Barnes & Noble, Inc., a Fortune 500 company, is the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States, and a retailer of content, digital media, and educational products. As of October 15, 2017, the company operates 633 retail stores in all 50 U.S. states.
Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores. The company's headquarters are at 122 Fifth Avenue in New York City.
After a series of mergers and bankruptcies in the American bookstore industry since the 1990s, Barnes & Noble stands alone as the United States' largest national bookstore chain. Previously, Barnes & Noble operated the chain of small B. Dalton Booksellers stores in malls until they announced the liquidation of the chain. The company is known for large retail outlets, many of which contain a café serving Starbucks coffee and other consumables. Most stores sell books, magazines, newspapers, DVDs, graphic novels, gifts, games, toys, music, and Nook e-readers and tablets.
Video Barnes & Noble
History
19th century: Foundations
Barnes & Noble originated in 1886 with a bookstore called Arthur Hinds & Company, located in the Cooper Union Building in New York City. In the fall of 1886, Gilbert Clifford Noble, a then-recent Harvard graduate from Westfield, Massachusetts, was hired to work there as a clerk.
In 1894, Noble was made a partner, and the name of the shop was changed to Hinds & Noble.
20th century: Expansion
1900-1919
In 1901, Hinds & Noble moved to 31-35 W. 15th Street.
In 1917, Noble bought out Hinds and entered into a partnership with William Barnes, son of his old friend Charles; the name of the store was changed to Barnes & Noble. Charles Barnes had opened a book-printing business in Wheaton, Illinois in 1873; William Barnes divested himself of his ownership interest in his father's C. M. Barnes-Wilcox Company just before his partnership with Noble and it would go on to become Follett Corporation. Although the flagship store once featured the motto "founded in 1873," the C. M. Barnes-Wilcox Company never had any connection to Barnes & Noble other than the fact that both were partly owned (at different times) by William Barnes.
1920-1939
In 1930, Noble sold his share of the company to William Barnes' son John Wilcox Barnes. Noble died on June 6, 1936, at the age of 72. In the long history of the bookstore, the namesake partnership was a brief interlude of thirteen years. In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, the bookstore moved to a flagship location on 18th Street and Fifth Avenue, which served as so until its closure in 2014. The Noble family retained ownership of an associated publishing business, and Barnes & Noble opened a new publishing division in 1931.
1940-1959
In 1940, the store was one of the first businesses to feature Muzak; it underwent a major renovation the following year. That decade the company opened stores in Brooklyn and Chicago. William Barnes died in 1945, at the age of 78, and his son John Wilcox Barnes assumed full control. The company underwent a significant expansion between the 1950s and the 1960s, opening an additional retail store on 23rd Street in Manhattan, as well as shops near the City University of New York, Harvard, and other Northeast college campuses.
1960-1979
John Barnes died in 1964, and the company was sold to the conglomerate Amtel two years later. The business was purchased in 1971, by Leonard Riggio for $1.2 million. By then, it had been badly mismanaged over the prior two years and consisted only of "a significantly reduced wholesale operation and a single retail location--the store at 105 Fifth Avenue." The publishing operation was sold separately by Amtel to Harper & Row. In 1974, Barnes & Noble became the first bookstore chain to advertise on television and a year later, the company became the first bookseller in the United States to discount books, by selling The New York Times best-selling titles at 40% off the publishers' list price. Between the 1970s and the 1980s, Barnes & Noble opened smaller discount stores, which eventually phased out in favor of larger stores. They also began to publish their own books to be sold to mail-order customers. These titles were primarily affordable reissues of out-of-print titles and selling them through mail-order catalogs allowed Barnes & Noble to reach new customers nationwide.
In November 1974, editors of the British-produced Guinness Book of Records, claimed on the BBC One television programme Record Breakers that the Fifth Avenue store of Barnes & Noble had overtaken that of London's Foyles bookshop to become the world's biggest bookstore.
1980-1999
Barnes & Noble continued to expand throughout the 1980s, and it purchased the primarily shopping mall-based B. Dalton chain from Dayton Hudson in 1986, for an estimated $275 million to $300 million. Solveig Robinson, author of The Book in Society: An Introduction to Print Culture, wrote that the purchase "gave [Barnes & Noble] the necessary know-how and infrastructure to create what, in 1992, became the definitive bookselling superstore." The acquisition of the 797 B. Dalton bookstores turned the company into a nationwide retailer, and by the end of fiscal year 1999, the second-largest online bookseller in the United States. B&N's critics claim that it has contributed to the decline of local and independent booksellers. The last B. Dalton stores were scheduled to close in January 2010.
In 1989, Barnes & Noble purchased the 22-store chain Bookstop.
Before Barnes & Noble created its official website, it sold books directly to customers through mail-order catalogs. It first began selling books online through an early videotex service called "Trintex," a joint venture between Sears and IBM, but the company's website was not launched until May 1997. BarnesandNoble.com went public in 1999.
21st century: Operating in an electronic environment
2000s
In 2004, it was reported that although the reading of books was on the decline in America, with the number of non-reading adults increasing by 17 million between 1992 and 2002. Despite this, Barnes & Noble claimed that its retail store business was expanding in the book market. Beginning in 1999, Barnes & Noble owned GameStop, a video game and electronics retail outlet. The company distributed its shares in GameStop in late 2004, spinning it off into its own company in an attempt to simplify its corporate structure.
CEO Leonard Riggio stepped down in 2002, naming his younger brother and former acting chief executive of BarnesandNoble.com, Stephen Riggio, to succeed him. Some corporate governance experts noted that this appointment could potentially cause conflict of interest, but the company board noted that Riggio's experience at the company made him the right person for the job. Stephen Riggio stepped down from the position in 2010.
2010s
In 2010, website president William Lynch was named CEO. He is credited with helping launch the company's electronic book store and overseeing the introduction of its electronic book reader, the Nook. Many observers saw his appointment as underscoring the importance of digital books to Barnes & Noble's future. Steve Riggio stayed on as vice chairman. Lynch resigned in mid-2013, and he was replaced by Chief Financial Officer Michael Huseby early the next year. Following the spinoff of Barnes & Noble Education, Huseby departed to head the new firm; his place was filled in mid-2015 by Ronald Boire, who departed one year later. Demos Parneros was named Barnes & Noble's Chief Executive Officer in April 2017 after having joined the company as Chief Operating Officer in November 2016; however, he was fired in July 2018 for "company policy violations" without severance and was immediately removed from the company's board, at the advice of a law firm hired by Barnes & Noble.
After the bankruptcy and closure of its chief competitor, Borders Group, in 2011, Barnes & Noble became the last remaining national bookstore chain in America. This followed a series of mergers and bankruptcies in the American bookstore industry since the 1990s, which also saw the demise of Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble's own subsidiary B. Dalton, and Crown Books, among others. Barnes & Noble's largest physical bookstore rival is now Books-A-Million, which does not operate in the Western US. Barnes & Noble also faces competition from general retailers, especially from Amazon.com, and from regional and independent booksellers. Amazon has even opened its own physical bookstores, once again creating a second national bookstore chain.
Barnes & Noble began reducing its overall presence in 2010's, closing its original flagship store in early 2014. In mid-2014, the company announced it would separate its Nook Media division from its retail store division. In 2018, Barnes & Noble laid off a number of employees in an effort to save up to $40 million annually.
Maps Barnes & Noble
Publishing
Barnes & Noble maintains a separate publishing business in addition to its retail stores and other entities. Barnes & Noble's publishing company got its start by reissuing inexpensive versions of out-of-print books, and made a push to expand the unit in 2003. The company saw success the following year; in September 2004, its book, "Hippie," reached the New York Times best-seller list.
Barnes & Noble often publishes and sells books at a lower cost than competitors, and sells lines of inexpensive books like Barnes & Noble Classics. In addition, the company has a second paperback series called the Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading.Barnes & Noble's edition of The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Haden Elgin, has sold over 250,000 copies, and its reissued edition of The Columbia History of the World by John Garrity, for example has sold over 1 million copies.
The company has expanded business by acquiring several firms over the years, including SparkNotes, an educational website and publishing company, in 2001 and Sterling Publishing in 2003.
Food service
In 1993, Barnes & Noble signed an agreement to serve Starbucks coffee in each of its existing and future cafes. In 2004, Barnes & Noble began offering Wi-Fi in the café area of selected stores, using SBC FreedomLink (now the AT&T Wi-Fi network). All stores offered Wi-Fi as of 2006. Since July 27, 2009, Wi-Fi is offered for free to all customers.
In 2016, Barnes & Noble announced plans to open four concept stores in 2017 that featured cafés twice the size of its usual food spots, as well as bars offering wine and beer. Restaurants would also include a waitstaff and a full menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The restaurants were expected to revive sales growth. Company executives planned to open additional concept stores if sales met expectations. The first stores were opened in Scarsdale, New York, Edina, Minnesota, Plano, Texas, and Folsom, California.
Community involvement
Barnes & Noble hires community business development managers to engage in community outreach. Barnes & Noble also gives back to the community to increase literacy and education. The Barnes & Noble located in Fairbanks, Alaska gave over $80,000 to the community between 2015 and 2018 through book fair fundraising programs. To promote nationwide literacy among 1st to 6th graders and encourage more reading during the summer, Barnes & Noble has implemented a summer challenge.
Barnes & Noble Nook
Barnes & Noble Nook (styled NOOK) is a suite of e-book readers developed by the company, based on the Android platform. The first device was announced in the United States on October 20, 2009 and was released November 30, 2009, for $259. On June 21, 2010, Barnes & Noble reduced the Nook's price to $199, as well as launched a new Wi-Fi-only model, for $149, and released a Nook colored touch screen for $249.
The Nook competes with the Amazon Kindle, Kobo eReader, and other e-reader offerings and color tablets used sometimes as readers, such as Apple's iBooks for iOS devices. Various Nook models feature a 6-inch, 7-inch, or larger touchscreen. Version 1.3 of the Nook introduced Wi-Fi connectivity, a web browser, a dictionary, chess, and sudoku games, and a separate, smaller color touchscreen that serves as the primary input device. The Nook also features a Read in Store capability that allows visitors to stream and read any book for up to one hour while shopping in a Barnes & Noble bookstore. According to a June 2010 CNet article, the company planned to expand this feature to include periodicals in the near future. The color version of the Nook introduced a 7-inch color touchscreen and the ability to view at a portrait or landscape orientation.
On April 30, 2012, Microsoft invested $300 million for a 17.6% stake in Nook, which valued the business at about $1.7 billion.
In November 2012, the technology publications Mashable and Techdirt criticized the license agreement with which Barnes & Noble sells ebooks to consumers, pointing out that the rights to re-download a purchased ebook expire when the customer's credit card expires, and a valid credit card must be added to the account to restore this functionality.
In June 2014, Barnes & Noble had previously announced that it would spin off its Nook Digital division into a separate publicly traded company, but as of 2016, Nook remains a part of Barnes & Noble. That same month, the company announced a partnership with Samsung Electronics to make Nook tablets, as the bookseller moved forward with plans to revamp its digital business. Samsung and Barnes & Noble introduced the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 7.0 in August 2014, followed by the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 10.1 in October 2014. In December 2014, Barnes & Noble announced that it had ended its Nook partnership with Microsoft by buying back its stake. Samsung and Barnes & Noble continue to introduce new Nook tablets.
In March 2016, Barnes & Noble announced it would close the Nook App Store and Nook Video and in the UK close the Nook Store on March 15. It will continue to sell e-books as well as digital magazines and newspapers in the US.
College bookstores
In August 2015, Barnes & Noble announced the completion of the separation of its Retail and College businesses. Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. is now an independent public company and the parent of Barnes & Noble College, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol, "BNED". Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, previously owned by company chairman Leonard Riggio, operated the self-proclaimed "world's largest bookstore" on Fifth Avenue and 18th Street in New York City, from 1932 to 2014. This flagship store carried a large variety of textbooks, medical and legal books, and medical supplies, in addition to the various trade titles carried at the company's main stores.
See also
- List of book distributors
- List of bookstore chains
- Book Stacks Unlimited
- Bookselling
References
Further reading
- Kirkpatrick, David D. (July 19, 1999). "Barnes & Noble's Jekyll and Hyde". New York magazine.
- Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. (April 18, 2014). "What's Barnes & Noble's Survival Plan? Former CEO Cuts Holding to 20%, but Says, 'The Story Isn't Written Yet'". The Wall Street Journal.
External links
- Official website
- Barnes & Noble SEC Filing
- Barnes & Noble at 18th Street Bookstore (flagship store)
Source of article : Wikipedia
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