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The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#311

Post by [deleted] »

avs733 wrote: post #294
eludwig wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning. Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been o…

>Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been ordered to do this (I assume) but knock it off already! Why should they? If they don't they will get fired. Business goes up or down that cashier doesn't get paid more or less...they have no incentive to risk their job for a customer. These companies are so obsessed with squeezing a nickle out of 5% of their customers because they can _measure_ that. Its 'impossible'…

[deleted]

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#312

Post by exhilaration »

rlonstein wrote: post #298
phil21 wrote: post #6

I 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…

> 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. This is a perfect instance for self-checkout kiosks. They're everywhere: big retailers like Target, chain groceries, national pharmacies, home improvement stores, and they're turning up in smaller places and…

There was an article posted 2 weeks ago on HN about how (some) stores are scaling back on self-checkout because it's causing their theft rates to rise: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16293747

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#313

Post by amygdyl »

wnevets wrote: post #205
phil21 wrote: post #6

I 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.

This is the case of the least denominator in management"thinking". If managers were legally liable to shareholders for obviously bad decisions that benefit to the managers, it might occur less. Only Sweden makes regular management liable in this way, even on criminal penalty. I see all manner of arguments why this could be used to excuse sclerosis in innovation, but frankly I don't see it that way.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#314

Post by vinceguidry »

spookthesunset wrote: post #202
cowpig wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ability to command market salary often depends on your willingness to move for a job. The labor market is not like the stock market.

So if you're supporting a family you may want a new approach for thinking about your career.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#315

Post by bluGill »

mattmanser wrote: post #244
wnevets wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It looks more like the idea that paying CEOs lots of money because they are worth it really isn't working. Because they aren't worth it.

A good CEO, of which there are a few are worth the money. There are a few cases (Steve Jobs comes to mind) where a new CEO has come in and turned a failing company around, or a new CEO has come in and tanked a great company. If a company finds such a great CEO who leads the company into making billions, then they are worth a lot of money as reward for their efforts.

Business schools have studied this. One of the strongest indications of a great CEO is how long they worked at the company before becoming CEO. The best CEOs started 20+ years ago and worked their way up the ladder (ie first job out of school). The worst CEOs were hired externally for the CEO role. There are exceptions that you can think of, but when a company brings in an outside CEO that should be a red flag: they don't have the internal development in place to make someone who knows the business the leader. Sadly investors have for the most part not caught onto this. (Warren Buffet knew is in the 1950s which is why he buys companies for their great leaders and keeps the leaders in place)

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#316

Post by emodendroket »

goofingaround wrote: post #212
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the author is saying is they used the “closer to customer” argument as a smoke screen to cover the fact that they performed a logisticextomy last year. The fact of the matter is logistic operations in the Midwest are favorable for the medium range retailer. In the post-warehouse age, when the book your NYC customer wants is in Seattle, you’re paying Zone 8 rates to USPS instead of Zone 3 from Indiana to NYC (or…

I don't see the logistics argument in the article. The article states i) distraction from in-store sales for employees, ii) removing inventory from store shelves, and iii) no credit for stores. The "stores don't get credit" argument is weak. The article implies that corporate is siphoning credit from stores to online. Sales are down 6% across the board. Samestore sales down 6.5%, online sales down 4.5%. Omnichannel d…

My understanding of the article was that they were poorly managing the inventory and therefore unnecessarily cannibalizing their own sales.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#317

Post by emodendroket »

natecavanaugh wrote: post #206
emodendroket wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a Walmart Super Center? I wonder if it has to do with store size.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#318

Post by notyourday »

When B&N decided not only not to compete with Amazon on books ("No, we will not price match these books". "Pay money to join our club to get a discount") but become a wacky showroom of wacky products ( sushi making kit, anyone? Would you like a reading lamp? Oh, wait, no, it is not a reading lamp, it is just a lamp that you could use for reading. How about our Nook thing? Not that we can run anything electronic ) it signed its own death sentence.

B&N stores were overstaffed.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#319

Post by deadmetheny »

Johnny555 wrote: post #145
pfisch wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we are pretty far from truly replacing truck drivers. There will be a long period where the truck driver is in the car but not really driving, maybe even a very long time depending on if it is enshrined in law. Even if the truck did drive itself, would it also load/unload and deal with flat tires and other vehicle damage conditions? I don't think these problems are insurmountable but I do think they will furt…

I think that replacing long-haul drivers will happen sooner than you think. Self-driving (though human monitored) trucks are already operating: https://www.wired.com/story/embark-self-driving-truck-delive... I think the first step will be replacing long-haul truck drivers with autonomous trucks, they'll start at a depo near a freeway and end at a depo at the other end, then a human will drive to make the local delive…

>Autonomous trucks will handle flats and other roadside breakdowns the same way many human drivers do -- pull over and wait for the repair service to come.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you clearly have no idea how the trucking industry works.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#320

Post by bluGill »

emodendroket wrote: post #38
awalton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't go into Walmart often, but I've never seen lines deeper than 2 people, other than at the self checkout (one line serves 6+ lanes so a longer line obviously moves faster). Depends on where you live of course.
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