Sales for office supplies merchant Staples Inc.’s North American Commercial business-to-business division grew 0.7% to $2.17 billion in the third quarter of 2015, up from $2.16 billion in Q3 2014, the company says.

Staples does not break out web sales for North American Commercial, which sells through Quill.com and StaplesAdvantage.com as well as through sales reps. Quill caters to small to midsize companies, StaplesAdvantage to larger companies.

But in a conference call last week with stock analysts, CEO Ron Sargent pointed to the company’s online offerings as important to its overall growth. Customer conversions were up on the company’s StaplesAdvantage.com desktop B2B e-commerce site and through its mobile version. While the company did not report specific figures, Sargent said Staples grew its in-store Staples.com kiosk and buy online, pick up in store offerings.

“We’ve improved the online experience for our customers,” he said. “We’ve enhanced our mobile app to accommodate the increasingly mobile workforce. We’ve got rich digital selling tools for our salesforce and we rolled out omnichannel capabilities like [our] Print-to-Store and buy online, pickup in store for [business] contract customers.” The Print-to-Store program allows customers to order print jobs online and pick them up at their nearest Staples store.

“We’re making great progress transforming our commercial business and building increased scale and credibility in categories beyond office supplies,”  Sargent added, “This transformation is critical as we evolve to meet the changing needs of our business customers and position North American Commercial as a key driver of long-term sales and earnings growth.”

In Q2 StaplesAdvantage.com organized its content to let customers browse and shop for products available for particular industries, including education, health care, government agencies, financial services and retail. Such verticals as health, education and government are “growing robustly” in sales, said Christine Komola, chief financial officer.

Sargent added, “I think sales for the whole company are probably about 55% office supplies and 45% beyond office supplies, or BOS. As BOS continues to grow, at some point those lines will cross and we will be more a non-office supplies [company] than office supplies.”

Staples’ growth in facility supplies, breakroom supplies and promotional products was in double digits, and in  high single-digit territory in furniture sales during the third quarter, Sargent said. Sharpened prices in such key categories as business cards, signs and banners also drove stable growth in the company’s copy and print sectors during the quarter, he said.

This momentum was offset by declines in sales of ink and toner, and mobility and technology categories, such as tablets and tech accessories. Print sales to the retailer’s larger, “contract” business customers also slowed during Q3.

“We saw deceleration in our contract print business as we cycled a couple of large customer wins from last year,” Sargent said. “We [also] continue to feel pressure from the ongoing digitization of our forms business.”     

Staples closed 18 North American stores in the quarter and has shuttered 70 stores this year. It has closed approximately 230 stores in North America since the beginning of 2014.

The Federal Trade Commission is reviewing Staples’ proposed acquisition of Office Depot Inc. for $6.3 billion. The decision will be issued Dec. 8, Sargent said. This acquisition, announced in February, would further consolidate the office supplies retail sector as Office Depot acquired OfficeMax in November 2013.

Staples stores will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, a change from the past two years when the retailer opened on the holiday. Staples will offer online deals on Thanksgiving and open at 6 a.m. on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Staples Advantage is No.21 in the new B2B E-Commerce 300, which lists companies by their annual online B2B sales. 

For the third fiscal quarter ended Oct. 31, Staples reports:

• North American Commercial sales increased 0.5% to $2.17 billion from $2.16 billion during the same period a year ago.
• International sales dropped 16.8% to $807 million from $970 million.
• Net sales decreased 6.2% to $5.59 billion from $5.96 billion.
• Comparable-store sales declined 2%.
• Net income fell 8.8% to $198 million from $217 million.

For the first nine months of the year, Staples reports:

• Net sales decreased 6.2% to $15.79 billion from $16.84 billion in the same period in 2014.

• Net income fell 25.8% to $293 million from $395 million a year ago. 

Sign up for a free subscription to B2BecNews, a twice-weekly newsletter that covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes the monthly business magazine Internet Retailer. Follow Nona Tepper, associate editor for B2B e-commerce, on Twitter @ntepper90.

Fareeha Ali, research analyst at Internet Retailer, also contributed to this report.

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