Cross-Category Design Partner
Scaling creative operations for the office products megabrand.
/ Staples: Intro
Staples
Staples has long been a household name in office products, known for its massive assortment and omnichannel presence. But behind that scale lies a constant challenge: producing consistent, high-quality creative assets across thousands of SKUs, dozens of categories, and multiple touchpoints. For more than a decade, Sprout has served as a trusted design partner to Staples, helping optimize operations, unify branding, and accelerate speed to market by supporting the full product lifecycle, from concept and packaging through launch and ongoing marketing content creation. Today, Sprout powers Staples’ design engine at scale, ensuring the brand remains sharp, consistent, and competitive in a fast-moving retail environment.
/ Staples: The Challenge
Competing at Retail Speed
Staples is a marketing powerhouse, but with that dominance comes relentless competition. From consumer electronics to breakroom snacks, every category faces pressure from both legacy rivals and online upstarts. To win, Staples needed to maintain a brand-right presence across every touchpoint, whether on shelves, online, or in marketing campaigns, without slowing down operations. Managing this at scale required not only creative excellence but also operational efficiency. Staples needed a versatile partner who could span categories, simplify workflows, and deliver at the speed of retail.
/ Staples: The Approach
Creativity at Scale
Sprout positioned itself as more than a design resource. We became an extension of Staples’ operations team, focusing on three strategic pillars:
- Design Operations Management: We streamlined creative workflows across packaging, product, and digital assets, ensuring every output aligned with brand and business objectives. By embedding best practices, we reduced friction from concept to execution.
- Cross-Category Flexibility: Whether developing new packaging for Tru Red®, designing electronics for NXT®, or creating in-store experiences for licensed partners, Sprout adapted seamlessly. Our versatility enabled Staples to innovate while maintaining cohesion across its vast portfolio.
- E-Content at Scale: To keep pace with ecommerce, Sprout built and continues to power Staples’ e-content engine, producing up to 1,000 CGI images each week across product categories. From tech accessories to janitorial supplies, our CGI system ensures consistency, speed, and polish at volume.
The following projects showcase the breadth of Sprout’s partnership with Staples, each representing broader initiatives across the portfolio.
Style at Staples
The challenge here is to balance the voice of Staples house brands with those of its licensed brand partners so that the in-store and online experience is compelling and cohesive. We threaded this visual design needle for offers from Martha Stewart, Condren, Dwell, Cupcakes & Cashmere, and others. Against a backdrop of Staples goodness we showcased these seasonal and specialty offers in ways that put the entire category in a new light.
NXT
Our product development work for this consumer electronics portfolio embraced the design criteria that grounds all Staples brand experiences—remove obstacles, offer clever capabilities, and epitomize value. From surge protectors, to powerbanks, to in-car chargers, to wireless headphones and speakers, to cables and thumb-drives, we have developed products that fit the need, packaging that celebrates the products, experiences that on-board new owners, and graphics that built equity for the NXT brand.
Staples Viz
Omnichannel retailers like Staples rely on the lock-step visual presentation of their products and packaging from web presence to shelf edge. When you multiply that requirement by tens of thousands of SKUs, you need a precise ground game. Sprout supports the uniform rendering of Staples assets throughout the go-to-market process with rendering protocols and time-saving techniques that have become a Staples competitive advantage.
Staples Education
In supporting Staples’ product and packaging development process, we have helped refine best practices for on-brand conventions and production quality control. Our relationship has expanded to include workshops where we cross-train teams around print production practices which ensure that packaging designs flow smoothly from intent to execution.
/ Staples: The Outcome
Partnership Drives Performance
The results extend far beyond individual deliverables. By managing complexity across categories and channels, Sprout gave Staples a scalable design system and a reliable operational framework. Together we’ve:
- Established a cohesive visual brand language across packaging, digital, and product lines.
- Reduced time-to-market with a high-volume CGI pipeline producing up to 1,000 images weekly.
- Enabled sales teams and ecommerce managers with consistent, brand-right assets at every touchpoint.
- Supported long-term efficiency by embedding quality-control processes and onboarding cross-functional teams in best practices.
This partnership has delivered measurable business value: faster product launches, more consistent brand execution, and improved operational efficiency across design workflows. Staples trusts Sprout to handle everything from urgent “hurry-up offense” projects to complex new product development, knowing that our strategic oversight ensures both creative excellence and organizational alignment.
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Not only did they get the work done on time, they delivered work well beyond exceptions. There are a lot of nuances to executing this work and we never would have taken this on without their dedication and cost-conscious approach.
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