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Barnes and Noble's surprising turnaround

• flappyeagle 4y ago
  Anecdote: B&N was by far the best place to buy x-mas gifts this year, especially for kids.
  • mcast 4y ago
    I wish Amazon brought back their 4-Star physical retail stores, it was a great place to buy gifts in person. The concept was simple: everything in the store was an item that was rated at least 4.0 stars online and there was an electronic price tag that kept its price in sync with the online version.
    • ProAm 4y ago
      It's hard to trust Amazon with quality anything these days. I wouldn't shop there as for I think the employees would be less than helpful or happy to be there and Id be constantly worried about counterfeits or returns.
    • browningstreet 4y ago
      I spent time at the Walnut Creek one -- it was a good execution of a kind of obvious idea. It was weird that they shut them down. That said -- smaller versions of the same format in airports/commute-centers would be great.
      • mcast 4y ago
        Amazon is mostly an online company, they're not great at managing storefronts. They also really over-expanded their warehouses and physical presences which hemorrhaged cash (mostly led by Dave Clark who later stepped down as retail CEO) which was quickly shut down by Jassy who is more focused on AWS/cloud than retail presence.
      • cylinder714 4y ago
        I asked a clerk at the Pleasant Hill store about that closure; it was due to rent increases. Figures, considering the location in downtown Walnut Creek. Sure was a lovely store, though. Fairfield and Reno still have big stores if you're ever in the area.
        • browningstreet 4y ago
          My upper comment was about the Amazon store they had in WC… but: B&N re-opened in Walnut Creek just below Ruth’s Chris. More like the Concord format.
    • TylerE 4y ago
      Serious question: how many products on Amazon aren’t rated at least 4.0. Even the crappiest Chinese alphabet brand products are typically rated like 4.3-4.5.
    • themadturk 4y ago
      I went to a Four Star store just once, to trade in a dying Kindle. The customer service was incredible, and the trade-in was actually better than promised online. I was sad to see them close.
    • 0xfeba 4y ago
      I think that meant more when the reviews were not egregiously astroturfed like that are now.
    • pwinnski 4y ago
      It seemed like 90+ or more of the traffic I ever saw at the Amazon store near me was returns, including me every time I visited. I doubt Amazon saw those as profitable, and they either didn't track well how much my purchases (and I'm assuming others) declined when it was no longer easy to deal with a person, or decided the impending labor/unionization battles would be best avoided.
      • TylerE 4y ago
        Might well be profitable if it’s cheaper to ship a truck load once every couple week than dozens of individual packages every day.
  • wwweston 4y ago
    If this isn't by design, it's by very happy accidental engagement with the fact that when it comes to media and related things, the time physical copies of it matter most are gifting-times. It just feels more genuinely gift-y to hand someone physical media than message them with it. And B&N has become a media-heavy giftshop.
  • panzagl 4y ago
    Ugh, while true, now I'm worried that after killing a generation of local bookstores they're gunning for my local game/hobby store.
  • qohen 4y ago
    Anecdote: B&N was by far the best place to buy x-mas gifts this year It was also by far the best place to buy board games this year, since they had a 50% off sale Dec. 26 and 27 on all their games and many of their stores have a fair selection of titles. (Some sample prices on some hot titles: Ark Nova for $37, Ruins of Arnak and Everdell for $30/each). From what I was told by a B&N worker, this was an extension of the 2-day post-xmas 50%-off-all-hardcovers sale that they'd started doing recently.
    • dawnerd 4y ago
      I spent a ton of money there yesterday exactly because of the 50% off hardcovers and board games. I haven't shopped in one in a while but after seeing how much stuff they have that I'm interested I'll be back. They even had lego sets that were sold out elsewhere.
  • xahrepap 4y ago
    We’ve done almost all our Christmas shopping there for years (younger kids). Still were able to do a lot of it there this year (tween to young teen age groups). The toys there are some of our favorites (Lego and Calico Critters) and they have a lot of fun toys you’ve never heard of but are fun for the kids to try.
• qbasic_forever 4y ago
  There's a new Barnes and Noble nearby me (just opened last year) and it is like no other B&N I've seen. It's honestly a direct carbon copy of Amazon's physical book store. All of the shelves have books with the covers out (just like Amazon's store pioneered), not tightly packed spine to spine. This means the selection is much, much, much smaller. It's more like an airport book store and just has a handful of the best sellers (despite being a huge physical footprint of a store). Games, toys, and a huge coffee shop take up most of the space. You would never go here with a specific book in mind to find, unless it was a massive bestseller. It's interesting and I'm curious to see how it does, but it's definitely not a general bookstore anymore.
  • Spooky23 4y ago
    Usually stores with constrained inventory by design are a sign that the company is on the upswing because they are aggressively controlling inventory. When you see a store bulk up with crap stuffed everywhere, it’s often tied to loading up on debt and sometimes bankruptcy risk. IMO, Barnes and Noble sees an opportunity with the struggles of Amazon in retail and the decline of Starbucks. Starbucks used to pride itself as a “third place”… now the drive through is the priority, the seating has been reduced, and the management seems more interested in fighting labor than having happy hospitality employees. People who read tend to have money. It seems like a winning combination to have people with money hanging out in your retail establishment. Plus they can riff off of Target’s super successful pickup model that is every mom’s favorite thing ever.
  • uoaei 4y ago
    > All of the shelves have books with the covers out (just like Amazon's store pioneered) This makes me think you did not enter a bookstore before you checked out Amazon's version. Many do exactly this for the big, recognizable hits they expect to sell more of. Also it is a symptom of JIT logistics and inventory minimization, not really a UX concern.
    • Hasu 4y ago
      > This makes me think you did not enter a bookstore before you checked out Amazon's version. Many do exactly this for the big, recognizable hits they expect to sell more of. Yeah, I worked at a chain bookstore years before Amazon ever opened a physical store and the entire bestsellers display was done covers out, as were all the endcaps. Within the aisles, we organized books so that some of the books on every shelf would be cover out, which sometimes optimizes for space, and makes for a more aesthetically pleasing shelf layout and allows for the more prominent display of popular titles and eye-catching covers. Setting up shelves this way was part of the training and a constant practice, adjusting the display of stock throughout the day as items are purchased, removed, and returned. The entire store got a once over every night at closing.
• slimginz 4y ago
  I hope that this will be used in the future as an example of why MBAs don't always make good CEOs. You may be the best person in the world when it comes to managing a company, but if you're not knowledgeable and passionate about the product you're making and/or selling then you're going to not do very well. Off the top of my head I can think of 2 more examples: Apple before and after Steve Jobs returned and AMD before and after Lisa Su was appointed CEO.
  • christophilus 4y ago
    I see it all the time in computer science. People become programmers because the pay is good. But without a love for the craft, they end up either hating life or being mediocre or both. It really does help to love what you do.
    • pryelluw 4y ago
      Not love, but have natural inclination towards it. That drives a sense of wonder to learn more. Love comes and goes. Wonder is forever.
    • grugagag 4y ago
      Some of that liking what you do can also be attributed to chance in the career path one stumbles upon. I’ve had programming gigs that I loved and gigs that turned out, after slowly boiling like a frog in a pan, were disfunctional and skill eroding.
    • jemmyw 4y ago
      I saw this at uni (2002), a lot of people studying there said it was for the job/salary and they didn't know much about it before starting.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      I started being a hobbyist programmer in 1986. By the time I graduated college in 1996, I had programmed in four different assembly languages. The last line of code I wrote “for fun” was in 1996. The number of things I’ve done as hobbies since then is a mile long.
• cocacola1 4y ago
  I don’t often buy books at Barnes & Noble, but it is where I buy most of my Criterions.
• 0xCMP 4y ago
  Also important to take into account for why this method is successful is that people write posts like this which make you really want to go check it out. Customers who are passionate about how your business is run. Honestly, if I was more skeptical + motivated, I'd be looking into if this post was actually a paid ad because my reaction is "where is the closest Barnes and Noble?"
  • AlbertCory 4y ago
    Ted Gioia is not a shill for B&N. He's actually more of a music writer. And other things.
• kken 4y ago
  Interesting insight and speculation from the comment section of the article: >Jane Friedman >Speaking as a publishing industry reporter & observer, I couldn't agree more with your assessment of James Daunt's leadership and business strategy. Unfortunately, the picture isn't quite as bright for B&N as those numbers would have you believe. B&N stores were once quite large (e.g., 25,000 square feet); the new stores opening are less than half that in some cases. And they're largely re-opening stores that closed during the pandemic. >It's also concerning that during a record two years for book sales (the pandemic was great for book sales of all kinds), Barnes & Noble didn't see the same percentage increase, indicating they've lost market share. Some industry insiders believe the current private equity owner is trying to position the company favorably for sale.
  • AlbertCory 4y ago
    So what if the stores are smaller? In retail it's sales per sq. foot that counts.
  • jdhn 4y ago
    A Barnes & Noble near my parents moved from their original space at one end of the mall to the other end. This new space is smaller than their original space by about half or two thirds. While they have fewer materials on the shelves (and fewer shelves), it seems more lively than the original spot did, probably because there's fewer space for the number of people who go there. I bet that the company would see that as a fair tradeoff.
    • calvinmorrison 4y ago
      Yeah probably most books sold are the best sellers not the extensive sections for less well selling stuff. Paring down is not a bad idea, and if you need references a library is a good place
  • mmaunder 4y ago
    No financials in the article. None available of course because it’s private. My guess is it’s loss making and debt just got a whole lot more expensive. If I was the owner I’d be looking to unload B&N fast and focus on my investments with strong cash flow and solid business models.
• softwaredoug 4y ago
  I wish there was a book store with a great and relatively up to date technical book section. I would spend a lot of time there. I’m not even talking up to date with the latest ChatGPT hotness, but any serious programming books written in the last 7 years - especially timeless classics that matter regardless of the technology. Rather that the same Sam’s Learn C++ book that’s been gathering dust for 20 years. I suspect there actually is a market there, but the problem is you need a very particular book store manager that can curate this well. I guess it would have to be a labor of love, as financially the people who would do this well are busy making much more money as developers.
  • ineedasername 4y ago
    B&N used to have this. It was also one of the most shoplifted sections people would steal from. The books were expensive and certain ones could always be easily flipped online.
    • grugagag 4y ago
      I had no idea technical books were the target to shoplifters. I imagine it wasn’t techies stealing these but other opportunists. I never minded buying IT books even when I wasn’t in the best financial situation. 40-50 bucks for a good book could bring almost limitless rewards. One thing though, I needed to browse and skim through the book to decide whether it was a purchase or not. Most books I bought like that were thoroughly studied. I can’t say the same thing about books I bought online though.
    • Jtsummers 4y ago
      This has been highly dependent on the particular B&N, in my experience. One in Raleigh (may have technically been Cary, NC, this was 15 years or so ago) had Knuth's TAOCP on the shelves, never seen that anywhere else. Certainly not in towns with less technical inclination (a town I lived in in GA for a decade, for instance, had a miserable technical section) where the technical book section was dominated by Windows and MS Office how-tos.
      • 4y ago
• snickerbockers 4y ago
  I shop at Barnes and Noble a lot, and I even subscribe to their membership program (for an annual fee I get 10% off purchases in-store and free shipping online). i dislike the way physical books take up so much space in my apartment but at the same time I can't in good faith buy e-books when they're covered in draconian DRM. I also can't get over the incident from the early 10s when Amazon deleted 1984 off of their customers' kindles. My apartment is running out of space for all these books, and maybe the solution to this is that I need to borrow from the library more often instead of buying my own books. I really wish I could have an e-reader, but again, I don't want to spend money on things that will lock me into a single vendor indefinitely and might just arbitrarily go away. I learned my lesson in the early-00s when online music purchases were DRM'd and I lost a lot of my collection due to Yahoo music shutting down. I also remember one of the problems being that purchases made in one store would not be compatible with a competitor's MP3 player, which locked you into a single vendor. Couldn't switch to iPod because it didn't work with the DRM that was designed for my Dell DJ (which was a POS that broke all the time but I had to stick with it because of my existing music collection). I'd hate to have that same problem but with books instead of music.
  • mclide 4y ago
    Many libraries accept book donations. That way your book will be reused, possibly also providing the library with a little bit of extra funding.
    • Tor3 4y ago
      To my surprise my local library doesn't accept book donations. They have to get them through their own buying program. Which is unfortunate, my wife wanted to donate Japanese books because they have so few of them, she even bought extras for that purpose, but they can't take them.
      • kcartlidge 4y ago
        It's worth considering just sneaking them onto their shelves. Sometimes they get 'adopted', and if they don't then often whoever tries to check them out (which is presumably someone who wants to read them) is allowed to just take them as they are non-stock. And at the worst, the librarians will find another home for them (they are not usually destroyed; sometimes they join the book sale which benefits the library anyway).
• ars 4y ago
  Something I took away from this is they don't discount books, they don't compete on price. And that makes sense, anyone looking for a good price is going online, if you are in the store you are not price sensitive. And of course this means B&N is much more profitable than they would be otherwise. Lowes is doing this too - their prices for plumbing products are insane - $12 for something that goes for $2 online, but they are betting that anyone buying in the store needs it NOW and will pay anything.
  • bikenaga 4y ago
    They discount selectively. Monday and Tuesday this week all hardbacks were 50% off. There are regular displays with "buy one get one 50% off". Some new books get marked down as well: I got Andrew Koppelman's "Burning Down the House" a week ago and it had a $5 off sticker. Occasionally, there are coupons for "15% off your order". And of course, members get 10% off (nearly) everything. When I've checked books on their web site, the books seem to be discounted more often than not, but usually not as much as Amazon or Walmart. But you're right that there isn't an across-the-board discount for everything in the store.
  • quickthrower2 4y ago
    NOW and not fake too
• benced 4y ago
  I’m always skeptical of turnaround stories that claim to be all about the love of the product or whatever. I’m sure that works sometimes - Apple in the aughts obviously - but realistically running a public company is a more hard nosed endeavor.
  • ip26 4y ago
    You can be hard nosed as well as passionate about your product.
• account-5 4y ago
  What an excellent article. I have lived bookshops since I was young, I always felt like I might find something amazing and secret in them. They held a kind of mystic for me (1990s). This changed in the 2000s. I do miss the massive borders books we had. I do have to say the all the Waterstones I've been into in the last 15 years have all those toys, calenders, etc the OP doesn't like; and the bigger stores all have Costas. I don't buy books now, I just go to the library.
• ketzo 4y ago
  It seems like the key insight is that bookstores are no longer places to get books. If I want a specific book, I already know where to go: the internet. No physical store is ever going to compete on inventory ever again. Amazon will eat you alive. I go to bookstores to discover new books, and to enjoy the feeling of being around books and the people who love them. The CEO realized this, and leaned in hard. It's a really, really smart recognition of when passion for the product is actually a business advantage, and not just a warm fuzzy. It's very hard to do good recommendations -- even for Amazon/Goodreads! -- without people who care about what they're recommending. Those recommendations are now a bookstore's real product.
  • jojobas 4y ago
    The bookstores also still have an edge in terms of getting you a book right now. I might want to revisit this in a year or two.
    • inthepipe 4y ago
      Maybe if you want the latest release of a popular author. In my experience, book inventories held by bookstores have decreased dramatically, which fits with the “carrying a curated selection” narrative. If I want anything released more than two years ago, the book store rarely has it, unless it’s a staple like 1984.
      • jakear 4y ago
        Depends on the store. I can have Amazon deliver me Egan by January 6 (9 days from now), or I can walk down to the local sci-fi store and pick one up off the shelf today. Of course, Barns and Noble don't even stock his books.
        • noduerme 4y ago
          Also, if your local bookstore doesn't have something in stock, they can order it for you, which helps support them.
        • 4y ago
• mastazi 4y ago
  I think the key insight is that a CEO with a background in the field, and who loves the field - such as James Daunt who became B&N's CEO but has a background as a bookstore owner - can do better than your average MBA. This is perhaps the passage from the article that resonated the most with me: > If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema. > But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Grammophon or Concord. I’ve come to doubt whether the people in charge really love the music.
  • _yb2s 4y ago
    This seems like a basic thing. Something I've noticed is that people working at car dealerships mostly don't care about cars at all.
• fzeroracer 4y ago
  In a world where everything is now digital, physical goods have a lot more appeal. That's really what it comes down to, and they leaned into that hard. It's the same reason why vinyl is continuing to grow. People want something they can actually own. Books are not immune to this and there is something inherently more satisfying about having a bookshelf with the books you've read versus a library of ebooks.
  • qohen 4y ago
    In line with this, the owner of a book store in the Boston area told me that older folks lean towards digital books and younger folks prefer physical books. This seemed a bit counter-intuitive, given that one might have expected older people to prefer the paper books that they are used to -- as an example, an older relative of mine, an avid reader, has a Kindle but rarely uses it. I don't recall how he explained this, but it might've been that older folks don't want to accumulate more stuff while younger people have room to grow a collection as well as the point you make about wanting to acquire non-digital goods (and, relatedly, perhaps to have experiences that take them away from their screens).
• fullshark 4y ago
  Man do I want to believe the lessons here. I just wonder if B&N success is also maybe due to the pandemic murdering poorly capitalized independent bookstores and they see an opportunity.
  • greenie_beans 4y ago
    i thought independents have been successful since a rough 2020?
    • TexanFeller 4y ago
      _If_ they survived 2020. Pandemic responses murdered small businesses.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  This article is a good answer to "how can CEOs be worth all that money they get paid?"
  • dsr_ 4y ago
    It seems to provide the answer of "Clearly, not all of them are."
    • WalterBright 4y ago
      Nobody said "all".
      • pwinnski 4y ago
        You did technically use the word in your statement ("...all that money,") but you also implied that the example of James Daunt said more than "James Daunt is a good hire if you run a bookstore company," which might or might not be true.
        • WalterBright 4y ago
          > You did technically use the word in your statement ("...all that money,") You know better. "money" is not "them", if you need more elucidation.
          • pwinnski 4y ago
            Okay, that's twice you've taken the easy response and ignored the actual meat of critique. I think that's indicator enough that you're unserious.
            • WalterBright 4y ago
              Your addition of "all" was the meat of your critique. It's a rhetorical device, meant to be argumentative, not substantive. "which might or might not be true" is yet another variation of the same rhetorical argumentative trick.
• bob1029 4y ago
  I am so hopeful to see stories like this. Combine stores like B&N and Half-Price with alternative online resources like AbeBooks, Discogs, e-bay, etc., and you really don't need inconsistent crap like Amazon in your life anymore. I can't be the only one who is fed up with the bait & switch experiences. Being an asshole or otherwise indifferent to the customer is eventually going to add up over time.
• ajkjk 4y ago
  I vaguely recall thinking that B&N was doing better a few years before the pandemic, in the sense that despite their financials, it was feeling more appealing to shop there than it had been in like ... 2012?... and was tending to have more people in it. Maybe I'm misremembering the timeline? But I'm pretty sure it was pre-pandemic. Regardless, can't agree more that a CEO whose interest is in something besides money-grabbing at the expense of the health of the business is actually how you make a store successful. Somewhat more cynical about the long-term health because it seems like once stores become appealing, they'll cash in on that by going back to money-grabbing, but we'll see...
• bikenaga 4y ago
  I've gone to Barnes & Noble 2 - 3 times a week for 10 - 15 years. I sit in the cafe with my cafe mocha and do some work, then browse books for a while. I never get tired of it. I read about their financial problems through the 20-teens and was sadly expecting that they'd go under. When James Daunt was named CEO, the changes were immediate. The spacer boxes appeared on the shelves; as someone else mentioned, they allow books to be placed cover forward, which is better for visual appeal. The front cover is what book designers design for. It also reduces the number of books on the shelves, which helps keep inventory lean. They rearranged the shelves on the store floor so you had fewer rows of parallel shelves like an old-school library. In my store, shelves were arranged to create a little enclaves for mystery and detective fiction and for hardback fiction. The store layout is more varied and interesting. On several occasions, I've seen guys who were, from their conversations, some kind of "store layout consultants" talking to the managers and discussing moving stuff around and changing displays. The folks who worked at the store were very encouraged. Many had been through the big layoff in 2018 (when a lot of full-timers were abruptly let go - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16389342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16389342). They liked the new changes - it was clear that the company was finally being run by someone who understood books. (I read somewhere - can't find the link - that Daunt even thinks about the angle of the shelves, because he thinks a certain angle is best for visibility.) The company seemed to be more realistic about what wasn't working. Most significantly, the Nook section near the door disappeared. Other smaller things that weren't selling (like Lamy fountain pens) also disappeared. Inventory in general is more controlled: They started turning over the magazines much faster, to the point where if I was interested in a magazine I found I couldn't wait too long. The technical book section isn't what it used to be, but they do carry a lot of No Starch books. I'm not a programmer, but I have a few No Starch books and e-books. I like the publisher (and given the problems with their books being counterfeited on Amazon, I'd rather buy a paper version in store if I want one). Some stuff they've done in my store doesn't make sense to me - for instance, separating fiction into hardback and paperback. The classics section has been partially separated by publisher. I don't think that's how people look for books: They ask for "Crime and Punishment", not the paperback edition of "Crime and Punishment", or the Penguin edition. People want to see all the editions of "Crime and Punishment" together so they can compare and choose. Right or wrong, at least these are changes which reflect someone thinking about books. The pandemic closure was a setback, and a lot of people who used to work at my store didn't return to work. But the store has come back pretty well. There's nothing else like Barnes & Noble, so I hope these changes work out.
• chrisgd 4y ago
  Love the story, can’t help but feel it is a little too early to judge a success. I believe it though and because it is hard, it is unlikely to repeat in other industries. I love my job, but the amount of time for me personally to provide discovery is hard. Need total buy in from an organization and it seems like something on the verge of bankruptcy is the best place to see it happen.
• ChuckMcM 4y ago
  I love this story for many reasons but the big one is the lesson about "selling out your mission." It seems naive and quaint to say "The job of a bookstore is to sell books that people want." except that is really true. We used to have a bookstore called "A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books" that had the vibe described here. Here's the thing though, profit and loss people get made decision makers. And it is a super simple decision process "Do I take $10M from this publisher to push their book or do I try to find books people are willing to buy?" well the easy answer is take the money. But as this story points out, it is the wrong answer. Once you're taking money like this your interests are no longer aligned with your customer, they are aligned with the publishers you buy from. That said, the store I've been to most doesn't seem to have changed its layout from selling games/puzzles + coffee bar + bookstore. (something mentioned in the article as being phased out) but perhaps that will change as they get around to it. Now if someone would do this transformation for a grocery chain I would love to have one of those near me!
• tspann 4y ago
  That is good to hear. I worked in their ecommerce group for a year and it was interesting. Nice people. Surviving Amazon is amazing.
• smm11 4y ago
  I've bought five magazines at Barnes and Noble in the past two months, after not buying any magazine for probably 15 years. I don't know why but I go in, something catches my eye, and I buy it. I have no desire to subscribe, three of the magazines are focused on things I've never considered but maybe now do. So there's that.
• HappyJoy 4y ago
  I wrote a bunch of LOB software for B&N's CS and B2B departments early in my career. I loved working there and I'm very happy to see an article like this.
• wrp 4y ago
  Our local B&N has had a remarkable turnaround this past year or two. It was in deep decline for many years. A third of the store was given to toys, another third to movies/music, and what was left of books saw little traffic. Now, they have just finished a major remodeling and it's back to all books. The parking lot is nearly full and I have to negotiate around many browsers in the aisles. It's been many years since I've seen a bookstore so full of books and customers (outside of Powell's in Portland). I noted two major differences from how B&N was many years ago. First, the proportion given over to fiction is much greater. Second, there is an enormous youth section, maybe a third of the store.
• superb-owl 4y ago
  Ted Gioia produces some great essays. It’s hard to pinpoint the theme of his blog (something something music and media) but he routinely grabs me, even on topics I didn’t think I was interested in.
• gnicholas 4y ago
  > he refused to discount his books, despite intense price competition in the market. If you asked him why, he had a simple answer: “I don’t think books are overpriced.” I wonder if this was the true reason, or if he simply wanted to stop discounting, and this was the reason that was scored highest by his PR team.
• 21eleven 4y ago
  I think the Barnes and Noble turn around story is interesting and deserves our attention. What annoys me is placing this against the backdrop of the pullback in share price seen by high growth tech platforms in recent months. No stock price goes only up forever. Tech stocks like Amazon have had an extremely good past 5 years. The current pullback is not indicative of some kind of "downfall". It's just market dynamics. A firm that is doing well may generate irrational exuberance and after this irrational exuberance will come a hangover. That doesn't mean the firm is no longer doing well, it was just overpriced in the short term recently.
• AlbertCory 4y ago
  I'm curious, as an author as well as reader: has anyone ever done the "print on demand" thing in a bookstore? There are machines that supposedly do that. I've never seen one.
  • qohen 4y ago
    FYI, Harvard Book Store, in Cambridge, MA (not affiliated with the university), had a machine they called "Paige M. Gutenborg" towards the back for doing this, which I was going to suggest checking out if ever in the area -- it was on display -- but I just saw on their website that, after 12 years, they stopped doing print-on-demand in April 2022. For reference, this page[0] about Paige on their website states that it was able to create "a library-quality, perfect bound, acid-free 300-page paperback book in roughly four minutes. These books are indistinguishable from paperbacks produced by major publishing houses." [0] https://www.harvard.com/shelves/in_store_book_printing/about/ https://www.harvard.com/shelves/in_store_book_printing/about...
    • qohen 4y ago
      P.S. I actually just called them up to find out what happened -- I was told that a part needed to be replaced which wasn't available any more. Given that they are across the street from Harvard (though not a part of it) and down the street from MIT, one would imagine that perhaps 3D printing could've taken care of it, but for whatever reason that wasn't done. I was told that the machine is still there, though, if one wanted to at least see it.
• nitwit005 4y ago
  > Do people really go toy shopping at a bookstore? Toys R Us also filed for bankruptcy in 2018, and if they couldn’t compete with Amazon, how could B&N hope to do any better? Have to disagree here. Yes, I looked at the toys in the book store, precisely because Toys R' Us was gone, along with the local toy store. I ended up buying Pokémon plush toys at a video game store in the mall.
  • bluGill 4y ago
    Toys r Us was going down for years before then. B&N had some bad years, but they were never as bad as Toys R Us was in 2008, and they still lasted another decade.
• snowwrestler 4y ago
  Barnes and Noble locations, at least the ones near me, still sell a lot toys and games. But the curation is excellent. I got quite a few things for my kids in there this year, when I stopped by to pick up one book. I’m not surprised they are doing well. That said, their technology could still be better. Ordering something online for local pickup works, but there’s a surprisingly long delay (sometimes days!) between placing an order and it being ready for pickup. Target is a lot faster, for example, despite having much larger stores.
  • ja27 4y ago
    They just ran a 50% off sale on boardgames (and hardcovers). The boardgame signs said something like "once it's gone, it's gone", making me wonder if they're cutting way back on boardgames.
    • snowwrestler 4y ago
      I wouldn’t be surprised if they cut back on the shelf space for toys and games once the holiday season is over. It would fit with the idea in the article of giving the stores more flexibility in how they merchandise.
• petee 4y ago
  Years ago, half the floorspace was just to sell their Ereader; this Christmas, I was excited to see the whole store full of books, and also people buying books.
• WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
  I LOVE entering a Barnes and Noble and being able to walk around looking for my next book. I love the atmosphere. I love moving from one section to the next. I love seeing other people there. It's just fun to me. I'm so glad it's beating the dier expectations. Digital books are convenient but the reading experience is horrible.
• kranke155 4y ago
  Waterstones in Britain are incredible. The one next to UCL campus is a gem, it doesn’t even feel like a bookstore, it feels like a library where you can buy books. I’m not surprised that the guy who turned around Waterstones in the UK can do BN in the US.
  • vinay427 4y ago
    Even the one in Blackpool is rather pleasant, which is somewhat unusual for the city as you’re probably aware. :)
• floatinglotus 4y ago
  Getting the Riggio brothers out of the business was the big change. Those guys were pure poison. Constantly drunk in the middle of the day.
• sizzzzlerz 4y ago
  Full disclosure: I'm a boomer. I was raised reading books, learned how to do research using real books, and I still vastly prefer real books to their alternatives. And not just books but magazines, as well. I'm at my local library every Saturday, returning items and browsing the stacks for new reading material (new as in I haven't read it). I usually visit B&N once a month to pick up the magazines my library doesn't have but also to browse. There are only a couple used book stores left but I will still visit them every 3 or 4 months. Before Borders blew up, I'd visit them instead of B&N because they were closer. Because my library is so awesome, I don't typically buy new books because I can get them there. Yeah, there may be a wait for popular items but they can be reserved and there are plenty more available immediately. That's me. You do you.
• Blackstrat 4y ago
  Little of what is discussed here or in the article applies to my local B&N. Yes, the Nook has been de-emphasized. Yes, the shelves have spacers for cover forward presentation. The technical sections have shrunk to the point of uselessness. That includes math and science as well as computers, electronics, etc. The number of romance novels has exploded. Books are now shelved by publishing category, e.g. mass market, trade paper, hardcover, etc. Hence, an author can be scattered all over the building. Inventory tends to be more sparse than the local independent bookseller. Consequently, for finding a new author or exploring, I go to the independent. I still visit B&N regularly as I have for years. The manager, whom I’ve known for a while, assures me that things will change because sales are down, but right now they are following the corporate direction. B&N is certainly not what Borders once was. But, we’re unlikely to see that again.
  • randcraw 4y ago
    I've seen the same trend at the B&Ns I frequent (Montgomeryville PA outside Philly and Northville MI outside Detroit) — in the past year or so the tech shelves have thinned out by 50%, same for the science and math, toys and games have grown by 100%, no more music, big reduction in movies, magazine offerings are fading and all the seating near them has disappeared. I frequent B&N because I badly want a seller of new books ro survive, but I so seldom buy anything there anymore, I find I'm visiting less and less.
    • Kon-Peki 4y ago
      I went to a B&N for the first time in probably at least 5 years a few weeks ago. The music section was outstanding; it was clearly curated by multiple music lovers and I saw stuff that I would never have guessed would be available on vinyl in a chain store. Probably around 40% of the bookshelves were dedicated to stuff teenagers or younger would like, and they had a ton of sci-fi and fantasy (both adult and children), including a bunch of copies of a fantasy book my daughter wanted that the B&N website said was available online only. I was impressed.
• renewiltord 4y ago
  Interesting. I've never seen that spelling for tchotchke before. Okay, I thought of B&N as a defunct random junk store. I think I'll go take a look. I wonder if these B&Ns have local identities or if somehow they have a common book load. From this article it would appear the former.
• runnr_az 4y ago
  The B&N in Flagstaff is being turned into a Goodwill.
• Mistletoe 4y ago
  >He asked employees in the outlets to take every book off the shelf, and re-evaluate whether it should stay. This reminded me of what Marie Kondo says about keeping your own personal books. -Put every single one of your books in a pile on the floor. -Take each book in your hand and see if it sparks joy. -Remove the ones that don't spark joy from your home. -Find ways to store your remaining books.
• dragonwriter 4y ago
  So, as someone who regularly visits B&N stores, this…creates a false narrative around the turnaround. Obviously, it has turned around, and is great. But it pretends that a sacrifice of floor space to non-book uses was part of the decline and the turnaround has involved recentering on books and particularly on a focus on intellectual stimulation, and the first is pretty clearly not true, and the second seems likely to be only in a very particular sense that diverges from what I think the average person reading the article would think. On the first point, floor space devoted to books compared to the past at the same stores has continued to decline, with, in one case, the entire space formerly devoted to non-book items now devoted just to games and toys, and spaces that were, before the pandemic, devoted to books now devoted DVDs, vinyl records, and other legacy media. On the second, the two sections of books that have not lost space seem to be (1) the bargain book section (which is also largely merchandised to show the whole fronts of books rather than spines like the rest of the store, so it is the least titles per unit of shelf space) and the self-help section; the rest of the sections have been compressed as the non-book areas have spread. If we define “intellectual stimulation” in terms of engaging a recurring customer base, I suppose that meets the description; but I don’t think it’s what people would normally read the description as implying. I do think that the article, amidst the noise, identifies the key factor: giving stores control over stocking books that appeal to their customer base rather than relying on a mix of promotional agreements with publishers and HQ buyer selections. This leads to a selection more tailored to the local market, and more conservatively chosen – not in the political sense, but in the sense of what will sell vs. what publishers hope to make sell by placement.
  • klelatti 4y ago
    > This leads to a selection more tailored to the local market, and more conservatively chosen – not in the political sense, but in the sense of what will sell vs. what publishers hope to make sell by placement. I know what you’re trying to say here - that local booksellers will play it more safe than publishers who might support a new author for example - but I think this is a mistaken perspective. First of all we are likely to see lots of small scale experiments where local booksellers will try different books based on their own instincts. That’s controlled risk taking and is likely to be less conservative than a global publisher. Then they will be closer to their actual readers and so will have a better understanding of what new books / authors will work for their actual customers. Finally this favours quality over other factors. If a local bookseller recommends a book they are putting their own credibility - and financial performance - on the line. They want readers to come back to their store rather than just sell that book.
• 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Good news. B&N is the place I first saw a copy of Ubuntu.
• psyclobe 4y ago
  My local Barnes and Noble has an absolutely massive record section. Really made it worth while to visit!
• peoplenotbots 4y ago
  Im genuinely surprised they didn't lean harder into the hobby shop/coffeeshop/beer-wine angle every indepdent bookstore didnt lean into as community space. The B&N stores typically have so much space they could stock some model kits, some DND manuals and a more robust coffee shop and knock out the average understaffed and under equipped hoppy shop or independent wine bar that has books for sale.
  • margoguryan 4y ago
    When I was in high school (06-10) you wouldn't believe how many kids could hang out at B&N for hours and hours and just drink some coffees and look at weird books or hang out with friends. I had several friends who would go for the annual Crterion Collection 50% Sale.
  • exolymph 4y ago
    > The B&N stores typically have so much space they could stock some model kits, some DND manuals and a more robust coffee This is exactly what my local B&N does. Not yours?
• fma 4y ago
  Seems like a similar story to the Best Buy turnaround. Although I've increased my purchases from Best Buy...everytime I want a book it's not near by, there's no free shipping and it's more expensive. Whenever I want a book I always check Barnes and Noble first to keep competition alive...I guess i must not be the target audience.
• mydogmuppet 4y ago
  Arise Virtual Solutions Bastion of slave labour practices. At Barnes and Noble near you. I'll not be giving them my money. Ever.
  • selimthegrim 4y ago
    Can you elaborate?
• jesuscript 4y ago
  What was once old is now new. Mechanical keyboards, anyone?
• xrd 4y ago
  I really wish there was a breakdown of how the "pay to shelf" calculation didn't pencil out. It seems almost counter intuitive that fewer books on the shelf would produce better revenues, but apparently books that are selected by the employees sell better. I wish there was a way to see that volume doesn't pay off, which seems to be Amazon's entire model. This is a great read.
• grej 4y ago
  One additional thing that I am now aware of because of a recent personal experience, is counterfeits. I recently received an O'Reilly book from Amazon that I am nearly certain is a fake (and sending back). If I didn't have another O'Reilly book to compare it to, it wouldn't have been so obvious. Apparently, Amazon is doing a terrible job at counterfeit technical books across the board. eg: https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1550932671022239745?s=20 https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1550932671022239745?s=20 I will now try to buy any books direct from the publisher or from a store like Barnes & Noble rather than Amazon.
• karmasimida 4y ago
  I have both prime and B&N membership. Here are some of my thoughts: 1. Amazon is a terrible place to discover surprising reads. There is one day I was navigating the bookself in Technology sector, and found one book on the story of how Android is created. I didn't know this book exist, but now my interests can't be contained, and I want it NOW. The sense of discovery is awesome, and I am willing to pay for it. 2. B&N membership gives you basically a 10% discount StarBucks (unofficially, but pretty much the same), which is a sweet deal. 3. Amazon sometimes screwed up book versions. For example, I bought book 1&2 of the same series from Amazon, and book 1 arrived in UK format, while book 2 in US. This is an intolerable mistake for me as a collector. So I have to repurchase book 1 later from B&N in US format as I can no longer trust Amazon for it. Overall, B&N now, is more of a socializing place for me than a retailer. I still use Amazon for books I can't find, but I don't mind pay a few more bucks to buy from B&N. Sometimes it is not all about money.
• ChicagoDave 4y ago
  This is sooo awesome. I stopped going to BN specifically because I’d chat with employees and ask about various authors not on their shelves. The answer was, “corporate controls everything.” The employees did get one single end point for “staff recommendations,” but that’s it. Everything else in BN was turning into Spencer’s Gifts. I was half expecting sex toys and supermodel posters to appear. To hear they put the stores back into local control and that it’s been successful is one of the most hopeful signs for our collective future.
• indus 4y ago
  my neighborhood store in the SF Bay area has a 50% hardcover sale. the store is full of people. people standing and reading magazines (i could hardly elbow to my aviation mag). kids are playing. folks sipping starbucks. my hands hurted after checkout.
• deafpolygon 4y ago
  I've said this over and over (not on HN, though)... Blockbuster would have survived if they leaned into the recommendations business. People want to go somewhere to look at whatever it is they're looking at, and find something novel and interesting. It is so much more pleasant to go somewhere, and feel like you're being served a good selection of recommendations, new and old. Even better if you can talk to someone at the store and get their feedback and ideas. But in Blockbusters' end days, all they hired were teenagers not even old enough to rent from their Mature section. There was no way they were going to compete with digital streaming services on sheer volume. But at the time of its collapse, every time I would step inside a Blockbuster - all I would see is non-movie related stuff being peddled at me. Posters, plush, popcorn, toys, etc. The "new releases" movies were in the back, the best quality films hard to find, jumbled in with all the rest. The rest of the store just seemed to be wasted space. I always thought if they dedicated less space to the new releases and spent more time curating valuable films from all eras, they'd make a return to form.. especially with their name. Movie and gaming deals ruined Blockbuster. And at the end, their $15/month ala carte plan just put them in the hole. They had such a good price before.. it was something like $3/night to rent. Then they raised the price to $7/2 night. It seems about the same price but no one really wants to rent it for 2 nights and the $7 priced most of the movie-goers out of the market. Then they tried the ala carte "Silver" or "Platinum" plan or whatever it was (it was probably a regional thing). It's the same principle here with B&N.
  • sanmon3186 4y ago
    Recommendations is just one of the aspects. We love books as a tangible medium of knowledge, for collection, for signaling and so on. Movies in disks, comes with friction which isn’t worth IMO.
    • deafpolygon 4y ago
      Yes, and Blockbuster can still lean into that. Pair recommendations with books. Movies as a tangible collectible item for many people still a thing. It's still a medium of knowledge, still a collectible item, and still good for signaling.
  • 4y ago
• dingosity 4y ago
  I live nearby to Arundel books in Seattle. It is my favourite store now. You go in and it's staffed by people who know and love books. I mentioned in passing I was surprised not to see any Houseman on the shelf (plenty of Auden, a decent selection Brautigan, Sexton and Plath.) I had just overlooked it. Every time I go in I see a book I want to buy (Calvino, Eco, Burroughs, etc.) Staffed and stocked by people who like good books for people who like good books. Leigh's Books in Sunnyvale (if you're a Bay Area person) is like this too. They were still there before the pandemic. Hope they're still there. It's staffed and stocked by people who know books. Bad Animal in Santa Cruz has an eclectic collection that stocks decent texts, but maybe not as wide a selection as Leigh's and Arundel. But if you're in Santa Cruz they're worth checking out. Go for the books, stay for the veggie foie gras. Towards the end of Borders in both Santa Cruz and Palo Alto, it seemed there were a LOT of self-help, travel and outdated tech books. Seemed to be all stuff that people used the web to read, but the chain was going to waste shelf-space on it until someone bought it. The coffee shop in my local Borders in Santa Cruz back in the day was as good as you would find in corporate coffee. A decent cuppa joe for me and an extremely nice hot chocolate for the kiddo. But we never went there for the books. We went to Logos down the street (now sadly closed) and wandered up to Borders (also closed) for a very decent hot chocolate. Good to see //someone// worked out a business model that worked.
  • dingosity 4y ago
    Also. How did I forget to mention Santa Cruz Books. Probably don't have to mention it to Santa Cruz residents. I think they were the first place I saw where A LOT of the books on the shelf had review cards and staff recommendations. It's clear it is... say it with me... staffed and stocked by people who like good books.
    • prismatix 4y ago
      Book Shop Santa Cruz is one of my favorite book stores. It has such a fun layout and feel for browsing, is usually buzzing with people, and in the rainy-months is a great place to sit and read for a few. The staff are always really kind as well!
• napsternxg 4y ago
  Is it possible that the pandemic made people fall back in love with non digital assets as they were already exhausted by the excess screen use? Has that possibility been ruled out clearly? I recently visited B&N and the feeling of moving around and sitting with books after spending all week in front of screen was quite refreshing.
• dingosity 4y ago
  Also... I really dig on Ted Gioia. Didn't know who he was 'til he was on a youtube video podcast w/ Rick Beato. His analysis is always well reasoned. I worked in the music biz for a while (yes, yes, plastic money trench, etc.) and I think he discounts the big player's motivation to avoid change in industry structure. He talks a lot about how tech will change the music biz and I think he's right, though the timeline is going to be slower than he implies (until it isn't, and then it will happen quickly.)
• willhinsa 4y ago
  i always enjoy the in person experience at B&N they need to get a better distro -> store pipeline and they need amazon-like lockers in their store to order online and pickup in store 24/7 i'd never use amazon again!!
• noobermin 4y ago
  Tbh this is guy must be quite an exception. He is literally doing the wrong thing, the market (really...just suppliers) have decided hype is the thing, basically sign on to promoters and publishers (in the tech space, the equivalent are advertizers) and shoe-horn feeding other suppliers every dollar you can in hope you can make it back. It's no longer actually just "sell a product," you have to join this system of apps that you can fit ads in every tiny gap on the screen you can fine, because this is profitable. Except it really wasn't, as this story says, at least for books. People apparently just want to buy books, and if you sell them books, may be they'll buy them. I don't know, I wish other types of companies (ahem, game companies) figure this out, you can make money without trying to be genshin impact. I'm really convinced the current tiktok/influencer/advertizer mindset that tries to ring people's brains dry really isn't that profitable in situations other than exceptions, it's essentially just groupthink and bandwagoning where people are chasing one off successes, whereas being boring (just selling a product) can be pretty profitable.
• ww520 4y ago
  It's refreshing to let the product guy in charge instead of the bean counters.
• noisy_boy 4y ago
  Tangential wondering: how do married people in tech industry with school-going kids, who also find the time to read non-tech books, manage to do so between raising kids, dealing with the daily grind and constant upgrading of knowledge demanded by the industry?
  • rozenmd 4y ago
    daily habits.
  • timc3 4y ago
    With difficulty. Can cause a great deal of stress unless you manage it. Also getting a firm grounding in the fundamentals let’s you quickly take in new learning as mostly the new stuff is a rehash/reimplementation/pivot on old ideas.
• Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
  I'm from Spain and there is no B&N here, but I have been surprised by the success of the bookstore sector in general. In the 2010s, just when ebooks became popular, a lot of bookstores opened in my city and others I know, both of the large chain and small independent variety. My thought was "are they crazy or what? Physical books are obviously a declining business, most people will just read ebooks. Most of these stores are doomed to close, as bookstores will become something very niche". Boy, was I wrong... the reality, while I don't have sales figures and just speak as a layman, is that they didn't close, but rather the opposite: even more of then opened during the rest of the decade and they generally seem rather lively. Have ebooks not caught on after all, or are people reading much more so that there is market for both? I don't know. By the way, on a more personal note, ebooks made me almost stop reading for a long time. I was an avid reader until ebook readers appeared. Then I started to read in ebook form, because physical books take a lot of space, and they already occupied a lot of room at home (and the space is not just for me, I lived with my wife, and now also my son!). With this, I dropped from reading a lot to like 4 or 5 books a year, then 2, then 1 or even 0. I made myself believe that this was due to lack of time (work, not being single anymore, etc.) which was only a half truth. The other half of the truth, as shallow as it is, is that ebooks don't get me hooked as physical books do, even if the content is the same. I'm not proud of it, it's silly because the real value of a book should be in what it says, not in the physical materials, but it's how I work. I tried to change it for some years but I failed. So I came to accept it. Now I buy physical books again and even though I don't read as much as when I was younger (work+parenting takes a huge amount of time), reading is again one of the main things I do with the free time I do have, and I at least read 1-2 books a month.
  • kcartlidge 4y ago
    > I was an avid reader until ebook readers appeared Same here, though possibly not for the same reasons. I go through phases of reading a couple of ebooks a week, but if I'm not careful I get reading deserts where when I look back I've spent weeks curating/buying more ebooks and never actually getting around to reading them. I love reading, but it's a constant battle to be a reader and not just a collector of books, something I never have an issue with when it comes to my physical collection (which is large but also largely untouched due to tired, aging eyes).
• dalbasal 4y ago
  I really enjoyed how this article was written. I'm going to classify this as a "just do a good job." We people like to understand the world with stories. Plot points. Twists. Heroes, antiheroes, antagonists... That's a bias. All of the failed B&N strategies were snappy headlines... good stories: Online sales, digital sales & ereader, bookstore cafes, restaurant business... These are all strategies you can put on a slide and sell to a board or executive team. An investment blogger can summarize them in a tweet. People can easily form opinions about them. You either think it's a good idea, or a bad one... and expect success or failure to follow smoothly from the goodness of the decision. IRL though, execution matters. Almost every war ever fought was determined in battlefields, not palaces. That's true for Russia in Ukraine, the US in Afghanistan... and we'll shortly forget this lesson about both. From the outside, it's always easier to credit political-level decisions and forget about execution. I think this is a major recurring fallacy. Real outcomes are not deterministic. They're usually determined by execution. Ted Gioia does a great job of creating a narrative frame here. But, it sounds like successes actually came from sub-narrative decisions. How purchasing is managed. Pricing & promotion policies. Responsibility splits between HQ & stores. These are all mundane, "housekeeping" issues... execution details. Strategic decisions obviously matter. They're also interesting, especially to low engagement outsiders... including shareholders. They do not matter nearly as much as tactics. Tactics > Strategy, in life as in chess. This is the kind of thing that gets lost in 2nd hand accounts.
• durranh 4y ago
  Sick
• srinathkrishna 4y ago
  I've been a huge fan of B&N since I stepped foot in the US and was one of the first people to rush to buy the nook color. Admittedly I haven't been visiting the stores since there's none that's close by to where I live but this post was refreshing to read. And I did learn about James Daunt in the process too. Definitely earmarking to visit a store before the end of the year to grab a couple of good books.
• tssva 4y ago
  The description of the new Barnes & Nobles doesn't match the store near me. Half of it is still a cafe which looks like the last place I'd like to enjoy a cup of coffee or glass of wine. When I walk by the cafe is always 3/4 empty. The article talks about local staff now deciding what books to select to feature prominently. When I went inside my local store 2 months ago the prominently featured books consisted of those required by our local high school curriculum. The store had very few actual books overall especially in relation to the number of puzzles, toys and tchotchkes being offered. In other words it was the complete opposite of what is described in the article. This store is located in a prominent position in the premier retail center in my immediate local area. The type of location you would think B&N would prioritize on making a showcase of their new concept. I'm left wondering if B&N has turned itself around or is simply riding a wave of post pandemic reading which will crest leaving B&N once again over built and in trouble
  • klelatti 4y ago
    Part of the challenge of this approach is that not every store will either be well run or meet aspirations of those who go to bookstores for a particular experience. Some will do very badly! Others will be successful but unattractive. But on average the result will be better and if that ensures the survival of the chain the that's probably a good thing.
    • tssva 4y ago
      The particular store in question occupies a prime location within a prime retail destination in an affluent area. It should be a showcase location for the new strategy but isn't. If they can't get this store course corrected then it signals to me and likely others that nothing has changed with B&N overall. Enough locations like that and you doom the chain even if other locations have changed.
      • klelatti 4y ago
        So you’re saying that someone at the centre should judge that this is a great store and then make sure that it is run in a certain way? Can you see how this completely contradicts the approach - leaving aside the fact it’s a sample size of one and that none of us have access to financials etc.
• klelatti 4y ago
  Good piece but it omits some relevant points. - James Daunt is now CEO of both B&N and Waterstones in the UK. Waterstones is a sizeable business in its own right with over 300 stores and totally dominates high street bookselling in the UK. - Both B&N and Waterstones are owned by Elliot Management who bought B&N after acquiring Waterstones. - Daunt only got his chance to run Waterstones after being installed by (now sanctioned) Russian Oligarch Alexander Mamut who bought the chain for $66m. I think it's fair to say this was a significant piece of risk taking as Waterstones was, at best, weeks away from insolvency and probably would have ceased to exist in anything like its present form. Of course, at that point Daunt's model was unproven (except in his own handful of London bookstores). Here is James Daunt in his own words (from pre B&N): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjs2_iAomnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjs2_iAomnc
• Dawnyhf2 4y ago
  [dead]
• gorpomon 4y ago
  I whiled away so many afternoons at Barnes & Noble. We'd drive 30 minutes from our small town to the nearest big city and go sit and enjoy an afternoon reading. I would say maybe 1 out of every 3 visits would result in someone buying a book, but we never felt compelled to buy anything. For where we were in the country, the magazine selection felt incredibly cosmopolitan, and a window into the broader world. To me, a Barnes and Noble still symbolizes the joy and worldliness of reading. Whenever I'm with family and shopping, if I'm not out to buy anything I still opt to spend some time reading in a B&N. I'm glad this chain is back on its feet and growing again. For lots of places, and lots of people, B&N is a lifeline.
• pch00 4y ago
  I've started wondering recently if we're starting to see a slow, gradual rejection of online shopping and going back to physical stores. I was in my local chain record store recently and physical albums seem to be back, especially vinyl. Even my daughter who was raised completely in the streaming-era remarked that looking through the record store was "way more fun". Perhaps it's too late for many stores but I'd love it if we were actually on some kind of partial "rebalancing" of retail.
• twblalock 4y ago
  I remember working at a Border's bookstore a long time ago, when management saw the coffee bar as a cost center that was a distraction from their real jobs.
• mdip 4y ago
  I found it interesting that one of the things he did differently was to empower the local Barnes & Noble stores to make placement/marketing/merchandising decisions themselves. The way typical retail stores are run these days is a lot like the Fast Food model -- consistency above all else -- where the food has the same (lousy) taste no matter where it's made. Having spent a lot of time buying last minute gifts, retail, this year ... short of some stores being a mirror of others, each brand has the same products in the same places. This works well at Walmart, Target, and other general retailers (the kind of commodity "super-store" arrangement I stopped visiting a long time ago). Those retailers have recognized I don't even want to walk into the store -- even my grocery store will bag my things and pop them in my car for me. Barnes & Noble seems to have figured out that it's really easy to buy a book. The previous management[0] thought they employed only cashiers, re-stockers and "where can I find"ers (the latter of which were impossible to find). When financial struggles hit, the few employees who were there "because they loved books" left because their jobs were slowly turning into "warehouse fulfillment for internet orders." Our local location shut down shortly thereafter. Further proof that this new strategy works is that the huge location was replaced by a combination book, record and other media store which is run "like a record shop" and feels like a mom-and-pop despite the square footage. This strategy works everywhere. Because I have a Microcenter location within 30 minutes of me, I buy 80% of my computer equipment retail. I wanted to physically touch the laptop I was buying so I stopped in on a Saturday. I don't ask for or want help, usually, because ... I'm a developer and I come in pretty ridiculously researched ... but that didn't stop no less than four people from asking to assist -- all while I stayed in the same section of the store. Overhearing them serve other clients, I was impressed at how well they knew their products. And if you haven't been into one of these places ... the one over here took over a six screen cinemaplex. It's massive. They have multiple models of 3D printers/filaments/accessories, multiple models of soldering irons and bench power supplies, IC components (loose LEDs/resistors/capacitors/basic motor drivers/timers), Ardinos/Pis (well...sometimes) and piles of accessories for it. Some of these things are really hard to buy confidently online or are really convenient if they can be returned/replaced with the correct part in an hour. They carry high-end, low-end and everything in-between[1]. I used to say that "I shop there first because I don't want to support their business" but that's granting myself credit I don't deserve. Frankly, the one gripe I've ever had about that place -- slow checkout[2] was remedied by common feeder and online pickup. People tend to complain everywhere about lack of floor staff, but waiting behind three people for the "one person in the whole computer department" at Best Buy was typical of all electronics retailers 15 years ago. I worked at CompUSA (I left a couple of years after the Windows 95 launch -- before they became a general electronics retailer) for 5 years -- we were half the size. Average floor staffing was two in hardware (three, sometimes, since there'd always be a guy or two who only sold Macs), two in software/accessories, one handling both depending on customers. Microcenter had at least 4 people just in the laptop/desktop section, three in the upgrades/parts, one in mac, one in the Maker area and several in the 10-or-so-floor-to-ceiling aisles (that most electronics retailers ditched to control shrink). Contrast that with my trip to Best Buy where three kids stood around talking to one another while I drooled over a Lenovo laptop. Had any one of them walked up to me I would have been easy to persuade into buying that day. I ended up picking it up from Microcenter (and it ended up being the best deal, too). The takeaway, I think, is that the one thing Amazon can't give me is the intelligence/personal interaction with another human being who knows what they are selling[3] and can give me confidence that the choice I'm making is the right one. This has to be done carefully, of course. One of the advantages of buying online is the lack of pressure applied by a sales-person. The places I seek out for retail shopping are ones where the staff is knowledgeable, consultative, friendly and not pushing me to buy something right now. [0] I've never worked for them or a competitor and it's been decades since I've touched retail, but a friend's adult child worked there just before our location shut down. [1] My children act like we're going to the dentist when I tell them I need to make a quick stop there. There's no such thing. [2] They still need work here. A little while back I ended up there with only one of my credit cards. The chip failed. I handed them my ID, figuring they'd run it via magnetic strip having positive proof that I'm the cardholder. A manager was brought up, and I even discovered I had my passport in my jacket pocket. It was a hard no for a sub-$100 purchase ... that kind of pissed me off ... if I hadn't had so many great past experiences, I probably would have sworn them off for good (as it was, I didn't return for several months). [3] Hell, Amazon can't seem to give me results for what I specifically ask for. Can we please stop filling search results with answers "just because they are sort of like the thing you searched for"? It doesn't work when "OLED Laptop" returns 400 results and the first page has two which have anything OLED related in them, let alone an OLED screen. Even when you're given a filter for AMOLED or OLED, most of the OLED results are then missing. It happens with nearly every thing I search for using just Amazon's search. I find Google Image Search with `site:amazon.com` is the only way I can find things sometimes.
• webdoodle 4y ago
  Library's and brick and mortar mom and pop bookstores are some of the coolest places to explore. So much has yet to be digitized or summarized or even catalogued in some parts of the world.
• sys_64738 4y ago
  It's very interesting that the prior B&N CEOs just didn't focus on Business 101. I mean, what were they thinking with B&N Restaurant investments? Business 101 says to focus on your Core Competencies and that's basically what the current CEO has done. When you think of a CEO you assume they know what they're doing. It's a fallacy mostly but well done to B&N for getting it right this time.
• surge 4y ago
  Barnes and Noble used to have cozy seating options, they got rid of them, probably for various reasons, probably because people were perusing books then putting them back on shelves. But they do that now in the cafe, I would often take a stack of books. I've been going to them more and more, especially since our independent non-profit bookstore has been doing some crazy things involving children and burlesque inspired traditions that aren't child appropriate but are otherwise fine in an adult context.