The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble • Hacker News Board

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#361

Post by nkrisc » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

pboutros wrote: post #332

nkrisc wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a company that would keep such an executive on board deserves to fail.

Blaming the executive here makes sense. But saying the "company deserves to fail" ignores the livelihoods of everyone below that person in the hierarchy, who gets fired because mgmt has different incentives than the workers.

Perhaps if those lower in the hierarchy and society as a whole are constantly burned by businesses failing due to incompetent leadership, they might start to expect or demand something different. Socialism? Anarchy? Some kind of socially conscious capitalism? I don't know what form it will take, but it might be something different than what we have now.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#362

Post by greedo » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

loorinm wrote: post #183

Reading that Storytime guy’s tweet, I really wondered: Has this guy never taken a look at his situation and noticed something off? He works in a relaxing huge retail store reading books to kids for free, and makes above min wage and keeps his job for the next 20 years and supports 5 kids??? That’s insane, and completely abnormal. No one else with that same type of job has that kind of life. It reminds me of someone I…

Your comment is so uniformed. Relaxing? The guy is a receiving manager. That's a physically tough job, requires a high level of organization, and he still takes time to help on the book floor by doing storytime.

A receiving manager at B&N makes around $15-17/hour. If his partner works, that's a reasonable enough amount of money to live, but not in a high COL location. How is this abnormal?

What's abnormal is thinking that this is abnormal. $35k/year isn't a high salary.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#363

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

grogenaut wrote: post #323

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long time one in downtown, not sure if there is an Amazon building downtown. They closed the attached (real) Starbucks and now it lacks a cafe, even though the Starbucks was always busy the store was still kind of empty.

Yeah that's the one I'm thinking of. There are 2 starbucks one block up the hill to the transit center too, so basically 3 on that square block. It was too far down the hill for me to go to when I worked there.

Bellevue is saturated with starbucks, but very few that were open until 10PM like the one in B&N was (actually, only the Lodge and the original Bellevue store are open late). It was the place for students to hang out studying, but now...there really isn't much to replace it.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#364

Post by bbarn » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

Barnes and Noble and Borders effectively destroyed the independent book stores of the nation, because at the time they had a better business model. I don't have a lot of sympathy for their business model getting the same treatment from the internet sales model.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#365

Post by sli » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

eludwig wrote: post #260

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…

>>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…

I aggressively avoid buying books on Amazon, mostly for the reasons listed in the article, but between BAM and B&N, I will always go to a local bookstore instead. They don't grill me for PII at the register, for one.

Overall the whole experience is way better. Finding a book is a tiny bit harder (emphasis on tiny), but honestly, I'm not in a hurry when I'm in a bookstore, so I don't care.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#366

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

tnolet wrote: post #236

ekianjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens in a lot of places. The shopping experience may be nice but the actual payment experience is atrocious. Honestly if I have to wait more than 10 minutes to pay for something, I just don't buy anything, or purchase online instead. Even if there are long queues, there are many ways you could improve the experience - for example get an automatic ticket to get "in line" in the system, and get called when it's…

Many train stations in the Netherlands have book and magazine shops with "self checkout". Basically a scanner & screen like you see at Ikea. Works great in rush hour when these places are packed with people buying morning newspapers and such.

Things like this are why I love Apple's self-checkout system at its stores. No need to even go to a checkout; just scan the item with your phone, and it's paid for.

I sometimes feel like a shoplifter on my way out, but nobody's ever looked at me sideways.

More than once I've decided to pick up an adapter or headphones or a hard drive at the Apple Store instead of Fry's or Best Buy or Target because of the iPhone checkout.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#367

Post by mwexler » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #331

totalZero wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A long history of good things adds up in one's mind. If your employer has benefited you, it's hard to maintain a mentality of pure rational self-interest.

Yep. Some employers are really good to their employees, even if they do layoffs and downsizing. One place I worked had an employee with terminal cancer, in the later stage he told them he'd never be able to come back to work but they kept him on the payroll anyway so he didn't lose his health insurance, right up until the day he died. Doesn't mean they didn't also close unprofitable locations and lay employees off so…

And until this is not the exception but the rule, we continue to be amazed by stories like this.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#368

Post by CodeWriter23 » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

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…

It’s an illustration, not an argument. The prior deletion of the logistics operation illustrates the company has been on the chopping block / raider mode for some time.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#369

Post by ryandrake » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

skywhopper wrote: post #307

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…

Not only are they ordered to do it but corporate puts requirements on the store as to how many joins they are expected to get each day, and cashiers have their own individual quotas and they get chewed out if they don’t meet them by managers who get chewed out for not meeting them. The fact that this behavior reduces sales throughput, employee productivity, and customer satisfaction are not worked into the analysis t…

If you're lucky you just get chewed out. My wife used to work retail and in one store, you had to push credit cards, often to people who really should not have another one. If you failed to meet your quota you get a warning the first time and then fired the second time.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#370

Post by mwexler » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #253

It would probably help some if their website didn't GIVE YOU LINKS to places you can buy the book you are looking at for less. I was looking up a book I'm thinking of buying, and right below the customer reviews section on the page they have a Google ads block, and the first ad was for the book at thriftbooks.com. The ad touted it for cheap used there, but clicking it also shows they have it new, too, for $25 (B&N on…

When I was at BN around 7 years ago or so, we were experimenting with this capability on the site, and we had some processes like 1) rules around allowing no competitive sales ads and 2) if the probability of purchase calced by a set of models was higher than the estimated ad revenue, we supressed ads. This worked really well, in that "browsers" who tended to visit and not buy on the site (and who, based on models combining digital and loyalty card data, were not expected to go to a store) might see ads (non-competitive, so no other booksellers, for example) and every visit, even non-purchasers, had some chance of revenue on the visit.

Obviously, we knew that many visits are shopping visits on the journey to buy in a later visit or at store, so the models needed maturing, but the concept had legs.

But as BN looked to add 3rd party sellers of the same products they offered in store and on site (ala amazon, ebay, etc.) and with the myriad leadership changes, clearly they went away from our original approach... And you wind up with this comment's experience.