Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
But Daunt has already said he wants to scale down to smaller, more stores*, so this isn't that shocking.
*didn't he? I remember him saying that, but I may be confusing it with speculation here on MR  |
The bolded part was "
too expensive", which brought up the matter of NYC rents because a lot of people are counting on B&N's new owners coming in with "deep pockets", to save Nook.
Daunt firing all new employees over the lockdowns, delaying publisher payments, firing the book buyers, and closing shop in NYC over money all suggest the pockets he's working with aren't all that deep.
So far, they've opened a couple of new format, smaller stores, but nowhere near as many as they've closed.
As for growing the chain I don't recall him saying it directly but rather hinting at it, by saying the US is "underbookstored".
I took the statement as a negative at the time because it showed a lack of understanding of US population distribution and the modern US retail environment.
Even small bookstores need big populations within a reasonable distance and the reason B&M bookstores have been withering is because "reasonable distance" has been shrinking all decade. (For all B&M; hence the mall apocalypse.) The number of population centers maintaining enough foot traffic to support even a small B&M store is lower than the existing store coubt so I seriously doubt there is room for much if any expansion, even with the steady closure of Independent stores.
And that was before the lockdowns.
My expectation is he will be closing big stores and opening new, smaller ones but the net will be a (quiet) reduction in store count.