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The Slow Demise of Barnes & Noble (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the beginning-of-the-end dept.

John Biggs via TechCrunch reports of the slow demise of Barnes & Noble, which he has been chronicling for several years now. There have been many signs of trouble for the bookseller chain over the years, but none have been more apparent than the recent layoffs made earlier this week. From the report: On Monday the company laid off 1,800 people. This offered a cost savings of $40 million. [...] In fact, what B&N did was fire all full time employees at 781 stores. Further, the company laid off many shipping receivers around the holidays, resulting in bare shelves and a customer escape to Amazon. In December 2017, usually B&N's key month, sales dropped 6 percent to $953 million. Online sales fell 4.5 percent. It is important to note that when other big box retailers, namely Circuit City, went the route of firing all highly paid employees and bringing in minimum wage cashiers, stockers, and salespeople it signaled the beginning of the end.

6 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Just Like Circuit City by UdoKeir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The expensive management that steered the ship into the rocks don't get cut: https://www1.salary.com/barnes...

    1. Re:Just Like Circuit City by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The expensive management that steered the ship into the rocks don't get cut:

      Different management would have made no difference. Retail bookselling was doomed. Nothing could have saved it.

    2. Re:Just Like Circuit City by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe, maybe not, but those extravagant salaries certainly accelerated the decline. That $40 million in savings from firing 1800 people could have been had by firing a single CEO, and probably triple that could have been had removing the entire management team and replacing them with someone that knew the business and had a vision for the future.

      B&N was doomed by an inability by lack of vision, the created the first Android based Ebook reader and they gave up the market through negligence. The management during this period had no vision for the future and was obsessed with the next quarter, not the technological revolution that was going to totally change their industry. B&N never adapted, there are plenty of independent book sellers still in business and actually thriving because they cater to the people that actually read books. B&N's management took the path of selling board games and coffee rather than trying to attract people that actually read books. Rather than focus the business they tried to generalize and drove the real readers to the independent book sellers.

      They would have done better to fire all the management and hire one of those independent book sellers to run the chain.

  2. Re:B&N went from best-middle of the road by Teckla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    weird, cause amazon is full of third party sellers to the point it's impossible to buy something from amazon itself. they are the best thing to happen to small business in decades

    Ugh, I avoid almost all of Amazon's third party sellers like the plague, because there are so damn many shady companies, many of them selling counterfeits, used items as new, broken items, etc. -- and Amazon does not seem particularly interested in policing the problem...

  3. Re:B&N went from best-middle of the road by Teckla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I started going to B&N less and less because it upset me that they wouldn't give me the good price unless I signed up for their damn club. I hate that shit.

  4. 50% markup over Amazon by rfengr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    B&N sells the books for list price, which is typically 50% over Amazon. That’s too damn much, physical store or not.