The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

Also with BN, I mean they were going up against one of the biggest most powerful companies in human history. Their survival so far is impressive at least, and they did try with the Nook, but Amazon was always a software company so BN has a difficult and late challenge.

If anything, the best strategy for now with BN is to increase cash-flow, cut expenses, etc and wait for the legal and cultural environment to turn against some of the tech companies. Personally I don’t think Amazon has done that much wrong, but I imagine they will suffer some collateral damage from the move against first, Facebook, followed by second Google. Although Google is smart and already broke themselves up years ago to avoid just this fate, Facebook is still in denial......

You can't race to the bottom in retail, the bottom is already taken by walmart and online stores (like amazon). You can't be cheaper or more convenient, you need to offer something they don't. For bookstores that means you have to have good selection, a good environment, author signing/speaking events, and so forth.

The retail apocalypse is not being driven primarily by lack of revenue, there's plenty of meat on those bones for companies to survive on in perpetuity, and many continue to thrive. Rather it's being driven by poor business decisions. Hedge fund driven leveraged buyouts that load down retail chains with enormous levels of debt. Complicated expansion schemes designed to enrich some particular set of owners or executives at the cost of business health. And so on. B&N is just another example of how retail chains have becomes playthings for the business elite. Business fundamentals are irrelevant. The fate of the business itself or the workers are irrelevant. All that matters is how many golden eggs they can cut out of the goose's body before it dies.

Grabbed the magazine, wandered the aisles a bit and picked up another book then went to check out. Basically I was their marketing department's dream - walk-in traffic coming to buy something cheap and specific who made an impulse retail buy of a much higher margin item.

The checkout line was at least 50 people long and probably estimated at over an hour. Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers, and as far as I could tell a singular employee on the floor itself.

I put my selections back and walked out the door. Granted it was near peak shopping season - but that was inexcusable. There were quite a lot of really pissed off looking people in that line.

So that is to say my experience lines up with the article. They entirely botched their Christmas season and it wasn't the employee's or consumer demand's fault. Just that one store bled hundreds of dollars in lost sales just from the 5 minutes I watched people walk in and immediately out after seeing the line.

I would pay a monthly membership fee just to keep my local store open. Kinda like a gym membership, but I would actually go in, and enjoy just the wifi, books, clean bathroom, and pleasant staff.

I do think it's time to break up the monopolies. What do we have to loose at this point?

I don't even need to list the companies. We all know them. Plus--three three companies will put so many of you tech workers out of business--eventually.