Building a cash reserve in the business is important, if you're hoping to sell the business in a leveraged buy-out.
Basically, someone buys B&N by using the B&N cash-at-hand as collateral.
The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
201–210 of 461 posts
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Meh. The older and more experienced I get the more I realize I work to put food in the table and to pay for my life outside. Working for “passion” is for suckers. As the dude in that one YouTube video about consulting says, fuck you. Pay me.
Pay me what market rate is and don’t give me sob stories about passion or making sacrifices to work on some life changing BS. Pay me.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the beginning, especially about the deck chairs as its an expression I often use. Let's be clear its people like me who killed Barnes and Noble not its executives. I have two or three sets of bookshelves downstairs in my office filled with books, many of which were bought at B&N. I spent hours sipping coffee in their cafe's. Then I bought my kindle. And I basically have not been back since. When I do buy…
The tragedy, for me, is that while I agree with most of what you've said and my transition to ebooks has been similar to yours, I've also begun realizing what we're losing by moving away from brick-and-mortar retail. I look back on my childhood in the 80s and 90s and remember retail as not only fulfilling the need of acquiring stuff but also as a central meeting place. Going downtown to buy stuff was an activity as m…
Yet on the flip side, here we are in the public square of HN having deep meaningful conversations about he world around us and sharing nostalgia. The future giveth and the future taketh.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#204Earlier 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…
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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#205I 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…
Just another case of business being penny smart and dollar dumb.
"Traditional" media did the exact same thing when faced with competition from the internet. They reduced the quality of their service & product when they saw a reduction in customers which only fueled a further reduction in customers, rinse and repeat til death.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Must depend on where you are, unless you’re making a broader point about their awfulness.
Every Walmart I've been to they're shuffling people out at pretty impressive speeds.
Next thing, you're going to tell me Santa is real ;). Every Walmart I've ever gone to, their checkout system is terribly slow.
Their self checkout is better but still gets overwhelmed easily.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#207Earlier 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…
Actually, I wonder if this is really true. The thing is, a company like Barnes and Noble needs to roll a hard six. Hiring an experienced, competent executive they can afford who wants to work there and ticks off all the boxes etc.. might not be in the cards for them.
B&N needs to think like a Startup again. Vision and dreams might be more important than a Harvard MBA and 10 years of experience at BigCo, Inc. Remember, Barnes and Noble is default bankrupt right now. Their situation in some ways is more like that of a startup that needs to raise capital fast or die than Amazon or Google. That means that barring drastic changes, their trajectory intersects with the ground. Why not take a big chance? Who's more likely to bet big, a young dreamer who wants $100K and a ton of stock, or the experienced executive who wants $5M a year and is going to get majorly paid no matter what happens? They're going to lose everything as it stands anyway.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Amazon has zero interest in fixing this because customers are its product not its customers. If you think 3rd party sellers are Amazons customers and get much better treatment than end buyers, boy are you barking up the wrong tree.
Not just any 3rd party seller, only the ones willing to systematically spend ad dollars to promote products. But even non-spending sellers send a lot of transaction revenue Amazon’s direction. You don’t get good treatment however because you're a disposable commodity. Treating you well doesn’t increase revenue.
Yeah, they have no trouble finding the next person in line or cutting their own deal to replace the supply they have kicked off for anything remotely high volume.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#209I 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.
It is one of those things people will say they want but when it comes to it won’t pay enough extra for it.
Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
#210Bezos 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?
Sweetheart, if you want me to serve as your surrogate imagination, it’s gonna cost you. Rest assured though that wealth would be created in the transaction.