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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: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday December 04 2017, @10:03PM (3 children)
Eventually I think all legacy brick and mortar non-food non-clothes retail will converge from all directions upon crappy generic gifts. There really isn't a purpose for them anymore. There will be a million places and a billion square feet all devoted to selling crappy gifts and nothing else on the market will be available except for online.
I was at a B+N a couple weeks ago and all I could find to buy was a gift for a family member, a specific cookbook. They sure have a lot of legacy optical media in a cavernous empty sixth of the store with no browsing customers at all, what a dumb merchandising mistake. The large board game selection is obscure in that its too euro/war/complicated for normies but its too intro level for real gamers, I suppose that fits the gift stereotype where grannie can buy something in the correct theme and the kids can return it for what they really want. I also noticed they have pretty much given up on merchandising tech type books. They sell almost exclusively gift books now, very little you'd buy for yourself.
The most interesting place to find tech type books, or really any non-fiction, is book resale stores of which there are a couple regional chains. Theres a chain named "half price books" that covers the civilized USA, pretty much anywhere more than 500 miles from the coasts. Today I found a book titled "Mathematical Astronomy Morsels" strangely appealing and interesting. Like "computer recreations" column from the 80s meets an astronomy magazine in a collection of essays format. That entire genre of non-fiction is missing from B+N, they gave up.
One interesting concept that isn't entirely insane is the local B+N at the mall is across the street from the pop-up store that sells seasonal junk, so ... merge? I could see a day where there's a book buying season, wedged in with Halloween costume season and Christmas ornament season. Spring has valentines day. Maybe dog days of summer would be a good popup book store season.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 04 2017, @10:07PM (2 children)
Figured it out just after posting. The three retail genres will be food, clothing, and gift shop. Think of tourist traps with their "gift shop". Someday soon the only non-food non-clothes store will be endless gift shops as far as the eye can see. Eat it, wear it, or give it away, nothing else possible.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 05 2017, @12:14AM (1 child)
No, no. It's 4 things, and they are:
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 06 2017, @10:58PM
yeah yeah. That's a book where I alternate between "wouldn't it be great to see a great movie adaptation" and "wouldn't it be horrible to see a messed up movie adaptation".