31–40 of 83 posts
“Mr. Ruis is planning a major expansion in categories such as cookware, tech gadgets and beauty products. “It’s not four or five things; it’s about 400 or 500 that we’re busily beavering away, trying to bring them to market,” he says, sitting in a boardroom at Indigo’s Toronto offices.”
https://paulwells.substack.com/p/the-rideau-centre-indigo-st...
I wish they served beer and wine there.
The Waterstones bookshop on Tottenham Court Road, London, has a coffee shop and bar in the basement. It's very comfortable and pleasant, although I haven't been in for about five years now.
It's always nice to read about their "comeback" story. There are no BN stores in the UK or I think it would be worth visiting. I guess our equivalent is Waterstones? But no idea if they've been going through similar moves to appeal to customers.
Since he embarked on the Barnes & Noble redesign in 2020, Mr. Daunt has demonstrated that consistency doesn’t rank very high on his priority list. New York City has nine Barnes & Noble stores featuring four different logos above the front doors. A lot of brands benefit from uniformity, knowing that your coffee or burger at Starbucks/McDonalds/wherever is functionally the same in Tokyo or Toronto. I think book stores…
If nothing else, uniformity doesn't add as much value to a brand that isn't selling its own product. Nobody really worries that the copy of a book they buy in one shop will be different to a copy bought in another. There are likely some benefits to consistency, like a familiar store layout or knowing that a shop will stock a good range of books, but these are kind of ancillary to the product (and my experience is tha…
In a sign that this works, there used to be a few actual Waterstones branches in Dublin, too, but they didn't survive the general decline in the bookselling industry.
I think Waterstones also own a couple of formerly independent shops in London where they've left the branding and operations alone, for similar reasons.
(From the article, the new Barnes and Noble chief exec previously ran Waterstones.)
Since he embarked on the Barnes & Noble redesign in 2020, Mr. Daunt has demonstrated that consistency doesn’t rank very high on his priority list. New York City has nine Barnes & Noble stores featuring four different logos above the front doors. A lot of brands benefit from uniformity, knowing that your coffee or burger at Starbucks/McDonalds/wherever is functionally the same in Tokyo or Toronto. I think book stores…
I wish they served beer and wine there.
I wish they sold BOOKS. My local B&N (15 miles north of Philly) has converted 25% of shelf space to toys. The tradeoff: just 2 shelves of computer-related books, now titled "Technology", most of which are about using Windows or Office. Does this trend reflect the dumbing down of B&N or its customers?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
....or does it reflect how we consume our information about technology these days? How quickly are tech-books out of date?
VLSI design books written in the 1990s/2000s are still relevant today. This is one of the areas which are arguably at the forefront of knowledge advancement, and yet the tools of the trade, concepts, languages are still the same.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice to hear of a fund that is reviving a beloved brand and not raiding it in this cynical world.
I don't have hard evidence but I suspect this is more common than you think, it's just we only read about the failures or the aggressive raiding stories (because they make juicier stories).
Further, I'd observe that most of the companies getting bought by funds for turnaround are.. in need of a turnaround. So many of them were on the path to failing if left to their own devices anyhow.
That said there are structural legal/tax issues that benefit "corporate raiders" in these these take-private deals.
I wish they served beer and wine there.
I wish they sold BOOKS. My local B&N (15 miles north of Philly) has converted 25% of shelf space to toys. The tradeoff: just 2 shelves of computer-related books, now titled "Technology", most of which are about using Windows or Office. Does this trend reflect the dumbing down of B&N or its customers?
And for more complex matters, a good youtube video is superior. Modern software can have extremely complex interfaces. It's much easier to follow along with a Blender video than to gain the same knowledge from a book.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
....or does it reflect how we consume our information about technology these days? How quickly are tech-books out of date?
VLSI design books written in the 1990s/2000s are still relevant today. This is one of the areas which are arguably at the forefront of knowledge advancement, and yet the tools of the trade, concepts, languages are still the same.