Taken over by a hedge fund. just like KB Toys, Sears & Toys R Us. Barnes & Noble Is Sold to Hedge Fund After a Tumultuous Year i give it five years before its completely stripmined.
First Toys R Us, now Barnes and Noble, and probably GameStop next. There goes just about all the places me and my friends used to hang out at.
I am not surprised. Amazon made then all but irrelevant along time ago. I do like going into the store once in awhile to see what gunpla they have.
Data pads killed the Bookkeeper Star!... ...eh, doesn't have quite the same charm when sung. Neither does an Apple shop when compared to a Bookstore.
Well this stinks, I really like going into Barnes & Noble to browse (I do actually buy stuff, too). I don't think I could trust Amazon to safely ship a book. They've crammed 4 DVDs into a tiny envelope and threw 6 DVDs into a giant envelope for me. I've heard about people getting crushed boxsets from them too.
I've only bought a comic from this book store. I've been in a store and i love those stores. There isn't any stores near me where i live.
Too bad. I worked there for about two years when I was right out of college. Used to find some really great stuff in their clearance/bargain section. RIP, brick and mortar stores. Pretty soon there will be no reason to go out at all.
I like B&N because I can flip through a book before buying it off amazon for cheaper. I mean they refuse to price match.
We have a fairly good size one near me. I used to go there more frequently until I started buying more books at Amazon and Half Price Book store.
Never had this chain on the island but its one of the stores I like going to whenever I am in the states (the last of which was 5-6 years ago).
That's a horrible shame. I enjoy B&N. I don't go there as often as I could or should, mainly because of locations and access (seriously, they're in horrible high traffic areas and getting through that muck and mire for a bookstore isn't always worth it. I know, that's crappy, I admit it.) I don't want to see them get destroyed, though. At all. I would love for them to stay open and keep operating. Geez. It doesn't help that some areas have Books-A-Million in the same area and they're direct competition as well as dealing with Amazon. Ugh. (Here, in the Youngstown Metro, we have a B-A-M in Niles and a B&N in Boardman and they're roughly 15-18 miles apart from one another, but it's all easily accessible via highway through the cities so you don't feel like you're driving all over the Earth to get there. Not to mention all of the Walmarts and the two Targets.)
From what I heard, the management has been trying to extract as much value from the company as they could before doing just this for the last few years. The investment company I'm sure will continue to bleed B&N dry until they can close the husk down and Amazon will be the only dedicated book store chain left after the same happens to Indigo. B&N fired all their head cashiers, receivers, and basically all experienced staff a year and a half ago without warning (and then told them they could re-apply for part time positions at minimum wage) in order to "cut costs", nevermind that they paid their CEO alone nearly 6 million dollars that year (executive compensation over the last few years has been in the tens of millions while the company has gone deeper and deeper into debt). They shifted to a practice of shipping online sales straight from stores rather than a warehouse, further impeding the ability of those stores to survive. The actions of management to not appear to indicate that there was any plan to compete in the marketplace, to rebuild the company, or to treat B&N as anything other than another asset to be sold on the basis of its brand recognition. There's a grim irony in this, though, in that B&N was accused years ago of using its massive buying power to undercut local independent bookstores and drive those competitors out of business, and now they're having the same done to them by Amazon (who buy some accounts now treats books as a loss leader to attract sales on other products via their sites).
well shit this sucks. I prefer going to a physical store to get books. Hollywood video, Blockbuster, then Hastings then Toys R us and now Barnes and Nobels all my favorite places are dying. there is still hobbytown and probably several anime stores where you live that will still sell Gunpla.
Goddammit. I'm dreading the Introverts' Paradise world that seems to be forming with pretty much all B&M stores going under. Unlike some people, I actually do like leaving the house and going to stores and looking around, and....<gasp>...interacting with people. Who the hell wants to just buy all their stuff online?
