The recently closed Bronx store.

Barnes & Noble announces that they are going to focus on books! And all we ignoramuses thought that B & N was  a bookshop chain. I always assumed that bookstores went in for stationery, music, coffee and all the other frills and chachkes because the margins on almost anything were better than on books — where we all know that meany publishers have been starving bookstores for ever! If that’s the case, would giving up the frills really help the bottom line?

The Passive Voice shares these extracts from B & N’s recent Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call commenting on their recent losses.

  • “As a result of the improving trends, we will continue to place a greater emphasis on books.”
  • “There’s too much stuff in the stores.”
  • “definite shift in strategy”
  • “Our goal is to get smaller.”
  • “Through customer research, we discovered that customers come to Barnes & Noble not only to browse and discover, but also to interact with our booksellers. This is a big takeaway for our store managers from a recent conference.”
  • “We remain laser focused on cost reduction initiatives that are centered on realizing efficiencies and simplification.”
  • “And while we’re not ready for prime time yet, I feel the team has done a very good job at loading up the pipeline with a lot of good ideas.”
  • “I think we’ve done a nice job of coming together to understand what needs to happen here.”
  • “What we can tell you is we have a better plan than we did at the start of the year.”

Not particularly inspiring talk. Shelf Awareness has a story about the situation. So too does The Digital Reader. There’s a definite trend for large-scale retailers to be finding life difficult. Maybe Macys et al will be able to weather the on-line storm. I guess everyone’s response is to get smaller — except of course for Amazon who continue to take over things like Whole Foods and to open more and more bricks-and-mortar stores. The retail situation has looked fairly dire for a couple of years. How much direness can be borne?

I expatiated on B & Ns problems a year ago.

Keep those fingers crossed.

LATER: The Digital Reader and The Passive Voice tell us that B & N have decided to offer in-store customers the same (lower) price for a book as they offer on-line. That they haven’t been doing this before is just dumb. The attitude can perhaps be understood as originating from the out-dated idea that on-line is an insignificant supplement to the real in-store experience.