What's sad about Barnes and Noble is that the book industry never saw the ebook and online buying coming. So they kept the price of books high, pressured by big name authors who were use to the big royalty checks, and they can't move away. Imagine if B&N could compete on price with Amazon, and the booksellers had to take what the market is willing to pay.
The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#32If management is assuring you repeatedly that there will be no layoffs, it's a good sign that layoffs are coming.
If management is assuring you repeatedly that specific people will not be laid off, it's a good sign that those people will be laid off.
At least this is what always seems to happen, IME.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Institutional knowledge and loyalty. Your entire staff can’t be flex workers if you expect customers to be treated properly (see: Apple retail for how it’s done well). Even still, see how Amazon’s flex/contractors handle deliveries (ie atrociously, as there is no incentive to care) vs UPS (a union shop). You have to align incentives. Your employees’ success is your success. Otherwise, close up shop and go home. You’v…
Comparing the level of customer care at a bookstore with that of an Apple store is pretty unfair. Apple makes hundreds or thousands of margin dollars per customer; a bookstore is probably closer to $10.
A better comparison would be Starbucks considering the margins. Not everyone needs to have Apple margins to compensate their retail employees above minimum wage (considering the $14 million dollars Barnes and Noble executives have siphoned off already).
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I made the effort to visit a B&N earlier this month because I was looking for good translations of t…
Don't believe it's wrong to say you are a very niche customer. Their selection of Hemingway isn't much better, but that's because they've got limited floor space. Not sure how they could solve your specific issue unless they had much bigger locations.
Is it so unrealistic? When I wanted a copy of _Beowulf_ in 2003 or so, what I did was I wandered into my local Borders and found it, and compared 5 or 6 different books; I ultimately settled on Heaney's translation which I liked the bits I read the most of, and then picked the volume with the most additional historical essays providing context. And _Beowulf_ is surely less read than Homer.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#35that's a real freaky Santa gif
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#36This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better option. You can't lose money indefinitely, you can't compete in the sector you grew huge in (because it's rapidly dying), and so what's the end game here? Yes, they could handle this better, and maybe they overpay their executives (although what experienced executive would even want this job unless the pay was awesome?), but this is just quibbling. Whether it happened now or happened in six months or two years, this is inevitable.
Now, it's definitely sad when people lose their jobs, but that's kind of the devil's bargain we've made with capitalism.
Some of the startups that grow out of HN will be in new sectors that only add to the economy, but many will replace, supplant, cannibalize, and dominate companies and industries that aren't strategically or operationally capable of adapting. That means a LOT of people are going to lose their jobs in the process.
It sucks, but I'm not sure there's a better option. Maybe the best we can do is try and structure a society where getting laid off from a decent job isn't so damaging and scary on a personal level.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#37I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I'd grab a copy of a magazine I've been wanting to read for a while. 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…
But the rest of the year, the stores are empty. Which validated the company's decision: why have a bunch of full time employees, when what it really needs is part time and flexible employees to handle holiday surges (probably caused by waiting for Amazon shipping to not be an option).
That doesn't seem to really validate the company's decision not to hire any seasonal workers.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
This makes me wonder why physical retail stores don't follow Apple's approach by developing an app so shoppers can self-check out.
The app would likely be more expensive to develop and maintain than hiring a few seasonal part-timers per store (2000 people at, let's face it, minimum wage for a month is about $4M that immediately converts to sales numbers just by being conscious enough to operate a register - that's cheaper than ~10 software devs in America (at least two of which are specialists - iOS/Android devs), a manager, an office, their equ…
Of all the criticisms one might make of Walmart, being slow to check people out I'd say would be about last on my list.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#39I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I'd grab a copy of a magazine I've been wanting to read for a while. 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…
But the rest of the year, the stores are empty. Which validated the company's decision: why have a bunch of full time employees, when what it really needs is part time and flexible employees to handle holiday surges (probably caused by waiting for Amazon shipping to not be an option).
Not the one near me (in Phoenix, near Arizona State University). It's a major anchor in a shopping center, and is busy every time I'm ever in there.
The employees are also really helpful. This Christmas, I was trying to find some books as a christmas gift, and the staff made a bunch of suggestions based on books that they had actually personally read.
Sidenote: finding appropriate books for 8-14 year old girls is really freaking hard.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#40Amazon's primary customer has shifted to the 3rd-party seller, i.e., it's not profit off water coolers that allows low prices. Looking at Amazon's financials, they make more profit off of selling advertising (lightning deals, search ads & "related" sponsored listings) than margin off sales. It really shows when you look at the lightning deals and find product after product with artificially inflated reviews. Amazon h…
> Hard to see how a traditional retailer can begin to compete with this.
Probably an administration actually interested in antitrust regulation.