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The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#161

Post by [deleted] »

visarga wrote: post #149
ivraatiems wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Maybe we need to acknowledge that we're moving towards having a society where "everyone has a job that earns them their living" is untenable, because there will be less work for humans to do than humans to do it, and we…

> Maybe we need to acknowledge that we're moving towards having a society where "everyone has a job that earns them their living" is untenable No, we need a society that guarantees everyone a job, a job that will generate the income necessary for survival. We shouldn't give up agency and become simple wards of the state, waiting hand stretched ahead for the UBI to fall from the crumblings at the tech billionaires tab…

[deleted]

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#162

Post by grogenaut »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #107
blhack wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

It’s weird, but some stores are thriving and others are dying. The one in downtown Santa Monica Ca is super crowded whenever I went there, while the one in downtown Bellevue WA is super dead. My impression of B&N changes quickly....

you mean the one in bellevue near the new amazon building in bellevue across the lake from amazon hq1? I'm not sure that's the best store to example off of.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#163

Post by dragonwriter »

so33 wrote: post #3

In Canada, Indigo is a chain of bookstores just like B&N. To counter the threat of Amazon, they have dedicated a large amount of their stores’ square footage to a lifestyle concept that sells aesthetically pleasing stationery, home goods, and gifts. AFAICT this has allowed them to keep afloat and they do still sell quite a bit of books.

> To counter the threat of Amazon, they have dedicated a large amount of their stores’ square footage to a lifestyle concept that sells aesthetically pleasing stationery, home goods, and gifts.

B&N does that, too.

Plus the in-store café.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#164

Post by jrmg »

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…

Maybe the books you buy are way more esoteric than ones I do, but I’ve been very happy with Alibris for used books.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#165

Post by twtw »

jamiesonbecker wrote: post #160

'The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (the "WARN Act") is a US labor law which protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 calendar-day advance notification of plant closings and mass layoffs of employees, as defined in the Act.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini... It's sad that old-school…

"The WARN Act also is not activated when the following coverage thresholds are unmet:

If a plant closing or a mass layoff results in fewer than 50 workers losing their jobs at a single employment site;"

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#166

Post by tytytytytytytyt »

mrbrowning wrote: post #136
comicjk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What experience in literature are you referring to? Do many people ask Barnes and Noble employees for book recommendations?

Well, that’s the point of the article, isn’t it? The long-time employees that were laid off were almost certainly there out of love of their wares, and the parent business could have put the work into making value out of that distinguishing fact. But beyond that, they had institutional knowledge, both of how the business works and what their customers want. I know it’s hard to imagine that retail work could involve a…

> and the parent business could have put the work into making value out of that distinguishing fact

The fact that you can easily make vague pontifications about what else they might have done doesn't mean that any of those things are actually viable for the business.

> I know it’s hard to imagine that retail work could involve any amount of skill or knowledge, but this is no doubt a loss of value.

But probably not enough value to be worth keeping them on staff, unless they did the layoffs on whim, like you seem to think. It is possible that they examined a lot of scenarios and are privy to a fair amount of relevant details to which the public isn't.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#167

Post by hueving »

mrep wrote: post #143
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…

Haha, you literally just came upon the realization for the economic use cases for unemployment benefits and also the main reason our government has one. You should read some economic textbooks as the world will make a whole lot more sense once you do.

This post is condescending without any real substance. "Read some economic books" is not meaningful in the context of one particular government safety net.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#168

Post by ryanwaggoner »

mrbrowning wrote: post #109

Bezos cheerleaders and their ilk never seem to be willing to acknowledge that creating wealth is much harder than extracting it, and either out of bad faith or naivety will misidentify ventures that specialize in the latter as being exemplars of the former. In this case, we have the incalculable loss of so many person-years of experience in a deep topic, literature, that’s being shrugged away as a case of the market…

I'll bite: what's an example of wealth creation that's fundamentally different from what Amazon is doing?

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#169

Post by dragonwriter »

zerotolerance wrote: post #80

Barnes and Noble had a huge high-margin section, just like Best Buy did... their ridiculous physical video and music section. I think the availability of streaming services did as much to hurt those "book" stores as reasonable competition from Amazon.

> Barnes and Noble had a huge high-margin section, just like Best Buy did... their ridiculous physical video and music section.

They didn't have that as a large section until deep into the time Amazon was eating their book sales; I'm pretty sure it was a response to the competition from Amazon.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#170

Post by jamiesonbecker »

twtw wrote: post #165
jamiesonbecker wrote: post #160

'The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (the "WARN Act") is a US labor law which protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 calendar-day advance notification of plant closings and mass layoffs of employees, as defined in the Act.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini... It's sad that old-school…

"The WARN Act also is not activated when the following coverage thresholds are unmet: If a plant closing or a mass layoff results in fewer than 50 workers losing their jobs at a single employment site;"

Good catch, thanks.
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