Barnes & Noble is expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint with plans to open 60 new stores this year, pushing its total location count past 2019 levels and completing a major structural turnaround under chief executive officer James Daunt.<\/p>\n
The store expansion arrives despite stagnant overall U.S. book sales and persistent online competition from Amazon. The recovery follows a radical operational shift engineered by Daunt, who scrapped the retail chain’s legacy corporate model in favor of giving store-level employees direct control over what books to stock and feature.<\/p>\n
To execute the strategy, Barnes & Noble abandoned the industry-standard “pay-for-display” arrangement, under which publishers paid co-op advertising allowances and offered promotional discounts to mandate uniform front-of-store book placements across all locations nationwide. Daunt ended those corporate agreements to eliminate standardized, repetitive inventory displays that had eroded store identity.<\/p>\n
Under the decentralized model, individual booksellers and store managers choose inventory based on localized neighborhood demand. Shannon De Vito, senior director of books at Barnes & Noble, stated that the previous centralized system constrained frontline staff, calling the former corporate mandates akin to “turning your brain off” and an impediment to customer interaction. The strategic shift allows inventory to vary significantly between regional markets, such as Flint, Michigan, and Manhattan’s Upper East Side.<\/p>\n
Daunt assumed leadership of Barnes & Noble in August 2019 after private equity firm Elliott Investment Management acquired the chain for $683 million. Daunt had previously deployed a similar localized approach to turn around the British book chain Waterstones, which Elliott also purchased in 2018. While abandoning publisher display fees initially meant forfeiting upfront promotional revenue, the operational pivot reduced return rates on unsold inventory and raised sell-through rates across retail locations.<\/p>\n
The store openings mark a reversal for Barnes & Noble, which shuttered hundreds of superstores during the 2010s amid aggressive digital competition. Following its financial recovery, the bookseller is re-entering key commercial markets it previously vacated, with financial advisors evaluating a potential initial public offering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barnes & Noble is expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint with plans to open 60 new stores this year, pushing its total location count past 2019 levels and completing a major structural turnaround under chief executive officer James Daunt. The store expansion arrives despite stagnant overall U.S. book sales and persistent online competition from Amazon. The recovery …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3440,15999,16623,16625,2970,16000,16624,16622,16002],"class_list":["post-13940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-amazon","tag-barnes-noble","tag-elliott-investment-management","tag-flint-michigan","tag-initial-public-offering","tag-james-daunt","tag-pay-for-display","tag-shannon-de-vito","tag-waterstones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13940"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13944,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13940\/revisions\/13944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}