Some interesting parallels can be drawn from leading retailers in their respective categories over their recent history. Lets compare Staples, Home Depot, Best Buy and Mens Warehouse - As business began to shift, the boards of these companies felt the need to reign in or incapacitate their visionary founders. As the leaders of these companies left, they were all replaced with 'operational' executives who, as they do so well, cut costs and tried to improve margins - ultimately alienating customers and furthering the downward spiral. Economic pressures and macro situations were used as validation of the actions, along with being leaders in commodities businesses.
An interesting thing happened though in two of these retailers. As the 'operational' executives left, they were replaced by people that actually reversed the spiral by ADDING costs and REDUCING margins. Home Depot got their core customer and reputation back by adding people in the stores and becoming more competitive with Lowes (pricing, store cleanliness, merchandise assortment). Best Buy started to turn it around by actually lowering their prices and confronting Amazon head-on - show-rooming was no longer an Amazon advantage.
So, the question now is "What will the boards of Staples and Mens Warehouse do?". If they don't follow the lead of Best Buy and Home Depot, Staples only hope is that the Office Depot/Officemax is a total debacle, and Mens Warehouse has to hope customers didn't really care about "I guarantee it".
The retail graveyards are littered with "down-sizers" and "right-sizers" - ultimately becoming "No-sizers". The challenge now is that Staples and Mens Warehouse needs to decide what "Sizer" they're going to be.