Dive Brief:

• Staples Canada is closing 15 of its 331 stores as it moves toward focusing more on e-commerce.

• Two major factors are having an impact on office supply brick-and-mortar stores, including Staples: a decrease need for office supplies and more opportunities to buy them online, experts say.

• The closings are part of the cost-cutting and move-to-e-commerce plans that Staples Inc. announced in March, when it said it would close 225 stores in North America.

Dive Insight:

Doug Stephens, a retail expert and author of books on retail who blogs at the Retail Prophet, says that Staples has missed an opportunity to turn its physical stores into experience-based centers that could be a real boon to business. Until they do, he says, there will only be more store closings. 

“What Staples hasn’t done is repurpose their store locations to be ‘experience centers’ where customers can learn about things like home office set up, cloud computing, data storage, connected home technology, and wearable technology,” Stephens told Yahoo Finance.

“They need to reinvent the office product buying experience to be more about education and experiences and less about file cabinets and reams of paper," Stephens said. "If they don’t make this transition soon, I suspect we’ll see more closures in the months and years ahead.”