Staples delivery businesses, including Staples Direct, Staples Contract and Quill

Staples delivery businesses, including Staples Direct, Staples Contract and Quill, combined with their e-commerce counterparts, grew sales 14 percent. Revenues for e-commerce businesses, including Staples.com, StaplesLink.com, BusinessDepot.com and Quill.com, were $234 million, up 144 percent versus last year. Staples.com achieved profitability with net income of $5 million for the quarter.

Said Stemberg, "We continue to plan conservatively for the remainder of the year and our earnings outlook remains in line with analyst expectations in the range of $0.65 to $0.70 per diluted share for fiscal 2001. Through solid execution and new strategic initiatives, we are in a terrific position for growth when the economy rebounds."

About Staples

Staples, Inc. is an $11 billion retailer of office supplies, business services, furniture and technology to consumers and businesses from home-based businesses to Fortune 500 companies in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal. Headquartered outside Boston, Staples invented the office superstore concept and today is the largest operator of office superstores in the world. The company has over 50,000 employees serving customers through more than 1,300 office superstores, mail order catalogs, e-commerce and a contract business. More information about the company is available at http://www.staples.com.

Certain information contained in this news release constitutes forward looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including risks related to Staples' ability to compete in its highly competitive market, Staples' ability to continue to successfully open new stores, Staples' quarterly operating results being subject to significant fluctuation, Staples' stock price fluctuating based on the expectations of professional securities analysts, the strain on operations due to Staples' rapid growth which can affect operating results, the ability of Staples' foreign operations and Staples.com to become profitable and the ability of Staples to obtain adequate future financing. Additional information concerning these factors is contained in Staples' Annual Report on Form 10-K dated March 15, 2001, which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.