Staples Rolls Out The Red Carpet for New eCommerce Innovation Center
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Michael Essany.
With ample fanfare Monday, Staples – the second biggest eCommerce company in the world – announced the opening of its new “eCommerce Innovation Center” in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The company says the office will be home to skilled professionals “responsible for designing and implementing innovative new eCommerce solutions for the millions of business customers who shop Staples websites and stores.“
With the stated goal of delivering more innovative online technologies, Staples is hyping its freshly unveiled facility as the next step in the company’s continuing investment in the multi-channel customer experience across mobile devices, desktops and stores.
More Than Just a Show for Staples
Although some critics are quick to contend that many companies merely launch new divisions and enterprises solely to cultivate an illusion of innovation without actually yielding tangible results, Staples’ announcement is being praised as a legitimate effort to make the world’s largest office products company an even bigger force in eCommerce across the contemporary retail landscape.
“Cambridge is a hub of innovation, with both world-class universities and technology companies,” says Brian Tilzer, vice president of eCommerce and business development at Staples.com. “Staples new eCommerce Innovation Center will become the home to some of the world’s best eCommerce talent with the goal of rapidly bringing breakthrough new ideas to market in emerging online technologies like mobile commerce and social media.“
Prior to this morning’s announcement, Staples had also recently nabbed headlines by heralding the launch of a new smartphone app as well as a top-ranking new mobile optimized website designed to make mCommerce a more attractive option to Staples’ loyal – and increasingly mobile – base of shoppers.
And it was just last November when the business-to-business division of Staples rolled out a revamped eCommerce site to enable businesses to consolidate suppliers and achieve savings. “Through the new business-to-business site,” Staples said at the time, “customers have a faster and more intuitive e-commerce experience with access to the industry’s most comprehensive source of office solutions.”
eCommerce Becoming a Staple of New Job Opportunities
While the announcement from Staples’ Monday primarily concentrated on the company’s broadening efforts to expand its digital retail footprint, the effort speaks to a much larger but often overlooked trend in the eCommerce world today – job creation.
Staples’ new facility, for example, is scheduled to open in late spring of this year. The company is already asking people in the fields of eCommerce and IT to visit Staples’ careers page to view available openings in the new office.
Staples says myriad openings for IT, product management, usability and creative positions will be available in Cambridge, proving once again that eCommerce’s growth at the expense of bricks-and-mortar establishments doesn’t necessarily translate into massive job loss in the marketplace.
According to research published in mid-2011 by IMRG and eDigitalResearch, eCommerce related job growth in the U.S. and U.K. could be sizable within the next four years. For example, an estimated 1.5 million UK staff will work within the ecommerce industry by 2015.
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