It seems that Elliott Management and Daunt are out to prove that, despite the rise of smartphones and social media, there is still plenty of room for books and greeting cards in 2022 and beyond.
#IS BARNES AND NOBLE OPEN PLUS#
While both brands continued operating independently, the potential for deeper collaborations between the bookseller and stationery store was clear.Īnd indeed, in late November 2021, Paper Source opened shops-in-shops in two Barnes & Noble locations as a pilot, “ with plans to scale and localize across their shared 700 plus national retail footprint.” Already, Paper Source’s seasonal items are sold in more than 100 Barnes & Noble stores throughout the country. Still, the fact that Barnes & Noble visits have become shorter does mean that customers may not be getting to all parts of the store or seeing all the displays on every trip – so store managers need to be especially deliberate in choosing what merchandise to exhibit at strategic points, such as near the entrance or registers.Ĭhicago-based stationery retailer Paper Source filed for bankruptcy in March 2021, and was bought two months later by Elliott Management – the same firm that purchased Barnes & Noble in 2019 and James Daunt has once again been tapped with reviving a chain. It also reflects the fact that today’s customers are more savvy across the board and spend more time researching products before stepping into brick and mortar stores – and this likely applies to books just as much as it does to blenders or backpacks or bathing suits. The drop in visit time is not necessarily negative – it may well mean that Barnes & Noble’s current customers are coming with a much more clear intent to buy, and don’t need to spend as much time browsing in store before deciding to purchase. Specifically, the share of 15 to 29 minute visits has increased from 31.7% in 2017 to 38.9% in 2021, while the share of visits lasting 1 to 2 hours dropped from 20.6% in 2017 to 16.3% of all visits in 2021. Over the years, however, the share of short visits has been increasing, while the share of long visits has gone down. One could spend an afternoon – or a whole day – curled up in overstuffed armchairs with a book picked off the shelf.
Those old enough to have patronized Barnes & Noble in the ‘90s and early 2000s might remember treating the bookseller a bit like a library. How Has Customer Behavior Changed Since 2019?īut just because customers are returning to Barnes & Noble does not mean that they are looking for the same experience as they did in 2019. Local management made major merchandising changes that were better suited to their customers’ tastes and interests, as part of a larger vision of providing local store managers with the autonomy they need to best run their branches. With customers hunkered down at home, Barnes & Noble employees moved fixtures and changed their displays. But what could have been a fatal blow proved to be a major opportunity. Then COVID hit, and all non-essential shut down. Elliot Management appointed James Daunt, the legendary CEO who successfully nursed Waterstones back to health, as the new CEO of Barnes & Noble, and Daunt was tasked with the formidable job of turning America’s largest brick-and-mortar bookseller around. In June 2019, the company went private following its sale to a fund run by private equity firm Elliott Management – the same fund that had bought British bookseller Waterstones the previous year. In 2008, the bookseller started steadily closing stores, and foot traffic continued to fall between 2017 to 2019, even after the pace of store closures slowed down. One of the chains that had the most trouble finding its place in the new increasingly digital retail environment was Barnes & Noble. Transforming a Challenge into an Opportunityīefore COVID took center stage in every discussion on the future of retail, some legacy brands were already struggling to adapt to the millennial shifts in consumer behavior. How did Barnes & Noble do it? We dove into the location analytics to find out. Foot traffic to existing locations is booming, and the company has even opened several new stores in recent months to keep up with demand.