Barnes & Noble Opts To Decrease Store Size To Grow Profit
Barnes & Noble, on its seventh quarter of major losses, is shrinking its footprint.
While it is not ready to close the book on its brick-and-mortar, the book retailer is opting to run smaller stores and refocus on book sales.
At 10K SF, Barnes & Noble's newest stores will be less than half the size of its typical stores, but the hope is that this will allow the company to mitigate losses and turn a profit of $180M by the end of April, the Observer reports.
The company reported a $30M loss this quarter, which it attributed to declining sales in non-book products such as vinyl records, toys and stationery, as well as a lack of blockbuster releases like "Harry Potter and The Cursed Child."
This is the seventh quarter in a row that Barnes & Noble sales have declined and investors are starting to get edgy — many are encouraging the prospect of taking the company private.
Last month, Sandell Asset Management, a private equity firm with shares in Barnes & Noble, made a $750M offer to buy out the company. But the bookstore is forging ahead with its business model relatively intact. The retailer has only closed approximately 20 stores so far while its peers, including Borders and Book World Inc., have already gone bankrupt, citing the rise of e-commerce and digital books as contributing to their downfall.
