Well I hope B&N will do better than Sears, Toys R Us, and RadioShack after they were taken private and saddled with unsustainable debt.
Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
51–60 of 197 posts
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#52So, before we doom and gloom about B&N, it's important to remember that independent bookstores are doing great! https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-independent-bookstores-haved-... So why is Barnes and Nobles struggling? A couple of important points: Their inventory and footprint IS HUGE. Large inventory with low turnover is a margin-killer in retail. And I doubt they make much money off the books in their shelves - real…
>before we doom and gloom about B&N, it's important to remember that independent bookstores are doing great
It’s funny watching a movie like You’ve Got Mail today when the trend was reversed. That movie hasn’t aged well for many reasons now that I think about it.
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's confusing? Shipping a book from a warehouse is cheaper and maintaining a website is cheaper than setting up and selling from a physical store. If I order a book online, I don't want to subsidize the walk in customers.
I can’t think of any other retailer that does this. Best Buy, Walmart, Famous Footwear, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. all honor the same prices in person as they do online.
Best Buy got in to legal trouble because they'd point 'bestbuy.com' from within the store to a different online store with prices that matched the in-store prices (i.e. higher prices).
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
And still, nearly all retailers have adopted a price-matching policy that matches not just their own website, but competitors as well. There's really not a good reason for their in-store price to be higher than their online price in 2019.
Not sure if you are aware, but matching competitor prices is actually anti-consumer. It's counterintuitive but it means that your competitors won't lower the price on the first place. Kinda like implicit price fixing.
It's actually not - if a competitor thinks it can sell more widgets at a lower price and make it up in the increase volume, they will lower the price. If that's the price which maximizes revenue for them, they'll leave it. It's straight forward supply and demand.
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's confusing? Shipping a book from a warehouse is cheaper and maintaining a website is cheaper than setting up and selling from a physical store. If I order a book online, I don't want to subsidize the walk in customers.
What makes it confusing is that you can check local store inventory online, order online at the online price and pickup in an hour from the store. However if you grab the book yourself from the physical store and save them a step, they absolutely won’t honor the online price. You have to order online and wait an hour while they take the book off the shelf for you. Or you get exasperated with the ridiculousness of the…
If you pick it up directly from the store you pay for the convenience of having the item right now.
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's confusing? Shipping a book from a warehouse is cheaper and maintaining a website is cheaper than setting up and selling from a physical store. If I order a book online, I don't want to subsidize the walk in customers.
What makes it confusing is that you can check local store inventory online, order online at the online price and pickup in an hour from the store. However if you grab the book yourself from the physical store and save them a step, they absolutely won’t honor the online price. You have to order online and wait an hour while they take the book off the shelf for you. Or you get exasperated with the ridiculousness of the…
I feel like the response then is to get the manager and do so in front of them.
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's confusing? Shipping a book from a warehouse is cheaper and maintaining a website is cheaper than setting up and selling from a physical store. If I order a book online, I don't want to subsidize the walk in customers.
What makes it confusing is that you can check local store inventory online, order online at the online price and pickup in an hour from the store. However if you grab the book yourself from the physical store and save them a step, they absolutely won’t honor the online price. You have to order online and wait an hour while they take the book off the shelf for you. Or you get exasperated with the ridiculousness of the…
They don't want to make to convenient for you to get the online price at the store. They want to force your to the extra step of ordering and waiting.
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
the value of the book doesn't change depending on its distribution channel
Absolutely does. The experience of going to a bookstore, browsing through the shelves, perhaps reading a few pages while sitting on a comfortable couches, perhaps talking to a knowledgeable salesperson about books (or life or anything), definitely has value. And I believe that value is greater than the convenience of ordering books online and then having to wait a 1-14 days for the book to deliver.
> perhaps talking to a knowledgeable salesperson about books
You aren’t likely to talk to a knowledgeable salesperson at a chain bookseller, as generally they are not big book fans. They just needed a job, and these chains will hire just about anyone who can competently work their POS systems.
I can understand certain independent bookshops having great additional value to customers because their proprietors and the other clerks were voracious readers. However, for Borders/Barnes & Noble/Waldenbooks, and various other US chains, their staff has been generally unable to talk in any depth on books since at least the 1990s when I first visited them.
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#59TIL Barnes and Noble still exists. I haven't seen one in what feels like a decade.
B&N is surprisingly one of the few private establishments available in the US for the simple pleasure of going in for a nice sit without feeling an obligation to purchase something. Would be a shame to see them go.
They made it a little too comfortable. I'd remember their cafe would have students sitting there studying or reading store books for hours. Meanwhile customers ordering food would have no space to sit down and eat. At some point they sold those cafe to a third party which modified the layout so tables were tall and narrow so less comfortable for studying.
Re: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683M
#60Last year I wanted to buy Thinking in Bets (great book, btw). I was feeling impatient, so I looked it up on Barnes and Noble's website, and saw that a store where I was had it in stock. I went in to purchase it, and the price in store was a couple bucks higher than the listed price online. I asked the clerk about it, and he kind of shrugged and said he couldn't do anything about it. I walked out without the book and…
I can’t fathom the decision-making that led to spending the time to go down to the store for some instant gratification and then leaving over a $2 difference.