Staples will close as many as 225 of its North American stores and cut as much as $500 million in costs, as online competition continues to hurt sales, bloomberg.com reported.
The office-supply chain, the largest in the U.S., continues to face threats  from Internet-based rivals such as Amazon.com Inc., a challenge that spurred Office Depot Inc. to merge with OfficeMax Inc. last year. Staples said sales in its fiscal first quarter will fall from a year earlier, the fifth straight quarterly decline, and profit will be as much as 22 cents a share, trailing analysts’ 27-cent average estimate.
In 2013, Staples closed 42 stores in North America, ending the year with 1,846 in the region.
The plan announced Thursday calls for shuttering 12% of its stores in North America, although the number of job losses and exact location of store closures remains unclear.
