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Taking a thought from another thread... What if B&N merged with wework? Wework just bought meetup.com - now you have more locations for meetups. B&N often has

by LogicX 9y ago

Taking a thought from another thread... What if B&N merged with wework? Wework just bought meetup.com - now you have more locations for meetups. B&N often has pretty good locations, and covers areas of the country wework doesn't akready have prescence. There's already a coffee shop built into B&N If you implemented a cashierless checkout process, and had ship from location, you now can compete with Amazon, and the retail prescence is an attractor for weworkers and meetups. I'm not sure of the B&N commercial real estate holdings, but wework seems to be all into that. Of all the possible fates of B&N - If I saw that happen, I'd be be pretty pleased with it.

freehunter 9y ago
Remote working spaces have amazing untapped potential IMO. Right now they're mostly concentrated in downtowns of major metro areas which might be nice for the heavily concentrated populations living there, but sucks for anyone in residential neighborhoods outside of the downtown core. Take Chicago for example: there are six WeWork locations within 200 miles of the city, and the furthest distance from one to the other is less than 2 miles. If you live in Schaumburg or Skokie or Aurora or Joliet, to get to your closest "office" you have to commute downtown just like everyone else, every morning and back home every evening. And in my metro area of 1.5m, there are no WeWork locations at all, the closest is over three hours away. There are some other co-working locations in my city's downtown, but I don't want to commute downtown every day. I think there's potential for co-working spaces in residential or suburban areas, but it's a smaller market so it'd be pricey... unless you already own space in the suburbs. Like Barnes and Noble does. And they already have Starbucks available at most of them, and many of them are in areas with plenty of food choices around for lunch. Many of them are near plazas with nice places to walk and get some fresh air. We're just getting started with co-working spaces, there's a lot of untapped potential in smaller markets yet.
snarf21 9y ago
I also think that this is what Staples and Office Max/Depot should do. Turn half of it into small offices and mini conference rooms. People will even pay 10% for the supplies if it means they can just go get them in 10 seconds. They have a lot of economies of scale to take advantage of.

by LogicX 9y ago

freehunter 9y ago

Remote working spaces have amazing untapped potential IMO. Right now they're mostly concentrated in downtowns of major metro areas which might be nice for the heavily concentrated populations living there, but sucks for anyone in residential neighborhoods outside of the downtown core. Take Chicago for example: there are six WeWork locations within 200 miles of the city, and the furthest distance from one to the other is less than 2 miles. If you live in Schaumburg or Skokie or Aurora or Joliet, to get to your closest "office" you have to commute downtown just like everyone else, every morning and back home every evening. And in my metro area of 1.5m, there are no WeWork locations at all, the closest is over three hours away. There are some other co-working locations in my city's downtown, but I don't want to commute downtown every day. I think there's potential for co-working spaces in residential or suburban areas, but it's a smaller market so it'd be pricey... unless you already own space in the suburbs. Like Barnes and Noble does. And they already have Starbucks available at most of them, and many of them are in areas with plenty of food choices around for lunch. Many of them are near plazas with nice places to walk and get some fresh air. We're just getting started with co-working spaces, there's a lot of untapped potential in smaller markets yet.

snarf21 9y ago

I also think that this is what Staples and Office Max/Depot should do. Turn half of it into small offices and mini conference rooms. People will even pay 10% for the supplies if it means they can just go get them in 10 seconds. They have a lot of economies of scale to take advantage of.