Barnes & Noble’s stores became a jumble of books and merchandise unrelated to books. Barnes & Noble found itself in the unfortunate middle between Amazon and small, independent stores catering to specific subjects mirroring either the tastes of their owners or satisfying local predilections. Barnes & Noble created its own ereader, Nook, to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, but gave Nook very little attention.

To counter the onslaught and inroads of electronic books and Amazon’s online sales, Barnes & Noble added non-book items such as music, children’s educational toys, events, and Starbucks’ cafés. Barnes & Noble’s competitor Borders went belly-up in 2011. (The name Barnes & Noble did not appear until 1917.) The environment for large mega-bookstores was not particularly favorable in the mid-2000’s. The brand had survived close calls many times over since its inception in 1886. Still, for Elliot Management, Barnes & Noble presented a challenge. The turnaround was led by Waterstones’ CEO James Daunt (pictured). Elliot Management already owned a UK bookseller, Waterstones and had been successful achieving a turnaround of that UK brand. Financial Times called the deal “contrarian” while The New York Times hailed the purchase as “a sigh of relief” for book retailing.

At the time, responses from the trade and business presses were interesting. In August of 2019, activist hedge fund Elliot Management Corporation purchased Barnes & Noble for $683 million (including debt), taking the bookstore brand private. Although some still question the future of the brand, there is no question that Barnes & Noble has come back from the brink. Recently, The New York Times ran a lengthy story about the revitalization of Barnes & Noble, the last book megastore on the American retail landscape.

Great expectations barnes and noble