The trick to being a big-box bookseller is to not be a big-box bookseller.
Driving the news: So says Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt, who’s been credited with engineering a turnaround for the bookstore chain, in an interview with Axios.
Why it matters: When Daunt took over in 2019 after B&N’s sale to Elliott Management, the company was at risk of meeting the same fate as its erstwhile rival, Borders, which liquidated in 2011.
- The company was “not quite there but pretty darn close,” says Daunt.
State of play: B&N, which has about 600 locations, plans to open 30 net new stores in its new fiscal year, marking the first time in recent memory that the company has gotten bigger, not smaller.
- Daunt said the retailer is profitable after he cut corporate staff in half and empowered local managers to make more decisions about their stores, including the books they carry and the way their stores are laid out.
- He also removed many of the products that B&N was selling that had no connection to books.
- “It’s ironic for somebody who runs chains, but I don’t think chain bookselling works,” Daunt says. “All I’ve done is bring the principles of independent bookselling to a chain and exploded the very notion of what a chain retailer really is.”
The intrigue: At least two of those new stores will be located in former Amazon bookstores, all of which have shuttered.
- Daunt praised Amazon’s “extraordinarily efficient” business but said the company’s bookstores were “essentially soulless” and “very unimaginative.”
- “They created a very bad bookstore,” he said.
- An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.
What they’re saying: “There can be little doubt that Barnes & Noble has been revived and that most of its recent success comes down to the approach of James Daunt,” GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders tells Axios in an email.
- “That has meant taking random products out of stores, focusing on making the shops places where people want to linger, and thinking carefully about what customers want.”
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