Born on the 4th of July
How a goose chase led to a company. Also, 7 other things worth your time.
Today: An origin story, plus future features, and a simple trivia contest…
This weekend marks a momentous anniversary: 36 years since a man named Tom Stemberg needed a new ribbon for his dot-matrix printer—and yet he couldn’t find one!
He spent hours driving from one office supply store to another, all over the Boston metro area. But everything was closed for the Fourth of July holiday.
OK, I’d better cut to the chase here: As a result of Stemberg’s frustrating experience, the office supply chain Staples was born.
Origin stories involve a lot of mythology, but as far as this one goes, I’m convinced of at least two things:
Stemberg did, in fact, drive all over Boston looking for a printer ribbon on July 4, 1985; and
He did, in fact, later team up with a former business rival named Leo Kahn to start Staples.
Now, Stemberg already had a strong retail background; he’d graduated in 1973 from Harvard Business School, and he’d spent a decade in the supermarket industry. (He’d just recently lost h…
