Science of Success: How Barnes & Noble Is Redesigning the Bookstore Chain
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Ash earn more barns and nobel was once the enemy of independent bookstores.

The chain even inspired the fictional villain fox books in the ninety eight romantic comedy .

you've got male. We don't want the super store.

But these days, Barnes and nobel is trying to be more like its former competitors. America's biggest batter's bookstore chain has invested millions of dollars to rebuild its stores to be more like the indeed IT once threatened to put out of business.

Why the problem that the big chain book sellers have head is that commercial life, post amazon became extremely difficult, and most of them went bankrupt. You know, some big names just no longer exist that .

James don't CEO. Vin noble, since the company was taken private in two thousand nineteen, don't took the rains right before. U.

S. Bookstore sales bottom down. They declined every year from two thousand and eight to two thousand nineteen and crated in twenty, according to federal data.

His plan to save the company and is nearly six hundred bookstores, is to combine the power of a big chain with the pleasure of a beloved. There might not be anyone on the planet more qualified for this particular job. In fact, James don't comes from the independent side of book selling himself.

He got his start in the business in one thousand ninety ninety when he found a dont books, a london indeed known for its impeccable ste. His british e eventually became a group of nine shops across england that he still overseas. Then he was higher to run water stones, which is a bit like the barn in noble of britain, when he took over the actual barn in noble. Don't have to figure out how to bring customers back into its physical locations.

Changing them was about changing the physical spaces, the books in them, how we presented them, how booksellers engaged with customers. You had to change every single piece. IT wasn't one thing. We had to bring people back into our stores and back enjoying them and and buying enough books to keep the business going.

From the wall street journal, this is the science of success, a look at how today's successes could lead to tomorrow's innovations. I'm been coin. I read a column n for the journal about how people, ideas and teams work and when they thrive. Today, we're looking at how Barnes and noble is designing its bricking water bookstores for the future. Perhaps you remember the classic Barnes in able design, very nineties huge store may be thirty thousand square feet, a little over half the size of a football field, drab carpet, far screen trim and rows upon rows of books.

The traditional bonds and noble has been serry ranks of Normally and highly symmetrical lines of of books. And you just go up and down corridors of shelving and how traditional bookstores work because IT allows you to concentrate the sheer number of books you have, and it's very easy Operationally.

scale and uniformity serve bargains in nobel. In those days, this organization in layout meant customers could come in and easily find almost any book they were looking for.

Large book stores arranged their books fundamental a to c within a section, so that if you're looking for a work, you can find that. And IT was all based on the premise that you knew which book you wanted, and therefore you have to make IT easy to find.

But that's not how we shot for books these days. If you know what book you want, you can just buy IT on amazon. That means burn in nobel has to give people the books they want and the books they didn't know they wanted.

Alliance at a slightly country. Intuitively, IT was bringing all of the principles of independent book setting into a chain book seller. And and that is much more appropriate in a postmen erst world.

But how do you redesign the big box bookstore to feel like an end and still compete with a two trillion dollar everything store that's after the break?

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Any lover of the ROM com you've got mail will blame big chain bookstores for the demise of the local bookshop. Many thought amazon would finish the job, and the nineteen nineties and early two thousands were a rough time for your local shop around the corner, but many independent bookstores have actually opened in recent years.

The american booksellers association has added more than three hundred new members to its rank since the pandemic, and their numbers have been mostly climbing since two thousand and ten. So there must be something fundamental about these bookshops that brings buyers in, right for barns and nobel C. E. O James. Don't independent bookstores succeed by curating spaces where people can wander around and stumble upon stuff they might not find online?

They've always been in places which you've been about bringing in their community and giving their community places in winter brows and there for the physical space in the arrangement and presentation of that has always been called to an independent work seller.

The renovated barns and nobel stores look completely different these days. The drap carpet and that dumpy, far as Green, they're gone. The bleak flow tiles were ripped out for sleep light wood, the repainted walls were warmed up with splashes of pink, and the cash registers were moved from the front to the back to make room for more books. The whole place was designed to be brighter and closer, the kind of place that inspires customers to browse, according to dt.

that requires in in sort of automotive gy, creating rooms which are connected but separate. All that means is you pull them into either squares with entrance to either the side, or into a three sided closed room. One side is opened, the three are closed.

And that creates the space. Creating the room, encourages browsing and encourages that. I think some of community amongst the people who are particularly attracted to the subject that you within that room.

it's not just about creating that room though. It's also about the books that go in IT and how they're organized. Think about the history section of the bookstore barns and able use to sort books in alphabetical order by author. But that doesn't make much sense for history, and it's definitely not the best method to encourage browsing.

the worst way to arrange your history section is a to c by author. There is no coherence to that. You're coming in because you're interested to become the civil war on for revolution. And therefore we have to put all those on the french revolution together. IT creates much, much more interesting book dollars IT does put a huge emphasis on how you select um the range, the backlist and and the titles you have.

The tables and deliberate idiosyncratic organization have been tenants of in bookstores for a long time. In fact, don books in london is sorted entirely by geography. That's a bit much for a Barnes noble, but what Barnes noble is trying to do is cater to the taste of a local community, just like a good in the bookstore.

After all, new york's upper west is different from west Virginia is even different from new york's upper e side to improve the experience of shopping in a barca noble. The chain is shifting control to individual storm managers across the country. Don't is giving Barnes nobile booksellers permission to do things they were never able to do before. They have discretion over purchasing, placement, even pricing.

You leave the decision making to the store teams themselves because each door I is responding to its own physical space and to its customer ways.

but don't isn't trying to turn the chain into an independent bookstore.

We also do things that independence can do. There's a democracy to our spaces, which isn't the case with the independence. Probably what IT is of a much narrower demographic than the chain. And the big store gets everybody in IT all walks of life coming.

That democracy, as he calls IT, is reflected in the design itself, though the rooms give customers intimate, intuitive spaces to browse, the stores remain easy to navigate.

I think we've worked very hard on trying to get the angles in the sidelines. Um IT is predominantly come prize of robes of very Young size, but still giving you a sightline through so that you can see where the kids section is pretty much immediately you coming and you can see where history is. And that when you look down at the open running ways that we have, you're constantly seeing where you might be in when you can see down and IT says history where you'll know that, that you probably businesses isn't too far away .

for not these redesigns create environments that are welcoming but not overwhelming. And IT seems like it's working as a privately health company. Barns and noble doesn't report financial results, but it's clear that it's no longer near death.

Don't say storm managers now understand their customers Better, whether the chain used to send twenty five percent of its unbolt books back to the publisher, now the return rate is down to nine percent. And for the first time since you've got malison theatres, barn in nobel is expanding. And James down believes the brick motor bookstores of tomorrow will be a lot like today is .

I think the physical bookstore of the future will look very, very similar to the physical bookstore of today. Hopefully it'll many more of them.

and that's the science of success. This episode was produced by Charlotte garden burg. I'm been coin. Be sure to check out my column on W S. J dot com. And if you like the show, tell your friends and leave us a five star review on your favorite platform.

Thanks for listen.

Amazon q business is the new generative A I assistant from A W S, because many tasks can make business slow, as if waiting through mud help. Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon q can security understand your business data and use that knowledge to streamline task? Now you can summarize quarterly results or do complex analysis in no time.

Q, got this. Learn what amazon q business can do for you at A W S dot com. Slash, learn more.