When does a brand turn into its own worst enemy? When it grows to completely dominate its product category? When it becomes seen as a bully to small businesses? When it’s unable to innovate quickly enough to compete with an even bigger adversary? In the case of Barnes & Noble, it experienced each of these phases in its recent history—but ended up the better for it.
America’s bookstore
For more than three decades, Barnes & Noble was the unquestioned behemoth in the bookseller industry. Offering an unmatched breadth of titles in a superstore-like format, it provided readers of all ages a cookie-cutter but comfortable experience in hundreds of stores across the country. Think of Barnes & Noble and it’s hard not to see the dark green paint, dark wood trim, and iconic author illustrations peering down from the walls in every store.
But beginning in the late ‘90s, Barnes & Noble became seen less as a bookworm’s friend and more as a real-life villain as it put countless independent bookstores out of business (as portrayed in the popular 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail). And like so many other big booksellers of the 2000s like Borders, Waldenbooks, and Crown Books, Barnes & Noble fell victim to the biggest retail giant of all—Amazon.
A dark chapter
Unable to change its stuffy corporate image or compete with Amazon’s lower prices and seamless online purchasing experience, Barnes & Noble saw its sales steadily fall throughout the 2010s and was eventually forced to close 150 stores. In desperate need of any kind of sales, it replaced bookshelf and display space with a wide range of gift items, knick-knacks, and miscellaneous merchandise that did nothing to improve profits. In 2019, Barnes & Noble was bought out by a hedge fund, which drew little optimism for a strategy to return customers back to its stores.
The hero emerges
However, the new owners brought in a knight in shining army—James Daunt, CEO of UK bookstore giant Waterstones—to oversee Barnes & Noble’s resurrection. Using the same blueprint for rescuing Waterstones from bankruptcy, Daunt tossed out the old B&N brand pillars and installed a fresh approach to the store experience.
Going forward, Daunt commanded each store to operate as an independent bookseller—essentially, to un-Barnes & Noble themselves. Past corporate leadership, said Daunt, “wanted to behave like a conventional retailer. It wasn’t because they were stupid or because they were idle. It was simply that they didn’t understand bookselling.”
In addition to updating the old décor with brighter paint and lighter wood, Daunt empowered store managers to:
- Redesign and refresh their stores as they saw fit
- Have a greater say in overall book buying decisions
- Curate and display their store’s offerings to appeal to their local community
- Refuse promotional money from publishers that forced stores to promote specific authors and titles.
Plus, with the rise of the BookTok hashtag, celebrity book clubs, and online book influencers, store managers gained powerful new tools in staying up to date on reading trends, under-the-radar authors, and emerging young writers—helping individual stores be more nimble in stocking selections that appealed to their customers’ tastes.
The result? In 2023, Barnes & Noble opened 30 new stores. In 2024, it opened 57 new stores. This year, it plans to open 60 more.
Epilogue
Thanks to its intentional “un-branding” and greater trust in each individual store’s decision making, Barnes & Noble is no longer regarded as the baddie in the bookstore economy. In fact, because of the decentralization of its stores, it is now actually welcomed by other booksellers as another “little guy” that can help the entire industry battle Amazon.
By jettisoning its traditional brand practices and embracing a corner bookstore mindset, the Barnes & Noble brand is back and stronger than ever—a highly unlikely but very real success story.