“Two years in, the team has halted the decline and now has a base from which to grow revenues and profit.” Round display tables are part of B&N’s new strategy to encourage browsing. “It was going through a prolonged period of decline in both revenues and profits - for a decade at least,” he told The Post. He declined to give an exact dollar amount for revenue or profit.Įlliott portfolio manager Paul Best, who is the firm’s European head of private equity, said Barnes & Noble is now “more profitable” than it was. Revamped stores are brighter with abundant overhead lighting and more open floor space.īarnes & Noble’s total sales are up around 6 percent from 2019, Daunt said, and that’s with fewer stores - 605 compared to 628 in 2019. A source familiar with the matter says Elliott is about halfway through its plan that would eventually spin the bookseller back onto the public markets - or sell it to another private buyer.ĭaunt, who ran Elliott’s UK-based Waterstones book chain before he was tapped to run B&N, says he’s already seeing the fruits of his changes, including an interior overhaul of the chain’s 600-plus stores and a new management philosophy that empowers local bosses to make more decisions about which books they’ll stock.īarnes & Noble is also moving away from its signature green color scheme, which in older stores dominates the carpeting, wallpaper and even signage on the book shelves. Those kinds of numbers are encouraging for Elliott, a fund known for taking big positions in public companies and agitating for change: In this case, it bought B&N whole as a fixer-upper. “Double-digit growth in books has not happened since Amazon came along,” Barnes & Noble Chief Executive James Daunt told The Post in an interview. Industrywide, US sales of books are up 12 percent so far this year through August compared to the same period a year ago - and up 20 percent from 2019 over the same time period, according NPD Group, a market research company.ĬEO James Daunt says B&N sales have risen 6 percent since 2019. Sales of Manga, or graphic novels, at Barnes & Noble are up by as much as 500 percent at some stores where young adults are crowding in the aisles on Friday and Saturday nights. The 125-year-old chain, taken private two years ago for $683 million by billionaire Paul Singer’s hedge fund Elliott Management, has reported double-digit sales growth in books this year so far compared to 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak.Įven more surprising to skeptics who had watched the chain wither in the face of Amazon’s rise, the retailer says teenagers and tweens are helping to fuel the surge. Thanks to the pandemic, a surprising number of consumers are once again devouring books - in print - and Barnes & Noble is cashing in.
Seuss ban as sales skyrocketīarnes & Noble Education shares spike on investment from Fanatics, Lidsīook publishers worry that Barnes & Noble hack will spur holiday snafusīarnes & Noble says shopper info may have been hacked
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