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Barnes & Noble will shift to smaller stores and is turning to books to attempt to save its business:
The retailer had hoped that toys, games and other items would shore up its results, especially as Amazon.com Inc. ate away at its traditional business. But its non-book sales have flagged the past two quarters, and now the company is putting its focus back firmly on reading.
Barnes & Noble will "place a greater emphasis on books, while further narrowing our non-book assortment," Chief Executive Officer Demos Parneros said in a statement.
The failed foray is just one of the challenges bearing down on the chain. Customer traffic is down, and Barnes & Noble is losing market share. Though the release of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" reinvigorated sales a year ago, the company is now paying for that blip: Same-store sales fell 6.3 percent last quarter, with about half of that decline coming from the drop-off in Harry Potter demand.
Barnes & Noble's Nook e-book business also has languished, a further sign of Amazon's tightening grip on readers. It all added up to a loss of 41 cents a share in the fiscal second quarter, compared with a deficit of 29 cents a year earlier. Analysts projected a 26-cent loss for the period, which ended Oct. 28.
Barnes & Noble may benefit from short leases, allowing it to close or downsize stores as needed. New stores may be only about 40% as large as the average existing location.
Headline credit where it is due.
Also at WSJ:
"There's too much stuff in the stores," said Barnes & Noble Inc. Chief Executive Demos Parneros, in an interview after the company's earnings call. "We're drawing a line in the sand and reducing the assortment of gift items and what I'd call tchotchkes. For example, we love journals. But we have way too many. We're refocusing on books."
Related: Amazon Opens Physical Bookstore in Seattle
Amazon Books Opens in New York City
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 04 2017, @10:40AM (1 child)
I'm a little shocked that Nook [wikipedia.org] still exists. They spun it off and partnered with Microsoft, bought back control of it, and partnered with Samsung on new hardware.
That's a good idea for getting people into their stores, especially into cafes in college towns. Except that the Nook market share is dismal [the-digital-reader.com].
Barnes & Noble is like the slightly upscale and more competent looking version of Books-A-Million [wikipedia.org], the other big box books store with similarly cavernous air-conditioned locations.
The holiday season is what keeps stores like this alive. You look at the "tchotchkes" and other crap sold and B&N, and I can guarantee you will find many journals, greeting cards, stationary sets, RC helicopters, slime science kits, plush dolls, Game of Thrones action figures, and other non-book junk. I'm sure they sell a lot of it as Christmas gifts, but do they really need to stock 100 varieties of journals? Apparently not.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by etherscythe on Monday December 04 2017, @05:59PM
It won't for long. [the-digital-reader.com] I was about 2 seconds from pulling the trigger on the new Nook Glowlight 3 Black Friday deal when I found out about this and decided I'm going to get a Kobo Aura ONE with my tax refund instead. No sense investing in an ecosystem that will not be maintained, no matter the "in-store support forever" guarantee. I'm hoping my library doesn't up and vanish before I get it converted into non-DRM format.
In case anyone's wondering, I'm boycotting Amazon as the reason I'm not getting a Kindle. Kobo does not have a huge presence in the US, but I'll be damned if Bezos gets any more of my money after the political stunt Amazon pulled on Wikileaks years ago with the Manning affair. I'm depressed to see how Amazon has flourished since then, with as hard as it is to avoid that place these days from a convenience and selection standpoint.
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