Quote:
Originally Posted by cfrizz
Fascinating history, and good example of what happens when people or businesses refuse to embrace change!
What I don't get is even with centuries of this happening over and over again with the same results, it keeps being repeated.
Are we really that stupid???  |
Pretty much.
Mostly it's ego: it's easier to see stupidity in others than to accept it in yourself. Successful people get used to winning and stop questioning themselves. A lot of those execs take themselves too seriously and start to believe their own hype. They become one-trick ponies.
Riggio used to be a shark of bookselling on the basis of big storefronts, large(ish) catalogs, volume discounts, and undercutting independent bookstores. It worked for over thirty years. He became so used to being top dog he thought he was incapable of failing.
Then the market changed.
The change began at the turn of the century: 2003 was the peak of the old regime. It's been downhill since then. (No, it did not start in 2008. That was when they no longer could paper over the declining sales.)
If you look at Riggio's pronouncements these days, he still acts as if the downturn in B&M sales is just a blip. That somewhere out there is a magic solution that will bring back the lost traffic. He still won't admit that B&N hasn't just lost sales but rather has lost *customers*. For now and forever. They're never coming back.
Online isn't a bad dream.
Digital isn't a fad.
It's the new normal.
And the very things that made him--big storefronts, large(ish) catalogs, volume discounts, and undercutting independent bookstores--is precisely what is sinking him. The catalog size isn't a draw, the store size is dead weight, and his reduced volume no longer lets him underprice everybody. (Independents that survived his tactics learned to live without low prices, they learned new tricks. Their sales are small but so are their needs.)
One trick and he has no other.
He's not alone.
Plenty of other high flyers are in the same boat, just waiting for their pony to die. All it takes is one misstep. Once familiar names--Word Perfect, Lotus, Ashton-Tate, Borland--they all failed to diversify, build a stable of alternatives. Now they are but memories and shadows. Footnotes. Borders is one. Soon enough, B&N will follow.
Some are aware of the danger and are frantically trying to grow alternatives but many are too wedded to their own invincibility to accept the need for change.
Like I said, ego.
Human nature.
Times change, entropy wins and drama becomes farce.