Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
Brick and Mortar Retail is failing across the country. Store Rents (>$10 a foot in major cities) are just too high to be sustained by the current Retail sales model
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Simply filling the store with stuff indiscriminately, hoping *something* catches somebody's eye is as "effective" as loading up the front with the same 20-30 new releases available everywhere.
Neither approach provides much reason for people to go to the trouble of driving to *their* store.
Part of the problem they are facing is that the people who used to visit regularly and buy a lot of product were (no duh!) avid readers (who have moved enmasse to online and ebooks) and their business model only works for casual readers (looking to see if anything catches their eye) and social bandwagon readers (looking for hot "bestsellers"). Neither demographic can sustain a "cathedral of literature, alone or combined. Not at those rents.
They need to downsize and know it but they're stuck with the monster stores so they seem to be looking for ways to use the floor space. With toys and lifestyle merchandise only providing 10% of their revenue in exchange for *over* 10% of the floorspace they now need to try something else.
In truth, the restaurant idea isn't totally hopeless--back in the day, a Friday afternoon outing in my social circle a couple times a month started with an early exit from work, a late afternoon movie, dinner at a casual sit-down restaurant, capped by a run through Borders for a handful of books each. Movie--Friday's--Borders.
But that was a decade or more ago.
Today there might be three or four summer movies worth the trip and B&N isn't worth the time to walk in one door and out the other.
It might work with younger bookworms...but I doubt it.
And even if it did, four stores isn't going to move the needle much on a chain their size. Even if it were to succeed, the time and cost of moving the bulk of the chain to that format would be prohibitive. For them, anyway.
They need a total revamp of their bookselling approach, not doodling on the margins with four experimental hybrids.