Still, the company’s struggles are probably far from over. “There’s solid leadership, whereas before, there was infighting about what the strategy would be.” “As a retail bookseller, it’s in decent shape, considering the direction the company was heading with so many store closings and so much visible bleeding in terms of the Nook business,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. Paperback sales were up 13 percent in the first seven months of 2015, while e-books were down 11 percent, according to the Association of American Publishers. “The only number that counts is Christmas,” said John Tinker, a media analyst at Gabelli & Company.īarnes & Noble stands to benefit from falling e-book sales and the stability of print, an unexpected reversal that could help drive customers back to brick-and-mortar bookstores. Through Black Friday weekend, comparable store sales were up 1.1 percent, providing an encouraging forecast for the chain’s holiday sales. Some analysts said there were reasons to be hopeful about the company’s future. Boire underscored this point by singling out coloring books and strong sales of Adele’s new album “25” among the company’s recent successes. Toys and games, a small but increasingly critical part of the business, provided a bright spot, growing nearly 15 percent in the last quarter. Huseby, who became the executive chairman of Barnes & Noble Education, the company’s college bookstore business. Boire, 54, the former chief executive of Sears Canada and a retail veteran who has worked at Brookstone, Best Buy and Toys “R” Us, is under pressure to reverse the fortunes of the beleaguered bookstore chain, which has been stung in recent years by the rise of Amazon, steep losses from its Nook e-reader division and a string of store closings.Įarnings before interest, depreciation and amortization fell to $20.5 million, a drop that the company attributed in part to a $10.5 million severance charge for its former chief executive, Michael P. Boire couldn’t help himself from reflexively straightening the jagged piles of books on the display tables so that the spines lined up neatly. Walking through the first floor of a Barnes & Noble store in Union Square in Manhattan recently, Mr. Boire, who took the helm as chief executive of Barnes & Noble in September, still seems to have a soft spot for physical books. “I remember telling a friend, when I grow up, I want to be able to afford hardcover books.” “We didn’t have any money, and my mother was a voracious reader,” he said. When Ron Boire was growing up on a dairy farm in upstate New York, helping out around the property for $2 an hour, he saw new books as an out-of-reach luxury.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |