TL;DR: Slash costs (i.e. fire tons of people, discontinue unprofitable stock) and target stores better for their demographics.
I've spent a lot of time in both B&N and Waterstones. B&N has a lot of problems Waterstones never had even ahead of bankruptcy:
- The stores are too big. 1/2 of a B&N store is tat, reference books, niche stock, a Nook display area, and other nonsense. You could cut almost all B&N stores in half and not notice as a customer.
- They place them poorly. B&N is perfect for foot traffic. But B&Ns are typically located as drive-up "out of town" shopping. Somewhere you need to go to intentionally. They need to be in malls.
- No good Nook tie-in for the stores. My SO often goes into B&N and looks at books, and then says "I'll buy it on my Nook later." They should have made an agreement with the publishers YEARS ago: When you buy a physical book, you get the Nook book included.
- The children's area is really nice, but poorly leveraged. No classes, no reading groups, no reason to come in. Stay at home parents WANT a reason to get out of the house, you offer a free reading group for small kids, the parents will buy the books after the group.
- Atmosphere in the coffee shop is bad. Waterstones feels like a nice little swanky coffee shop, somewhere you'd go and work on your novel, B&N's coffee shop feels like a generic coffee shop at the airport.
- B&Ns has no brand, and keeps making it worse. 3D printers, toys, Nooks, what is it that B&Ns is? They're all over the place, and now when you go into a B&N store you'll never know what they'll be pushing this week.
I think B&N will go under. I just don't think the management is very good, and every attempt they make to right the ship makes it worse. The whole business needs to be restructured.
> The children's area is really nice, but poorly leveraged. No classes, no reading groups, no reason to come in. Stay at home parents WANT a reason to get out of the house, you offer a free reading group for small kids, the parents will buy the books after the group.
I think this is really important. Stay-at-home parents want to get out, and free things are always welcome. Have daily reads + arts and crafts (simple coloring sheets is probably enough) with a small discount on the book-of-the-day is probably enough. I don't think it would even cost the store that much to run.
Michael's and Home Depot do weekly parent-child activities, and those you have to pay for, and I love taking my kids to them. Much easier than trying to figure out something to do at home.
A local theater had a "cheap kids movies" thing during the summer, where they showed older kids' movies for a dollar or two. My wife took our kids to those, and it's a lot of fun, even if those movies we could have seen on Netflix at home. The theater is just different, and it's refreshing to leave the house.
Parents like these things, and (IMO) it probably brings your utilization of the store up, since during the middle of the weekday you're not going to get a lot of traffic.
Plus, as far as children's books go, physical books are way, way better than ebooks. I might even go as far to say that ebooks will never replace children's books.
> Plus, as far as children's books go, physical books are way, way better than ebooks. I might even go as far to say that ebooks will never replace children's books.
For me there is a log of nostalgia around going to Borders with my parents as a child. Regarding the eBook thing you may be correct, but for me they already have replaced real books. For 5 dollars a month through an app on iPad my kid gets access to thousands of children's books on-demand ranging from a direct page-for-page port to something more interactive with sound, interactions, and video. I, for one, welcome our e-book overlords.
I suppose regarding children's books I should have tempered that with "all children's books". There's a category of children's book that provides a tactile experience that ebooks/apps cannot match (e.g., "The Very Hungry Caterpillar")
(FWIW, you can get a "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" app, but it's a different experience, being an interactive toy. Not worse, not better, just different. It appears to nicely complement, not replace, the book.)
Also I think the UK has more foot traffic. There are certainly places in the US that generate enough foot traffic to support a bookstore, but the European market for foot traffic is much bigger.
B&N needs to quit adding "new stuff" to failing stores, as it's just not enough to make people want to go vs shopping on Amazon, and shutter them instead. Maintain a smaller but better brand.
This is my local Waterstones: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2351971,-0.5749889,3a,15y,... (next to the Nero). You can see the amount of foot traffic that it could conceivably get, and after killing off Ottakars it’s the only book store in town (ignoring WH Smith’s top 20 section). It’s 3 stories tall and contains a Costa coffee shop with no music playing.
>But B&Ns are typically located as drive-up "out of town" shopping. Somewhere you need to go to intentionally. They need to be in malls.
Malls are dying in the US, though. The only malls that remain successful these days feature more upscale products in affluent areas that people want to see in person before purchasing. For everything else, shoppers seem to prefer your outlet style strip malls where there's less crowding and inconvenience. Or if they can wait a day or two, just order it online.
Are they? Anecdotally, I'm in St. Louis and Houston regularly and every mall I know of in both cities has always been busy every time I've been to it in the past five years. The more upscale malls in Houston are actually so busy that I can't bear to go more than once or twice a year, and I'll usually take Uber when I do because parking is so congested and difficult. Granted, these are both relatively large cities, so perhaps that's a factor here.
No, but that's a point that a certain type of person likes to push. As this article [1] starts, "maybe it's that reporters don't like malls". You could add "and Hacker News commenters" after "reporters" there.
Yes, but for every Galleria or Woodlands Mall there's a number of malls like Greenspoint or Northwest, losing anchor stores and becoming very low quality. Even malls like Deerbrook, which while still containing mainstream stores and staying pretty busy, are very obviously becoming run down.
Well, to be fair, Greenspoint (also affectionately called "Gunspoint") is not exactly a thriving area. I don't think it's surprising that a mall in a run-down area might be run-down.
It wasn't always that way - it was originally intended to be a thriving area (see the office buildings in the area), but during development, the economy went sideways.
As the linked article says, it does vary with higher-end malls tending to be in better shape. This matches my personal experience. One local mall that counts a Penney's and a Sears among its primary anchors doesn't seem to be in great shape. But if I go into Boston, something like Copley Place seems to do just fine. The shopping malls across the border in NH also seem to be regularly packed but that's something of a special situation because of sales tax.
From this article http://www.wsj.com/articles/shrinking-u-s-shopping-malls-get... it seems that the industry consensus is that malls are "overbuilt", not necessarily dying as in long-term trend. So we're seeing a correction, not necessarily a long-term slump.
> outlet style strip malls where there's less crowding and inconvenience
"Dying" problem and "crowding" problem seem to be mutually exclusive in a Yogi Berra kind of way.
A couple of B&N shops around here are in malls. I have no idea if that's better for sales or not, but they seem overall just as dreadful as the non-mall B&N locations.
I greatly enjoy books, and bookstores, and have shelves of books in my home. I guess I'm not the kind of customer B&N wants.
> The only malls that remain successful these days feature more upscale products in affluent areas that people want to see in person before purchasing.
If physical bookstores are to have any hope of surviving then books need to be exactly that kind of product.
> If physical bookstores are to have any hope of surviving then books need to be exactly that kind of product.
Physical books are exactly that kind of product, but there are precious few malls that meet that description, and the rents are very high. And the communities where they exist also tend to be communities where B&N has stores (though not always in the malls, though sometimes on the same lot and sharing foot traffic). I'd be very surprised if there's any real evidence that there is a profit opportunity for B&N being missed by tieing itself more to malls, there or anywhere else.
Agreed, but that becomes even more difficult with shifting trends in how people spend their free time. I'm disgusted by the number of people I know who actually boast about how few books they've read.
In the UK, malls are one of the places that Waterstones has done so well in. They're also the type of place that WH Smith seems to be (somewhat) surviving in, despite an incredibly poor reputation.
Maybe Barnes and Noble could do well over here. I mean, they can't really be any worse than Smith's in terms of quality, can they? I think they could do decently well in say, Lakeside or Bluewater.
The management is horrible. They're out of touch with the individual stores, push questionable initiatives, constantly reshuffle areas, have poor inventory management, and their IT is roughly 1995. They have plans to cut the number of stores, but they're not being aggressive enough. If they had strong leadership, they'd focus on customer experience; create a nice place for people to spend time enjoying books, not chasing the latest and greatest tech fad.
B&N will linger on, since they have no real competition anymore with the demise of Borders. People still buy physical books, and book readers still like to visit bookstores. But the long term outlook is probably a 50% reduction in stores.
Oh, and they pay their employees like shit, though all retail does to some extent.
B&N's coffee shop is a generic coffee shop. At my (now closed) local B&N, it was a Starbucks. With very little seating. And too loud pop music. It was not a place somebody would ever go to sit and read a chapter of the latest novel.
It's interesting , do you think B&N is well aware of all these shortcomings yet they don't do anything(for whatever reason) or the management is not or doesn't care?
Isn't knowing exactly who customers are and what they want the priority of any business? (one might argue sometimes customers don't know what the want)
They have to know, right? If not, they're incompetent.
Of course, the current CEO presided over Toys R Us as they fell into oblivion and ended up purchased by Bain Capital. And Sears Canada, another example of failed "big box" retail shopping.
>At my (now closed) local B&N, it was a Starbucks.
It was probably a Branded Solutions Food Service store (http://www.starbucks.com/business the Food Service option, not a Licensed Store or Starbuck Office Coffee delivery service) that served Starbucks brands from the "We Proudly Serve Starbucks Coffee" portfolio.
Or it may have been a real store (licensed); I can't say for certain.
The B&N I live near also has a "Starbucks" inside it, except it is actually one of the food service branded stores on closer inspection. It doesn't take the Starbucks app or giftcards, small signs with the prominent mermaid logo have the smaller "We Proudly Serve" print instead of "Starbucks", etc.
I think the Starbucks that are inside Target stores are also these sorts of arrangements.
My B&N had this "Branded Solutions Food Service" coffee. It was not a good experience. They didn't have the usual Starbucks coffees and it wasn't even hot.
Starbucks never operated coffee shops in B&N. B&N runs the shops entirely, and just uses Starbucks coffee and recipes. Try using a SB gift card at a B&N coffee shop and you'll see.
Regardless, my comments about the atmosphere hold. The coffee product was overpriced and mediocre. The seating was next to non-existent. And the music selection and volume were annoying. It was not a comfy place to sit and read.
Not all Starbucks coffee shops are generic. Some of them have really nice layouts with cozy corners and comfortable couches and they play jazz or classical music at reasonable volumes. But those tend to be in high-end areas, and B&N is definitely not high-end.
> Not all Starbucks coffee shops are generic. Some of them
> have really nice layouts
It may just be one of the generics that you like - they have I think four different styles (not exact layouts, but upholstery themes).
Quite a good idea IMO - allows them to better fit the area as you say, also make two nearby shops a bit different, while also keeping all the benefits of a common theme(s): bulk buying, easy and fast replacement, maintaining brand, etc.
Coffee business is about margins though - as long as people kept buying $3.50 cups that cost 25c to make (excluding labor), it might have been a good business.
> B&N's coffee shop is a generic coffee shop. At my (now closed) local B&N, it was a Starbucks.
It's not really a Starbucks in the same sense as the standalone coffee shops of that name (nor is it specific to a particular local store); they've licensed the branding and beverage product line from Starbucks on a chain-wide basis (their food products are not Starbucks lines, but from other sources.)
They used to. From 1987 to 2010, B&N owned a mall bookstore chain called B. Dalton. There were in every mall, but then B&N decided they didn't need that market anymore, so they liquidated the stores and killed the Dalton brand.
There actually are a few full-size B&N stores in some malls, but only a few malls have them, and they're typically positioned as anchors.
To be fair, those B. Dalton stores were tiny. No way they could compete in the general-sales arena with so few shelves, when Amazon arrived with orders of magnitude more titles at lower prices and quick delivery, and drive-to or anchor bookstores were so nearby. They worked when bookstores were few and far between, and malls were the new place everyone went, but not when vast & cheaper alternatives arrived nearby and mall foot traffic turned to a less academic clientele.
I bought my first Goosebumps books at my local B. Dalton. I have no idea why they closed it...I felt like it was the perfect size. Or maybe that's just nostalgia talking.
> They used to. From 1987 to 2010, B&N owned a mall bookstore chain called B. Dalton. There were in every mall, but then B&N decided they didn't need that market anymore, so they liquidated the stores and killed the Dalton brand.
B Dalton was (as were other mall located bookstores at the same time) in decline when B&N bought them; the format was visibly on the way out even before online competition.
> - They place them poorly. B&N is perfect for foot traffic. But B&Ns are typically located as drive-up "out of town" shopping. Somewhere you need to go to intentionally. They need to be in malls.
There's slight confirmation bias as before 2011 it was Borders who would follow the Starbucks strategy for real estate - sign a lease on the place with the most foot traffic (in US it was typical to see Borders shops close to train stations, major urban shopping centers, malls, etc.)
Borders went bankrupt, and B&N is not that flush with cash to overtake their leases (which makes me wonder if expensive leases combined with relatively fixed margins on books are sustainable), but that was likely the reason B&N would not compete for prime real estate.
> The stores are too big. 1/2 of a B&N store is tat, reference books, niche stock, a Nook display area, and other nonsense. You could cut almost all B&N stores in half and not notice as a customer.
> They place them poorly. B&N is perfect for foot traffic. But B&Ns are typically located as drive-up "out of town" shopping. Somewhere you need to go to intentionally. They need to be in malls.
The smaller, mall-located brick and mortar bookstores were unsupportable even when B&N was doing well -- B&N even bought several of them and continued to operate them under their old names for a while, attempting to leverage connections to B&N's loyalty programs, online presence, and other relevant strengths to make them viable.
I think the theory here has been fairly well tested and proven false.
> The children's area is really nice, but poorly leveraged. No classes, no reading groups, no reason to come in. Stay at home parents WANT a reason to get out of the house, you offer a free reading group for small kids, the parents will buy the books after the group.
Most B&N's I've seen have events in the children's section; I just checked one of my local stores, and they have children's storytime weekly.
> Atmosphere in the coffee shop is bad. Waterstones feels like a nice little swanky coffee shop, somewhere you'd go and work on your novel, B&N's coffee shop feels like a generic coffee shop at the airport.
IME, "coffee shop atmosphere" varies considerably among B&Ns (for those that even have coffee shops).
> B&Ns has no brand, and keeps making it worse. 3D printers, toys, Nooks, what is it that B&Ns is? They're all over the place, and now when you go into a B&N store you'll never know what they'll be pushing this week.
I think B&N, like many stores, has decided that focusing on a narrow product range is less viable than targeting interests of a particular demographic. This is not a completely insane idea, but do I think Waterstones' strategy of keeping the book focus and letting each store target locally is better.
> I think the theory here has been fairly well tested and proven false.
Only if we assume that store size and location at the ONLY metrics used to determine success. Not atmosphere, product selection, store layout, consumer demand, competition, and price.
You cannot say for sure why that specific attempt failed. Nor can I.
Our local B&N is the size of Toys R Us (same plot), and while Toys R Us makes good use of their floor space, it feels like half of the B&N is populated (e.g. fiction section) while the other half is a desert wasteland (reference, Nook showcase, etc).
And considering how much rent costs around here, I can only imagine how much B&N could save by re-designing the stores into a smaller plot. Or heck move it into a plot with more foot traffic, and the same popular selection.
Back in the days when Borders was still around, I constantly found myself wishing there was some way to scan my member card or use an app to send books to my Kindle. There were so many times I'd find an interesting book while browsing, but avoid purchasing because I didn't want another book taking up space. Sometimes I'd make a note and buy it on Amazon later, but other times I would just forget.
> - The stores are too big. 1/2 of a B&N store is tat, reference books, niche stock, a Nook display area, and other nonsense.
That was the same with Waterstones. They just decided to kill all that stuff. None of the stores stocks any references or similar things.
I think Waterstones just generally benefits from having really good locations and tailoring them to the audience. But that requires good stores in the first place. Not every company has that luxury.
> They should have made an agreement with the publishers YEARS ago: When you buy a physical book, you get the Nook book included.
It's not for lack of trying, but publishers have to play ball. They've had a few programs where you could buy a physical book and pay $x extra for the ebook, but the process has been cumbersome and the publisher-set additional cost too high.
Insightful, and chimes absolutely with my experience.
I live near Oxford, UK, where we have the peerless Blackwells, an academic-biased but broad-based bookshop (http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/stores/oxford-bookshop/about...) where you can literally get lost for an afternoon. I would typically walk straight past Waterstones on the way there.
Now, since the Daunt era began, I spend almost as much time in Waterstones as I do in Blackwells. Waterstones is where I go if I want to be surprised with a new book I haven't yet heard of. The 'new titles' displays on the ground floor often showcase books from smaller publishers which I'd never have found myself. "Curated" is an overused word these days, but it's exactly what they're doing, and doing well.
What the article doesn't mention is that Waterstones, under previous ownership, took over other good UK bookshop chains - notably Ottakars and Dillons. This was generally met with rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, because Waterstones at the time was the lowest common denominator High Street bookshop. But Waterstones now is better than I remember Ottakars or Dillons ever being.
I remember when Borders (another bookshop chain) went bankrupt and they closed down the Oxford branch. By the time I reached it, they were desperately trying to sell trash books at any price, just to make back money. They were also begging people to buy the shelving.
I remember when that place was awesome, and I spent many happy hours there. I was devastated to see it go, but yeah, in the end it had hollowed out to garbage, stationery, and toilet humor. Bleh.
I'm sure the coffee shop there was put in tourist guides as a good place to sit down all day... rarely did I see a coffee bought, just students with large piles of books in front of them
Your last paragraph is exactly right. I remember the local Ottakar's changing to an at-the-time shabbier, down-market Waterstones.
Today, when I go home there's a clean-fronted Waterstones that's warm and pleasant. My memory of Ottakar's is distinctly drabber; dirty even, worn out.
B&N is really suffering from a way bigger problem in the US: The death of retail. Other than a few big cities, the cost of going to a store in the US is far higher than in Europe, just because e have to actively go to a store, instead of passing them on the way to work. This is what made American stores into big boxes: Since people had to make specific trips to the store, it paid to make them big, fill them up with lots of inventory, and make them service large areas.
But then the internet happened, and as internet retail gets getter and better, the weakest stores suffer, and the weakest of the lot are bookstores and electronics stores. We've seen competition in those areas dwindle already, because the market just couldn't hold: CompUSA, Circuit City, Borders, are gone, but it's not as if the survivors are thriving: Their sales are still getting eaten by Amazon more and more every year.
So B&N will probably manage to stay alive until the next economic crisis happens, consumers start buying a bit less, and the internet eats them alive.
In more dense urban areas, very efficient book retailers will still have a chance for a while, because it is often more convenient to buy at a local store than to buy online. They'll still have to be afraid of the switch to ebooks though.
> They'll still have to be afraid of the switch to ebooks though.
Not if they do it right. I buy ebooks and hardly ever go to a bookshop these days, but I used to love browsing through physical shelves looking for "enticing" items and miss that experience dearly. Would I pay an extra £1 or £5 to get that experience back? In a heartbeat.
What they need is an augmented experience where i can show up at the store with my e-reader, go through books, and when i find a nice one, let me "point" the reader at it to download it seamlessly. The reader should figure out I'm in a bookstore and, after fulfilling my request, send a percentage of generated revenue to the store operators.
You could do this today, either as an Amazon affiliate or with a custom website API. You don't even need to risk overstocking: get one book for each title, nothing more. You could even open the API to third parties and let indy shops bloom. But you would have to be competent, forward-looking and not afraid of change -- qualities sorely lacking in the whole retail sector, and not particularly valued in publishing either.
> What they need is an augmented experience where i can show up at the store with my e-reader, go through books, and when i find a nice one, let me "point" the reader at it to download it seamlessly. The reader should figure out I'm in a bookstore and, after fulfilling my request, send a percentage of generated revenue to the store operators.
This is actually a pretty great idea. After reading it, it feels plain silly that B&N haven't leveraged the fact that they own both physical bookstores and a reader. There's a huge relationship that they're completely not utilizing at all. And since it's all B&N, they don't even have to worry about the latter half of the idea.
I'm a B&N fan and shop there often, but that's one thing that always gets on my tit - they have totally screwed the pooch on the whole "clicks and mortar" thing. They should leverage the fact that they own retail stores and have an e-commerce side and an e-reader and make one nice, seamless experience. But no... Even worse, the experience on bn.com is pretty much shyte, especially compared to Amazon.
The whole "one click" thing aside, bn.com totally fails at coming close to Amazon in terms of discovery / recommendations / search, availability, and even visual aesthetic. I almost cringe every time I wind up on bn.com for some reason.
Somebody in another comment said their IT is stuck in 1995... I could totally see that. I hope they get things figured out, but I'm not real confident.
In Bellevue, WA there is a new and used bookstore adjacent to a food court that is packed all day every day. There's a starbucks nearby and tons of seating, and its in a mall where people bring their kids. People come to work, read or just get out of the house all the time.
Its the opposite of big box store. The biggest problem with malls is there's really almost nowhere to hang out. Community spaces seem really lax in the US, especially in the suburbs - I think thats why the millennial are flocking to the city.
Crossroads? I visited there a couple of years ago, and was amazed at how wonderful a public space it is. I don't know what the mall owners do to encourage the atmosphere they've got (though I suspect the area's demographics and high wages help), but I wish every mall was as good.
Yup. There's not even much THERE compared to other malls. A few craft stores, a game store and comic shop, a QFC grocery, and then the food court (mostly all small-owner), book store and a few kids places. The demographics do definitely help but the lack of over-wrought big-box malls with nothing but huge chain stores make it feel like you're actually in a community.
I'm not quite sure how well it's doing overall, but Books a Million, probably B&N's biggest brick and mortar competitor, seems to be doing alright in my local area. There are lots in the South (several within 30 minutes of me) and they have a lot of more discount options. I go to Target once in a while and have a BAM next door and I usually stop by. I can usually find some interesting titles for $1-$5.
> Other than a few big cities, the cost of going to a store in the US is far higher than in Europe, just because e have to actively go to a store, instead of passing them on the way to work. This is what made American stores into big boxes...
This is an artifact of American car culture and (lack of) urban planning that predates the Internet.
I see parallels in other industries as well. I recently purchased a new camera (Olympus PL6). Normally, I just order my electronics online. However, in this case, the size and feel of the camera was very important to me, as I'll be using it on a cycling trip next year. I wanted something to complement my pocket-sized Canon S-series.
I swung by my local Best Buy to see some of the options in person. They didn't have much of a selection. A few full size DSLRs and a bunch of cheap point and shoots. Maybe one Sony mirrorless.
This seemed to be true of all the areas. The shop was a bit of a ghost town. Lots of "stuff", but nothing to get excited about (and I'm a gadget geek).
So, I went to the local camera specialty shop. It's a bit further away, but it was nice to get all the options spread out on the counter, chat with a knowledgeable salesperson, and end up buying something. Yes, it was full retail, but I got what I wanted, no regrets.
Same for my local bicycle shop. I can order most of the stuff online, but for some items, having knowledgeable staff and items I can touch is worth the extra retail markup. But, the items need to be in stock, the salesperson needs to be able to help me, and the atmosphere must be something enjoyable.
> Yes, it was full retail, but I got what I wanted, no regrets.
That's something worth noting. People say you vote with your wallet, but they don't. If you need to see something in person, then by all means, pay the shop the price it asks and do not buy it on Amazon later.
If you need to see it, then buy it where you can see it, not send mixed signals: thumbs up for amazon, thumbs down to the local shop while you actually needed the opposite. I have no shame shopping better price on Amazon or others. But once I have needed to put a foot into a physical store, a physical store will get my money.
> People say you vote with your wallet, but they don't.
They do; they just don't vote the way you think they ought to.
Empirically, given a similar quality item, almost all people vote for lower prices, almost always, despite any amount of haranguing about how it'd be morally better to pay slightly more because of this or that benefit.
Other examples:
* During the US deindustrialization of the 1970s-1980s, there was a big "Buy American" campaign, touting the many benefits of paying slightly more to preserve the US industrial base and its jobs. It was completely ineffective.
* The political climate in San Francisco is ostensibly heavily biased against chain stores, yet the new City Target in SOMA had lines around the block when it opened. Laws to restrict chain stores by fiat were even deemed necessary to stem the tide of chains, even though empirically they do pretty well in the city -- meaning many residents actually do want to spend their money at chains.
* Almost everywhere a new Wal-Mart opens, people complain about all the local mom and pop retailers that'll be put out of business. Yet the new Wal-Mart is usually packed. Years later, it remains in business. They close locations that aren't profitable.
People do indeed vote with their wallets. They just don't usually vote the way you think they should.
'Voting with their wallet' is actually an expression used to remind people that what they actually buy is what is affecting the market, not what they say or what they wish.
What I'm actually saying is that if you need to enter a physical store for some type of goods, then it is not stupid to pay a markup. That's actually paying for a service you need (and for the record, it is very unlikely that it is a service I need).
In all the example you gave, it is ok to tell people to stop complaining and vote with their wallet. eg: you complain you want mom and pop retailer to survive but you only shop at WalMart, vote with your wallet or shut up. ( again for the record, a lot of the mom and pop retailer just sucked, the added value they provided was limited to the convenience of being located where you once did most of your shopping, not expert advices, choice, accessibility, or any kind of flexibility or service. They were replaced because once they lost the location advantage, they simply provided not reason to set a foot in their shop ever again. If you regularly go to a village lost in the middle of the countryside, you probably understand what I mean )
This. You're paying more in the physical store, but you derived benefit from the experience of going in there.
If you want to live in a future where you can go to attractive stores and look at physical items, you have to be willing to help support those stores. Real estate and staff are not free.
> If you want to live in a future where you can go to attractive stores and look at physical items, you have to be willing to help support those stores.
If you want to live in a future where you can go to attractive stores and look at physical items, a sufficient number of other people must be willing to help support those stores. Your choice to do so or not has a very small impact on the viability of the model, and a much larger impact on your own realized utility, making it a classic tragedy of the commons situation where the rational thing for each individual to do is defect (using the store as showroom and buying by discount online where available), but the consequence of each individual doing the rational thing is the collapse of the common system which provides value.
Seems like there was a move in the 90's to gigantify everything. Bookstores, electronics stores, gyms, etc. It was awesome because they had so much more selection than anything prior.
Now with the internet, that's no longer the case. There's absolutely no reason to drive out to a strip mall to find the book / electronics you want. Mega-gyms still succeed. Retailers need to find something else.
I wouldn't be surprised if malls start making a comeback in the US. There are lots of times you want to browse through tangible miscellanea, and the internet doesn't give you that. But it'll be different than the 80's, as shops in the mall will have to know better how to cater to a specific local demographic; generic won't cut it anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if they were anchored by fresh markets, the quintessence of "local".
In the UK we have "garden centres" that feel like an iteration on malls. They tend to target a particular demographic very well (older people) and sell various side lines that are very profitable (like gifts, clothing, toys, and books). The quality of the plants act as very good word of mouth marketing device that brings people in. They don't have to bother trying to appeal to everyone.
Most of this article sounds familiar from frequently visiting Waterstones, it really has improved remarkably, the selection of books that people would actually read is excellent, the sci-fi section expanded and they moved it to the second floor (which made sense, ground floor is prime real estate for shifting volume and sci-fi isn't (mostly) volume).
They put a Cafe in on the 2nd floor which is nice if you just want to grab a coffee after a browse or buy your book and go read it with a coffee.
The staff where always pleasant and helpful so that hasn't really changed.
The number of unsold books that were returned to publishers fell from about 20 percent before Daunt took over to just 4 percent today.
A small but important waste reduction.
It seems that by freeing the staff he's created what's effectively a chain of indie bookstores, where each one has its character determined by the staff. This works because people who work in bookstores are far more likely to love books than other kinds of retail workers love their product (except maybe some fashion brands, but they're tightly brand-controlled).
Books are stocked sale-or-return. Upgrading your hit-rate from 80% to 96% takes epic customer insight.
I suspect the range has shrunk, so there won't be many quirky or indie books. But they're mostly doing okay online. So...
>It seems that by freeing the staff he's created what's effectively a chain of indie bookstores.
There must be more going on, otherwise staff would make random picks of whatever they're into and fail to sell them - which is what happens to a lot of indies.
But I think there's another difference - the UK still has a culture of literacy of sorts, while in the US that's much less obvious. So although the population is much bigger, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of active book buyers - as opposed to the best-seller-a-year crowd - is about the same.
Spread those over a much bigger geographical area and there are problems of delivery, stock choice, and logistics that don't apply in the UK.
The Waterstones model could possibly work in the US, but B&N would have to kill its warehouses, move its non-book stock online, and rent plenty of smaller city centre shops near business and tourist districts - which would be expensive and risky without some trial runs.
> There must be more going on, otherwise staff would make random picks of whatever they're into and fail to sell them - which is what happens to a lot of indies.
This was actually described in the article:
"Next came the staff. Daunt shrunk Waterstones’ central office and fired half of the store managers. He gave those booksellers who remained almost complete autonomy over how to arrange their stores—from the windows to the signage to the display tables—but controlled the stock with a dictatorial zeal. Out went books you wouldn’t want to browse: reference, technical guides, legal textbooks."
The choice and local culture from the on-the-ground booksellers comes from the layout of the store, but what could ever make it into the hands of the bookseller is centrally managed which is probably the biggest difference to an indie. Reducing the stock to things that are more likely going to be impulse buys probably has a lot to do with it, since it is really impossible to keep a wonderful reference book selection that is fun to browse and easy to take home. The only time I see that work is if it is extremely close to a university or it is a used bookseller. In the used bookseller case they get the reference books for a fraction of the cost and can list them online as well but they don't have to worry about the day to day events.
> Upgrading your hit-rate from 80% to 96% takes epic customer insight.
Well, no. If you cut the number of books you ordered down to 1, it wouldn't be very difficult to get 100% hit-rate. (Until your store died, of course). You need more than just the single statistic.
The 'indie' comment rings very true in my experience. Each Waterstones I've been in seems to have a unique feel but still remains under a strong brand.
I think the one in Taunton is great as I think that one has a huge reading area upstairs. Cheltenham is different with its café and condensed layout. The Guildford one is three levels I think and has loads of more niche stuff up top (where it belongs really, not taking up prime first floor popular sales).
Staff are always nice to speak to, find stuff I've needed straight away and best of all they have an ebook store too. Like you said, they seem to love books too which really helps as they seem 'interested' in helping you and to talk about the genre you're interested in. I credit one guy in Cribbs Causeway store for getting me started with Peter Hamilton and Alastair Reynolds.
Yikes, I've just realised I've been in a lot of Waterstones shops!
> It seems that by freeing the staff he's created what's effectively a chain of indie bookstores, where each one has its character determined by the staff.
ISTR that Blockbuster pursued a centralized alternative to this strategy (using community demographic analysis to make store stocking decisions, rather leaving store leadership independent), which was very successful until they ran into the whirling blades of Netflix; I think either independent or centralized demographic targeting of specific stores could work well for big-box bookstores, what probably won't for a chain with stores in lots of different communities is cookie-cutter layout.
Wow, the current B&N CEO's resume reads like a hit list of terrible projects: Sears, Brookstone, Best Buy, Toys R Us. I'd be really curious to know the decision making that goes into hiring someone like that to run B&N. It's sad, because I really like B&N, and feel like there is a strategy to make it relevant in the changed reality - but a generic leader from "retail" with experience mostly in companies that have specifically failed to adapt is not going to get there.
It's likely that they believe that even experience running a business into the ground is better than no experience at that level at all. It's possible that they don't even blame him for the failures and just chuck it up to the market.
Barnes and Noble is dying to me because of their idiotic website.
When you check to see if a book is available in your local store, you have to enter a zip code.
Then when you check another book, you have to enter your zip code again. You have to enter it for every damn book you want to check.
Have these people never heard of session cookies?
You can login to the site if you have a B&N account (and they remember this...so they DO know about cookies). When logged in you can even set your location, and they remember that...but as far as I can see that is only used to determine what to show you when you ask for upcoming events. It doesn't help with checking to see if a book is available at your local store.
B&N as a web seller of books has nothing that tempts me to use them over Amazon (especially since I have Prime). Their sole draw is that they have a big store full of books 15 minutes away from my home, which means that if my store stocks a book I'm waffling about buying online I can go in and take a good look at it. And when I do that there is a good chance that if I decide to buy the book I'll buy right there, both for the convenience of having the book right then and because I do want offline bookstores to stay around. I'm willing to eat the price difference over Amazon for that.
They need to have a way on the website to tell it "I'm here because I'm interested in what is in stock in my local store right now...do not show me anything else". If they did that, I'd buy a much larger fraction of my books from my local B&N store.
I used to hang out at the B&N a couple of times a month and bought a number of books per year. They got rid of all the comfy chairs and tables throughout the store and now the only place to sit and read or peruse a book I am thinking about buying is in the noisy, uncomfortable in-store Starbucks. To avoid this customers are sprawled uncomfortably on the floor, sitting in windows sills, etc. amongst the books, its a bad joke. I stopped going and haven't bought a book from them in years.
I recently visited a Barnes & Noble for Christmas shopping. I was shocked at the markup! A $13 brand-new hardcover on Amazon is $30+ at Barnes & Noble. All books were 2-3x the price I saw on my phone. I noted a few I wanted, and bought them from Amazon the next day. Same-day delivery, no less! I understand competing can be hard, but the markup they are pushing is unnecessary.
I fondly remember in my youth grabbing a book and a drink from their cafe. I would sit down and read an hour or two while my mother shopped around. I'd love to see B&N survive by innovating instead of relying on egregious markup. Perhaps a coffee shop with a book rental service? (Pay by the hour, all you can read, or something along those lines. Additionally, sell new books as they do now)
At any rate, B&N needs to get creative. Their current model will be increasingly difficult to perpetuate.
All the books mentioned in the article are links to Amazon. Which is why I ultimately think Waterstones is still doomed; I kept going in until recently, but even when I saw a book I liked, I'd be put off by how heavy the paper edition was.
Still, the lesson is a good one. Many people are good at their jobs if you trust their judgement and delegate responsibility.
> All the books mentioned in the article are links to Amazon
They link to Amazon with referral ids from Slate Magazine, so Slate earn a cut.
But Waterstones run an online book shop: https://www.waterstones.com/, and the "Christmas" banner at the top seems to link to a semi-curated collection of titles.
Digging into the financials of Barnes & Noble, it's mainly suffering from Nook's underperformance and its inability to command a reasonable share of the ebook market. Here's a news piece on their last quarterly report
"The company, which spun off its college-bookstore division earlier this year, also has seen store closings eat into revenue."
"The bookstore chain said it expects comparable-store sales to be flat this year, with the Nook weighing on results."
"Sales decreased 4.5 percent to $894.7 million. But comparable-store sales only fell 0.5 percent when excluding Nook products."
"The retailer also has worked to stem losses from the Nook unit by lessening investment and teaming up with Samsung Electronics Co. to produce the devices."
So overall the Barnes & Noble brick-and-mortar book+coffee+accessories business is doing relatively okay, what's hurting it is previous investment in e-readers and e-books that's tough to wind down.
I remember a similar thesis explored when Borders went bankrupt - comparable-store sales were relatively flat, but the company borrowed immensely to finance expansion, and it was the expansion that didn't pay off. The old school business, if left alone, would've tagged along.
Back in the day (2000) I worked in a branch of Books, etc. A chain, mostly London based, with some airport branches, soon before their takeover by Borders.
When I started working there it worked like the current waterstones in a way, as we, at branch level, saw the publisher's reps and chose the stock for our branch. Only the big 3 for 2 promos came from head office... Then it all changed and we were left with stock that wouldn't shift - 20 copies of a Bjork book in a small branch in the City is an example I remember...
Then Borders took over thinking selling books is the same as selling baked beans. By then I was working in the head office getting more and more disillusioned... Honestly, I'm not surprised Borders went down as it tried to follow the B&N system of huge branches in out of town locations...
I went into a B&N store and found a book that I was going to buy. They wanted far more in the store than they did on their own online bookstore and offered no in store pick up on the web. I would have bought the book from them then and there if they had matched the price or met me somewhere in the middle. Instead of buying from BN.com I just went to Amazon.com and got it in two days all this while I was still in the store.
the US is just ahead in the curve. The brittish are naturally so onservative, if not outright reactionary, that the new buisness models haven't had the same impact yet.
In Scandinavia online shopping has taken on almost as well as in the US, and bookstores there is suffering just as bad a B&N.
This is despite actually having done much of the advice offered in this thread. ARK in Norway have outlets in all the Malls (still the most popuar shopping places in Norway) adn outlet in walking market districts in the cities.
They cut their inventory to high volume books only. Still struggeling....
> In May 1984, in Gateshead, England, the world's first recorded online home shopper, Mrs Jane Snowball, purchased groceries from her local Tesco store in the world's first recorded online shopping transaction from the home.[50] Tesco has operated on the internet since 1994 and was the first retailer in the world to offer a robust home shopping service in 1996. Tesco.com was formally launched in 2000. Grocery sales are available within delivery range of selected stores, goods being hand-picked within each store, in contrast to the warehouse model followed by Ocado.
> As of November 2006, Tesco was the only food retailer to make online shopping profitable.
No need for stereotypes. As others mentioned, the UK is actually very much ahead of the curve in online and retail: big chains all but wiped out independents in the last 20 years, and with all the faffing about Waterstones, nobody said that they are the only bookstore chain left on the market (Blackwells is strictly limited to university areas, and WHSmith is a generic corner-shop business that sells books in some stores). Waterstones themselves went through painful restructuring, as the article said, built a half-decent online shop, and implemented an automated fidelity program that should give them invaluable insight in their core userbase.
Chances are that in Scandinavia, like in most continental countries, you actually have more than one national bookseller and a variety of independent local shops, which means consolidation hasn't actually happened yet on the scale we've seen in the UK.
I love Barnes and Noble, however, one of my issues with BN is that they are mostly out of the way and not near malls where they'd get a lot of traffic.
Another issue I think is absolutely mind boggling is that their online prices are not what's in store; you can't even price match their website with their own in-store pricing, let alone price matching with Amazon.
I generally browse BN and then pull up Amazon to check pricing there, and either order the book with same-day delivery/next day or buy the e-book. Its still cheaper to pay for same day/next day than to buy it in store.
That sort of behavior is what is killing retail. If you're going to browse the showroom it is more than a little backhanded to then buy from an online competitor with less overhead.
If I find a product I want to buy in a store I will buy it there. More often than not, though, retailers don't have what I need and I end up forced to buy online anyway.
I'm in no way obligated to buy something in the store, especially when they have obfuscated policies regarding pricing. How can you justify a higher price in store when you have a lower price online and your competitor has a lower price and same day delivery? I get 25% BN discount from my gf's teacher discount and stuff is still more expensive than their own online pricing.
If I find a significant price difference, I'm going to buy it online. However, I will go out of my way to purchase at small business because there are benefits to that.
The higher price is because they have to pay for employees to serve you, HVAC and lighting so you can be comfortable and see at night, the capital investment for everything needed to run the store, plus local taxes. All for the convenience of letting you see the product first hand.
Taking advantage of all those things and then robbing them of a sale isn't fair to the business trying to stay afloat. Comparison shopping between proprietors on equal footing is fair. Not between brick-and-mortar and a warehouse operation with huge economies of scale.
They could sell stuff online for just as cheap as Amazon. They could offer delivery to stores so you can pick it up there and save on shipping. They could do lots of things. We're not obligated to support their failing business plan. I always attempt to buy local first, and do if it's the better option. Not my fault if local stores make it difficult.
> That sort of behavior is what is killing retail. If you're going to browse the showroom it is more than a little backhanded to then buy from an online competitor with less overhead.
It makes perfect sense; there's definitely a tragedy of the commons involved, but its created by the store owner giving away their compelling differentiating offering rather than selling it.
OTOH, its hard to see what the viable alternative is.
I've seen "malls" mentioned a few times in various comments. Can you elaborate on why you think B&N should be in malls, given the current poor state of malls in the US? Many are seeing financial troubles, or shutting down completely.
It's anecdotal for me, but where I am in Illinois, there is a BN in Old Orchard Mall which is a Simon property and is a high end mall (Nordstrom, Bloomingdales etc...). It gets a ton of foot traffic and is packed on the weekends. There is another BN in Schaumburg, IL, an affluent suburb about 20-30 minutes away and it is not in a mall. I used to live there and go to that BN a lot, it was very quiet and empty unless they were running an event.
Your behavior is not true to someone who loves Barnes and Noble. You are using them as Amazon's showroom. At best, your actions say that you enjoy the showroom BN provides but you are unwilling to pay for it. Great way to drive them out of business.
Sounds like you love Amazon, not Barnes and Noble, and you're willing to help Amazon drive its competitor out of business--all while visiting the competitor and using his inventory. Delicious irony.
Maybe you are right, but I do enjoy going to BN and I do buy stuff there from time to time. My gf is more willing to buy in store than I am, probably because of the nature of books she purchases (kids books for school) versus my books (Tech) which are significantly more expensive.
I've spent a lot of time in both B&N and Waterstones. B&N has a lot of problems Waterstones never had even ahead of bankruptcy:
- The stores are too big. 1/2 of a B&N store is tat, reference books, niche stock, a Nook display area, and other nonsense. You could cut almost all B&N stores in half and not notice as a customer.
- They place them poorly. B&N is perfect for foot traffic. But B&Ns are typically located as drive-up "out of town" shopping. Somewhere you need to go to intentionally. They need to be in malls.
- No good Nook tie-in for the stores. My SO often goes into B&N and looks at books, and then says "I'll buy it on my Nook later." They should have made an agreement with the publishers YEARS ago: When you buy a physical book, you get the Nook book included.
- The children's area is really nice, but poorly leveraged. No classes, no reading groups, no reason to come in. Stay at home parents WANT a reason to get out of the house, you offer a free reading group for small kids, the parents will buy the books after the group.
- Atmosphere in the coffee shop is bad. Waterstones feels like a nice little swanky coffee shop, somewhere you'd go and work on your novel, B&N's coffee shop feels like a generic coffee shop at the airport.
- B&Ns has no brand, and keeps making it worse. 3D printers, toys, Nooks, what is it that B&Ns is? They're all over the place, and now when you go into a B&N store you'll never know what they'll be pushing this week.
I think B&N will go under. I just don't think the management is very good, and every attempt they make to right the ship makes it worse. The whole business needs to be restructured.