My last job, a few years ago, was at the retailer where the current CEO of B&N worked for most of his career, topping out as President of the retail division. I was (the junior person who didn’t talk) in enough meetings with him that I have a pretty good feel for him. He’s a great operator, but his demise there was driven by his inability to deal with the fundamental shift in the retail environment. I’m pretty confident he’s there as a retail optimist and an expert in running things as efficiently as possible… and I’m also pretty sure he’s not the right guy if you think B&N needs a big-picture strategy change.
I also figure the board at B&N probably realized that when they promoted him from COO to CEO after five months at the company. So it seems to me that the board thinks investors will be best (least-poorly, really) off if they squeeze as much profit as possible before the inevitable bankruptcy reorganization. I just wish that I had shorted the stock when they promoted him.
Barnes and Noble (along with many independent bookstores) definitely holds a sentimental place in my memories.
I still have vivid memories of my Grandmother bringing me to B&N when I was a child and letting me browse the shelves for hours. I can remember the classical music they used to play back in the 90’s in the stores and how my imagination lit up when I discovered the SciFi and Fantasy section. Next to the fantasy books was a rather sizeable tabletop RPG section and my young mind couldn’t believe something of that nature existed…It was like a vastly more advanced HeroQuest adventure. One day I purchased the 2nd edition Shadowrun sourcebook with my allowance since the idea of fantasy races in a near futuristic setting captured my imagination. My parents later saw the book and objected to the content (probably the sleazy female character models and large amount of guns) and forced me to return it to the store. I had better luck with the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks following that.
Since then I have spent thousands of hours in Barnes and Noble stores. I discovered many great authors–like Joe Abercrombie and Neal Stephenson–just browsing their shelves and pouring over the new speculative fiction shelves (which others have pointed out don’t exist anymore), philosophy, and history. I used to always walk out with an armful of new purchases and didn’t really shift the bulk of my book purchasing to Amazon until 2009-2011ish.
Even after I started buying more books from Amazon I still loved visiting Barnes and Noble stores and after my son was born in 2011 I spent more of my time in the children’s section and purchased countless picture books and early reader books from the stores. I much preferred browsing picture books in a store over online options.
I have carried many of my bookstore traditions on with my son and we still go to B&Ns and spend a nice afternoon browsing the children’s section and reading stacks of books at the kids table. Admittedly my B&N purchases have diminished in recent years and now mostly involve toys, Legos, or boardgames…the type of merchandise the chain started pivoting to in the last decade.
I actually can’t believe that the Barnes and Noble experience–large multi-level stores filled with cushy chairs, a cafe, a huge selection of titles, and a pleasant unhurried ambiance–has survived intact for this long. After Borders closed I thought it was only a matter of time before B&Ns started closing locations but they surprised me. Now it does look like the writing is on the wall and another nostalgic part of my life will disappear.
I love independent bookstores (and still have plenty around me living in New England) but unless one goes to a larger used book store their speculative fiction, philosophy, and history sections tend to be quite anemic and more focused on the guaranteed sellers like 9 different editions of A Song of Ice and Fire (meh) crowding out other more interesting authors and works.
So for me this news is less about the dominance of Amazon but more about losing another prominent part of my cultural experience, akin to the hours I used to spend browsing record stores in the 90’s.
Barnes and Noble is going the way of Tower Records. The upside is people who write books will still get paid when they sell their books through Amazon. Musicians got it real bad for a while when record stores died and there was nothing to replace them.
Even these days, I visit our local B&N with my adult daughter every few weeks. We’ll have some coffee and a treat in the cafe, then spend a few hours browsing the YA and SF/Fantasy sections. I usually buy a book or two. My daughter walks out with an armful. We’d certainly save some money just making an Amazon shopping list, but we enjoy the experience. Plus, they have a gal there who always provides great on-point recommendations for my daughter. She’s clued her into a couple of YA series that she now just loves. I imagine that person was summarily fired last week?
I’ve got the membership, even though it doesn’t provide huge value. The coupons can be pretty good, but I haven’t seen any for a couple of months now (?!).
There’s just something about browsing books that digital will never replicate. The Half Price books and small booksellers of the world are fine, but don’t give you the same opportunity to discover new, cool stuff.
The stores aren’t closed yet, people. I’m really tired of these eulogies for retail establishments that still exist and often rebound. I’m pretty sure there’s a Best Buy thread around here that talks about it already being closed too.
It’s employees may not have great pay or working conditions, but at least they know the joy of being part of the most powerful entity in the universe, the Party Amazon, and they can sip their Prime Gin and reflect on how they love Jeff Bezos.
That many full time employees in 2018 in a store that size in retail was not sustainable. I realize that statement sucks, but again, I don’t think you can blame the company for wanting to jettison all that cost of employment that comes from providing healthcare in a retail business. It’s a crushing problem for every retail business with full time employees today. It’s notable because the company already had said they wouldn’t replace those people as they quit or retired before this layoff. Probably no one was leaving because they were good jobs and they enjoyed working in bookstores…
Bezos isn’t some paragon of employment with his warehouse staff either.
This for sure. There are places you enter and just the place can make you smile. A book store is one of those places. Even if you end up buying nothing you can enjoy the visit.
@DaveLong is exactly right. What B&N did sucks for the nearly 2000 people who are out of a job this week, but what they did is also going to become more and more common in retail, food service, hotel and travel, and many other service industries. It’s all about the continuing failure of America to address it’s ridiculous healthcare costs.
Here’s the killer for B&N. CaptainSteve (or whatever his name is) that does the storytime, the guy with the wife and 5 kids…it costs B&N the exact same amount of money to provide him with family health insurance as it costs them to provide the COO (with his wife and 3 kids) with family health insurance. Assuming for a moment that CaptainSteve makes $30K a year, and that it costs another $800 a month for the company to provide his family insurance, that’s another $10K in annual costs for that one employee alone. Multiply that times 1800 employees and it’s millions of dollars per year for B&N to provide insurance for full time workers.
If they hire two part time workers to replace every lost full time worker at 25 hours each and pay them $8 an hour they get 50 hours a week, 52 weeks per year, and only pay out around $25K in total costs for those two employees (even part-time workers have additional costs associated beyond hourly wage). That kind of cost savings is HUGE for a large retailer. Wal-Mart did something similar years ago, and Best Buy has done it on a smaller scale for years, replacing full-time people with part-time people to scale back health insurance and benefits costs.
All of it leads directly back to the fact that it costs employers ridiculous amounts of money to employ people full-time if they are required to provide insurance. I work at a company with around 50 full-time employees at one single location. Health insurance is our largest operational expense (excepting payroll obviously), far outstripping even the rent we pay on our prime downtown location and our utilities costs COMBINED.
American businesses are being forced to move to a predominately part-time, benefits free workforce just to survive. Don’t blame Amazon, don’t blame the internet, blame CONGRESS. Blame an out of control healthcare system with costs that are nowhere near justifiable. If this continues for another decade, it will push the United States into a situation where full-time employment in any industry will be in danger, and we will either be forced to pass Medicare-for-all or simply move to a system of universal income for those not fortunate enough to have a job with the few remaining megacorporations.
Good post. Just fyi, in California at least for a family of 5 you can double or even triple your figures. When I paid for my own healthcare during my indie stint my families health insurance was pretty much a second mortgage payment. It is crazy.
Family of three, Blue Shield, $6k deductible, …$1600 a month. That’s California.
As much as I hate companies that employ everyone at 29 hours a week, you can kinda understand it when you see what health care costs them. And I don’t know that all your employees would appreciate how much it costs either.
Yeah its absolutely nuts. Regardless of your preferred solution (left or right) it is clear to me at least that Health Care just needs to be the next big thing either party takes on.
Well I am a lefty by some distance. But even with the best will in the world it is self evident Obamacare did not solve the cost problem of healthcare in the USA. It may have helped, I think it did, but we have some way to go. While my preferred solution is a government run universal system I would be more than happy to listen to ideas from the right. Its just too important a topic.
I guess this is no longer a B&N discussion but as someone who lived 7 years under the Japanese healthcare system before moving back to the US, I strongly feel that that the problem is that the US healthcare system continues to make the quality decision over the cost decision EVERY SINGLE TIME because each the actual cost is completely obfuscated each stakeholder down the line.
There’s no question that the quality of care in the US is objectively better than most other countries but I (and most other folks) would rather pay $50 vs $2500 for care if there is only a small difference in actual outcomes.
Minor detail but I question that part. In my experience healthcare in the USA has been consistently worse that the NHS in the UK. I agree with the rest though, it is overpriced.
Well the question becomes one of how you measure quality.
If you measure it by amenities like private hospital rooms, marble flooring and high end furniture? Yeah, you probably end at a higher quality bar for the US. IF you measure it by outcomes and patient care, I think the clarity of US superiority is… challenged at best.
Yet they don’t even blink when dishing out golden parachutes for their fired executives every couple of years for the same amount. I’m not shedding any tears for a company having provide decent benefits for their employees.
If the companies don’t like it they are in a much better position to lobby congress and health care companies to make a change.
If we raise the minimum wage to 15 or so dollars an hour, the health cost will be a smaller portion of the overall cost of doing business. Everyone wins because full time employment won’t seem as bad.
