Barnes & Noble's New Plan Is To Act Like an Indie Bookseller (bloomberg.com) 28
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Last fall, during a visit to Barnes & Noble's flagship store in New York City's Union Square, the British bibliophile James Daunt strode about the ground floor in oxblood loafers deploring the bookshop's hideous appearance. The carpets were dusty, and the escalators had broken down. A cheap pine table was littered with trinkets and scented candles. A vase was wedged between new titles, its bouquet of sunflowers sagging in brown water. "I like the idea of the flowers, but you have to change the water," Daunt said. "And you have to put in decent flowers -- you can't just go down to the petrol station and grab a bunch. I mean, look at it." Daunt has opened about 60 bookshops in his three-decade career, every one of them profitable, making him one of the Amazon era's most successful booksellers. After founding Daunt Books, a popular, independent brand of stores in the U.K., he was credited with saving the country's largest chain, Waterstones, from ruin by giving managers more agency over their inventory. Those credentials impressed Elliott Management Corp., a notorious $40 billion hedge fund better known for seizing an Argentine warship as collateral and berating corporate governance at Twitter Inc. and AT&T Inc. It acquired Barnes & Noble Inc. last year for $683 million including debt and appointed 56-year-old Daunt chief executive officer, the man in charge of its rescue.
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If Daunt succeeds in rescuing Barnes & Noble, it would earn Elliott a stellar return. In typical hedge fund fashion, it's already insulated itself against not earning anything at all from its bookstore empire. Corporate filings show that a $41,598,957 dividend was paid last year from Waterstones to Book Retail Holdco, an entity controlled by the firm and domiciled in a Channel Islands tax haven that indirectly owns the U.K. chain. Daunt says he's answering a higher calling. "There aren't remotely enough independents to maintain our industry. Publishers won't keep that infrastructure going, it will become a world completely dominated by Amazon, and the traditional bookshop will disappear," he says. His life's work now depends on saving the giants that were once the enemy. "If we can achieve that goal, the owner will also make a lot of money, so they'll be happy as well."
[...]
If Daunt succeeds in rescuing Barnes & Noble, it would earn Elliott a stellar return. In typical hedge fund fashion, it's already insulated itself against not earning anything at all from its bookstore empire. Corporate filings show that a $41,598,957 dividend was paid last year from Waterstones to Book Retail Holdco, an entity controlled by the firm and domiciled in a Channel Islands tax haven that indirectly owns the U.K. chain. Daunt says he's answering a higher calling. "There aren't remotely enough independents to maintain our industry. Publishers won't keep that infrastructure going, it will become a world completely dominated by Amazon, and the traditional bookshop will disappear," he says. His life's work now depends on saving the giants that were once the enemy. "If we can achieve that goal, the owner will also make a lot of money, so they'll be happy as well."
Retail 3.0 looks a lot like retail 1.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Go go where? (Score:4, Funny)
A store is a warehouse where you can place an order in person and have the item delivered instantly. As you'd expect for a marketing gimmick like this, there are extra costs involved: you need to make contact with other humans, be dressed in appropriate attire, and actually leave your house, all of which are non-starters for most of us around here. It's another one of those silly fads that I don't expect will take off.
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It started earlier than that with the flood of MBAs in the late '70s and early '80s who came out of college with their shiny new degrees, six figure debt, and no actual work experience, and were put in charge of organizations of which their knowledge was theoretical at best. They then began to fail upward, until by the end of the '90s the last person in the executive suites at Target Stores who had ever worked on the sales floor retired. None of these bozos have even the vaguest clue what the jobs of the
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Most MBAs have years of work experience **in management**, after they graduate college. Those in the upper echelons who have actually worked for a living are a minority, and most of them try to hide that from the others or they don't rise far.
China MBA (Score:2)
China has been getting big on MBAs for over a decade now and we'll see how much good it does them.... Their government integration may keep it from going as badly as here.
BTW, I have 2 MBA friends. The school changed them, they are more removed and like sociopaths when it comes to business. "It's not personal, it's business" is a real change of mood or alter-ego for them now. The concept of capitalism doing the most good for the most people (socialism) by exploiting greed and competition (cynical sociali
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Until the introduction of the 'Business Ethics' classes in the 1970s that proclaimed the Divine Revelation that a manager's only duty was to maximize shareholder benefits corporations were required by laws in almost all states to provide a net public good. That's why most cities had opera houses, parks, and libraries donated by and often maintained by companies like Carnegie Steel and Burlington Northern. Corporations were **required** under their state charters to be good citizens, but of course all of t
Re:China MBA (Score:4, Informative)
That's why most cities had opera houses, parks, and libraries donated by and often maintained by companies like Carnegie Steel and Burlington Northern. Corporations were **required** under their state charters to be good citizens, but of course all of that is gone now.
Andrew Carnegie believed the rich had a moral obligation to use their fortunes to improve society, he did not do so because the state demanded it. Indeed, he even wrote an essay on the subject [amazonaws.com] in an attempt (largely successful) to inspire others to follow his example.
On the other hand, he believed that HE was the best person to decide just how to spend his money, regardless of purpose. There is a possibly apocryphal account about someone asking why he didn't spend his money on something that would be a direct benefit to the poor, and his response was along the lines of the libraries, concert halls, etc that I've built ARE a direct benefit, use them to improve and then spend YOUR money however you want, and don't expect anything else out of me.
His example DOES live on (Bill Gates is probably the best modern example I can think of as a Carnegie analogue--and you'll note that the Gates Foundation aims to achieve what it believes are the best benefit to society, rather than simply do what other people tell it to do).
Good (Score:2)
Then they'll get bankrupt as one.
Hope they succeed (Score:4, Informative)
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My 14 y/o daughter loves books and wanted us to take her to Barnes & Noble on black friday to get some deals on books. The store was like in this article - a bit depressing, and under-stocked - especially when it comes to books. It is very difficult to maintain an air of positivity in a long and probably inevitable decline, but that's what's needed to slow it down.
I took my son to BN a number of times the last few years. He would just end up in their toy section wanting a monster truck or whatever. I stopped going there and took him to the library instead where it costs me nothing and he actually looks at the books.
Re: Hope they succeed (Score:2)
When I go to B&N, I go to the toy section and look for LEGO sets on clearance. Then I leave.
I've seen this one (Score:2)
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Hedge funds ruin everything. (Score:1)
I'll never shop there again.
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I don’t know about that - look what they did for Sears!
I go there occasionally, but I don't buy much (Score:2)
It doesn't matter much as most of my book purchases are ebooks as I did a purge of most of my physical library, but I do still buy physical books. They just pushed me closer to Amazon and other stores
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I have been a solid customer of B&N all my life and continue to be loyal. I have always chosen the Nook over the Kindle and spend hundreds of dollars a year on books and gift cards.
I hope that they manage to pull through. I just hate the idea of Amazon owning everything.
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When you get down to it, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton were instrumental in the initial destruction of a lot of mom & pop booksellers and spawned the birt
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Re "go take a hike".
They wanted you to read Walden by Thoreau.
Read it in a forest.
Amazon and Barnes and Nobles blew it (Score:3)
Ebooks are overpriced because of illegal collusion between the sellers. They could have stood up and stopped it, especially after the government sued. They did not.
Ebook samples do not have a "instant buy" link implanted at the end of the sample. Why?
At the end of an ebooks you do not find an '1 click buy next book in series button.' Why?
They advertise book 2+ in a series because it just came out, rather than showing book 1 (perhaps with a "book 1.... last book").
Neither Barnes and Nobles nor Amazon know anything about customer satisfaction. Instead they manage to do everything they can to make the publishers happy. Which results in horrible service and helps destroy a once great industry.
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How much do you think ebooks should cost compared to the physical version?
Because the truth is, the physical nature of it costs less than 10% of the book's price. That includes the printing, the paper, the warehousing, the shipping and everything. The system is extremely efficient at doing this and the costs are basically very small at this point
I'm just glad I can still buy Nook charging cables (Score:2)
I'm just glad I can still buy replacement Nook Color and Nook Tablet charging cables that replace the laughably fragile originals.
Walk into your local store, there is a glut of these rugged charging cables for these two tablets that have been long forgotten.