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Up north, the Indigo bookstore chain did the exact opposite. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_Books_and_Music https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_Book
by melony 4y ago
Up north, the Indigo bookstore chain did the exact opposite.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_Books_and_Music https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_Books_and_Music
They are a case study in business school that selling tchotchkes and trinkets is more profitable than books. I disagree with GP's article. It is the same myth in tech that "engineers make better founders" and "companies ran by execs with engineering backgrounds are more successful". It is feel-good masturbation for professionals without objective data backing it. In this case they are running with "booklovers run better bookstores". Not necessarily generalizable to all booksellers. The pandemic has shown that cheap rates play an oversized role in picking winners and losers.
- Doctor_Fegg 4y agoNonetheless what TFA says is absolutely true about both his original stores, Daunt Books, and Waterstones here in the UK. Waterstones is immeasurably better under his stewardship than it was before. If he’s turned around the biggest bookshop chains in both the UK and the US, he must be doing something right.
- criddell 4y agoIt’s possible that there’s more than one successful business model though, right? I think the lesson may be that B&N wanted to be a successful bookstore and they achieved that by doing a better job serving book buyers mostly by giving individual stores more autonomy. That doesn’t mean another chain couldn’t succeed by turning into a books & trinkets store with a focus on high margin trinkets.
- melony 4y agoHere's the link if you want more details https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/books/booksupdate/indigo-books-canadian-chain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/books/booksupdate/indigo-...
- BizarroLand 4y agoI can see where you're coming from, there are multiple angles. B&N is setting themselves up as a bookstore for book lovers, and Inigo is setting themselves up as a book store for culture lovers. Many paths to the same destination.