LUMBERTON — Office Depot will close its store in Lumberton on Jan. 23 as part of a companywide consolidation. According to a spokesperson for the office supply chain, the Fayetteville Road location is one of 400 stores the company plans to shutter following its 2013 merger with OfficeMax.
“One of the critical priorities for Office Depot Inc. continues to be rationalizing our store footprint in North America,” Julianne Embry, the company’s senior manager of Public Relations, said in an email. “The overlapping retail footprint created by the merger of Office Depot and OfficeMax last year provides us a unique opportunity to consolidate and optimize our store portfolio, while maintaining the retail presence needed to serve our customers.”
Office Depot has closed approximately 347 of its stores since 2014. The closures represent an annual savings of $75 million for the Florida company, which employs about 66,000 people across 59 countries. Embry did not say how many people work at the Lumberton store.
It was announced in February that rival Staples planned to purchase the struggling retailer for $6.3 billion in cash and stocks. The Federal Trade Commission voted last month to block the deal, saying it would “eliminate beneficial competition that large companies rely on to reduce the costs of office supplies.”
A going-out-of-business sale is underway at the Lumberton store, where many items have been discounted as much as 60 percent.
Tiffany Dial, a Hoke County educator, visited the store Wednesday to stock up on discount supplies for her classroom. The Red Springs resident said she was sad to see the store go.
“They have a lot of good weekly deals and better deals than Walmart,” she said.
