Investors can take some measure of solace from this deal. Sycamore’s offer of $10.25 a share represents a 20 percent premium over the company’s stock price in early April, before initial reports of a deal to sell the company lifted shares.

“Staples’ board believes that this process has led to a transaction which is in the best interests of our stockholders, as well as Staples and its employees,” Robert Sulentic, the company’s chairman, said in a statement.

Staples and Sycamore declined to make executives available for interviews on Wednesday.

For a business on the wane, Staples still sells huge volumes of paper, printer cartridges and electronics. It reported $18.2 billion in revenue last year, down from $21.1 billion five years ago.

And for a company that is closely associated with big-box stores, Staples sells a minority of its goods at bricks-and-mortar locations. Some $10.6 billion of its sales are delivered, compared with about $6.6 billion sold in stores. That suggests that even as stores close and consumers shop online, Staples has a large and potentially profitable opportunity.

For those reasons, the company was an ideal target for a leveraged buyout.

What’s more, Staples has very little debt, just about $1 billion in total. That healthy balance sheet will mean Sycamore — which will borrow much of the money it needs to fund its buyout — will not have to overload the company with a crushing debt burden.

A consortium of banks including UBS, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, Jefferies, Wells Fargo Bank and Fifth Third Bank are providing financing. The deal, which is subject to shareholder approval, is expected to close by the end of the year.

Ultimately, however, Sycamore will have to figure out what to do with Staples.

“Declining traffic, escalating leases and sluggish consumer spending have made it very difficult to support the debt load that often comes with private equity acquisitions,” Liz Dunn, chief executive of Pro4ma, a retail analytics software company, said in an email. “Staples’ position as an industry leader provides some cover from retail’s meltdown, but there remains too many stores in almost every sector of retail, and office products are hardly immune from disruptive trends.”