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The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#71

Post by marzipan »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This 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 o…

Waterstones came back, and recently, too. [0] They're a similar company that faced similar issues - it CAN be done. This is about a lack of vision and will from the management to re-position the company, make hard cuts, and tap into the best things it had going for it. Stripping the company down to book value assets with no repurposing or new goal is what you do when you've given up and become a liquidator. Even "Kodakcoin" is a better plan.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/balancing-the-...

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#72

Post by ams6110 »

emodendroket wrote: post #63
ams6110 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying the arguments of the post are irrelevant. Sure they could have hired seasonal workers for the holidays, and maybe had better results, but either way they are doomed. I haven't bought a book at a retail outlet in probably 10 years. There's just nothing about the retail experience at B&N that's even worth the effort to drive there and park. It's not salvageable.

You don't think there is space in the United States' market for even a single major brick-and-mortar retailer of books? I find that pretty hard to believe.

Not really. Not for the long term. Certain independents and specialty shops -- sure. We still have record stores here and there, but the big chains are all gone.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#73

Post by cowpig »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #68
cowpig wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd probably be better off finding an executive who works for 100k/yr but believes in the company.

I doubt it. Belief and passion may be necessary, but they're not sufficient. How do you pick this person? Based on the strength of their belief? Because if it's based on their experience and track record, you're back to where you started: this person likely has better alternatives and is smart enough to want to be compensated for the opportunity cost they're incurring. Also, it's all well and good to say this when it…

I've done a lot of hiring, and have found that salary demands are weakly inversely proportional to performance.

That is to say, people whose salary demands are at the lower end of the salary range for that career have outperformed those whose demands are at the higher end.

My sample size is small but significant. Food for thought.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#74

Post by throwaway9980 »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #49
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This 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 o…

It's destructive, and Amazon can get away with being a crap book store now. I've ordered many thousands of dollars worth of computing books from them over the years. In the past six months, and especially the past couple months, "new" books come with massive creases, scuffs, and dents. Or a bad print with hard-to-read text. A copy you'd never buy in person, or B&N would knock something off the price because of the da…

“Even sweeter, those vendors don't sit on my order for a week for funsies like Amazon does if you resist their PRIME offering.”

What’s the deal with this? I turned off prime a couple of years ago and it certainly feels like they’re intentionally slow processing orders.

For books, I only buy used and try to pick nearby sellers. Often the media mail shipment will show up in 2-3 days. Pretty great.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#75

Post by Finnucane »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #31

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.

Never saw ebook book buying coming? What? In the '90s we were selling books for the Palm Pilot. I remember when a sample of the Rocket showed up at the office. We thought, hey, now maybe people will start buying ebooks!

I also remember when Amazon first started selling books online, and they were getting their data from Books in Print. Despite the name, BIP lists a lot of books that are not in print. Some effort was required to get them to clean up their data.

In those days, B&N was rapidly expanding their superstore system, and trying to drive out the independents by, you know, discounting. And we said, hey, once they've gotten rid of the competition, those discounts will go away. And they did.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#76

Post by metaobject »

purplezooey wrote: post #48

I likes this article. This point, though, seemed off: I would double-down on what we can offer that Amazon can’t: enthusiastic staff that can find and upsell books... But it's already been proven, sort of, that this isn't what people want, at least in sufficiently large numbers. That kind of underscores the difficulty of recovering this franchise.

"... find and upsell books"

What can be easier than using the Amazon search bar? And as far as upwelling goes, Amazon's ML-driven 'suggestions' algorithm results often seem to interest me.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#77

Post by sanderjd »

emodendroket wrote: post #63
ams6110 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying the arguments of the post are irrelevant. Sure they could have hired seasonal workers for the holidays, and maybe had better results, but either way they are doomed. I haven't bought a book at a retail outlet in probably 10 years. There's just nothing about the retail experience at B&N that's even worth the effort to drive there and park. It's not salvageable.

You don't think there is space in the United States' market for even a single major brick-and-mortar retailer of books? I find that pretty hard to believe.

I love wandering around in my local B&N and in my local independent bookstore, but I don't find it at all hard to believe that this sort of thing is a small niche that is not sustainable in the long run. I find it harder to believe that you find this hard to believe.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#78

Post by emodendroket »

ams6110 wrote: post #72
emodendroket wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think there is space in the United States' market for even a single major brick-and-mortar retailer of books? I find that pretty hard to believe.

Not really. Not for the long term. Certain independents and specialty shops -- sure. We still have record stores here and there, but the big chains are all gone.

Fye is still around.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#79

Post by barsonme »

aorloff wrote: post #9
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #2

Barnes and Noble did some dumb things as this article points out, but they are NOWHERE near what the CEO of Sears is doing. That is corporate malpractice, gross negligence, and perhaps high treason all rolled into one. Literally look up anything online for “Sears CEO is terrible” and you will get links from NY Times, WaPo, etc. Also with BN, I mean they were going up against one of the biggest most powerful companies…

For any company that can, increasing cash flow is a great way to proceed assuming you don't muck around with the balance sheet. Unfortunately, I don't see a way for BN to really do that, the sun set on their business a long, long time ago. Sure they could morph into some kind of WeWork/Starbucks thing, but its not like that's an open playing field begging for competition either.

For the record, I do like that idea. I recently started working remote, and while I like my office it's nice to go to a coffee shop and get out of the house for a while. But, the WiFi usually sucks and it can be too noisy. A quiet place with decent WiFi and coffee would be superb. I don't know what books other professions need, but it'd be pretty neat to go and checkout TAOCP (or something) and do some work for a while. Like a library meets coffee shop meets BYOD internet cafe, or something. Idk.
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