managing general partner. The firm focuses on the consumer industry.
He also founded Olly Shoes, a children’s footwear retailer, and Zoots, a dry cleaner.
“When I invest, I look for two things above all: a great market and a great entrepreneur,” Stemberg said, according to an article in July-August issue of Inc. Magazine last year.
“The business plan is going to change. The team is going to evolve. But if you have a leader who can inspire others and a growing market that offers you an opportunity to differentiate yourself, typically you’ll have a winner.”
Thomas George Stemberg was born on Jan. 18, 1949, in Newark, N.J., to Oscar Michael Stemberg and the former Erika Ratzer, both Austrian immigrants. After his father died when he was 13, he moved with his mother to her native Vienna, where he attended the American International School, according to The Guru Guide to Entrepreneurship, a 2001 book by Joseph H. Boyett and Jimmie T. Boyett.
Former U.S. governor Mitt Romney, whose Bain Capital invested in Staples, called Stemberg “an extraordinarily creative and dynamic visionary.”
“Tom is one of the great business leaders of our state and our nation,” he said, according to The Boston Globe.
Romney, a Republican, said Stemberg persuaded him to draft health-care legislation in the state.
“Without Tom pushing it, I don’t think we would have had Romneycare,” he said.