BarnesandNoble
is one of the world's largest and most trusted e-commerce
retailers offering millions of books (including out-of-print
and used), music, DVDs, videos, prints and posters. Barnes
and Nobles beginnings can be traced to 1873, when Charles
M. Barnes started a book business from his home in Wheaton,
Illinois. In 1917, his son, William, went to New York
to join G. Clifford Noble in establishing Barnes
and Nobles. During the height of the
Great Depression, what later became the Barnes & Noble
flagship store was opened on Fifth Avenue at 18th Street
in New York City, where it still resides today. This store
developed a worldwide reputation for excellence by serving
millions of customers with its comprehensive selection
of general trade books, academic titles and textbooks,
and medical books.
Leonard
Riggio, the Barnes
and Noble store chairman, began his
bookselling career while attending New York University
in the early 1960s. Working as a clerk in the university
bookstore, he became convinced that he could do a better
job serving students, and he opened a competing store
of his own. With a small investment, Mr. Riggio established
the Student Book Exchange (SBX) in Manhattan's Greenwich
Village in 1965. The store quickly became one of New York’s
finest bookstores, known for its knowledgeable staff,
wide selection and great service.
By
the 1970s, Mr. Riggio’s thriving business, which
included six other college bookstores, acquired the flagship
Barnes & Noble trade name and flagship bookstore in
Manhattan, which had fallen into decline. Within a few
years, Mr. Riggio transformed the Fifth Avenue store into
"The World’s Largest Bookstore," with
150,000 textbook and trade titles. Mr. Riggio’s
commitment to students continues today through Barnes
n Noble College Booksellers, a privately held company
that operates more than 500 stores on college and university
campuses across the United States and in Canada. Throughout
the 1970s and 1980s, the company made a number of groundbreaking
moves. In 1974, Barnes n Nobles was the first bookseller
in America to advertise on television. Aired in the New
York market, the Barnes & Noble “Of Course!
Of Course!” commercials won awards and were so memorable
that customers still recall them.
In
1975, the company took a bold and audacious step by becoming
the first bookseller in America to discount books by offering
New York Times bestsellers at 40% off publishers’
list prices. Barnes & Noble expanded on that idea
by opening a 40,000-square-foot Sale Annex directly across
from its flagship store. The company began to expand in
the New York/Boston markets by opening smaller discount
bookstores. In addition, it acquired two local chains,
BookMasters and Marboro Books, which were converted to
BarnesandNoble discount stores. Initially, these stores
were very successful and expanded to 50 locations. They
were eventually phased out in favor of the company’s
larger-format book superstores.
The
acquisition of Marboro Books gave Barnes & Noble a
foothold in the growing mail-order business, which served
as a platform to reach customers nationwide. This business
served as a laboratory that revealed undercurrents of
demand, prompting Barnes & Noble to begin publishing
its own books for sale to its growing mail-order customer
base. These titles were primarily out-of-print books that
were reissued in high quality, affordable editions.
Through
the 1980s, Barnes & Noble experimented with different
store formats and sizes, seeking to develop a suburban
superstore version of the original Barnes & Noble
store. In 1987, the company made its largest acquisition
when it purchased B. Dalton Bookseller from Dayton Hudson.
This acquisition of 797 retail bookstores thrust the company
onto the national scene, making Barnes & Noble a nationwide
retailer overnight and the second-largest bookseller in
America. The company also acquired Doubleday Book Shops
from the Bertelsmann Company and the rights to the Scribner’s
bookstore trade name from Macmillan.
To
further evolve its superstore strategy, Barnes & Noble
purchased BookStop, a company operating discount book
superstores in Texas, in 1989. This acquisition gave the
company key insights into the ingredients behind a successful
superstore strategy, from real estate to operations to
marketing and merchandising. In the early 1990s, the company
refined its superstore concept and established the modern
generation of BarnesandNobles superstores, which today
represent over 96 percent of our retail sales. Barnes
& Noble superstores have become the information piazzas
of America. They combine a vast and deep selection of
book titles with an experienced bookselling staff and
a warm, comfortable and spacious atmosphere. They also
offer a comprehensive inventory of music and DVDs. The
music department stocks a deep selection of classical,
jazz, opera and show tunes that has established Barnes
& Noble as a leader in the adult music market. Further
enhancing the stores’ appeal as destinations are
our cafés, which through an exclusive arrangement
with Starbucks, distinguish Barnes & Noble as the
only bookseller serving America’s premier coffee
brand. Barnes and Noble became a publicly traded company
in 1993.
Internet
Retailing
The company has been selling direct to consumers for over
25 years, beginning with its mail-order catalogue in the
1970s. In the late 1980s, Barnes and Noble tested selling
books online in an early generation venue called Trintex,
a joint venture between Sears and IBM. In the mid-1990s,
it sold books on CompuServe and later opened a full-fledged
book superstore on America Online in March 1997. The company’s
Web site, Barnes & Noble.com (www.barnesandnoble.com),
was launched in May of that year.
Today,
the BarnesandNoble.com Web site serves as the company’s
largest store, enabling customers to order any book any
time from anywhere. With more than one million unique
titles, the site’s standing inventory is the largest
of any bookseller online. Customers also have access through
Barnes and Noble .com to millions of used and out-of-print
titles from a network of authorized book dealers, as well
as a vast selection of music CDs and DVDs.
Book
Publishing
The company began publishing books in the early 1980s
by reissuing affordable editions of out-of-print titles.
Its editions of The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense
by Suzette Haden Elgin and The Columbia History of the
World by John Garrity have sold over 250,000 and 1 million
copies, respectively. Over the next decade, Barnes &
Noble’s nationwide store base enabled it to expand
its publishing operation and become a leader in illustrated
book publishing. The company has made two acquisitions
that expanded its publishing capability:
*
In 2001, BarnesandNoble purchased SparkNotes.com, a leading
study aids Web site, offering free online access to literature
notes and more than 1,000 study guides on everything from
literature to chemistry to computer science. SparkNotes
converted its top study guides into print publications,
and they have rapidly become bestsellers.
* In 2003, BarnesandNobles purchased Sterling Publishing,
one of the top 25 publishers in America and the industry's
leading publisher of books for enthusiasts, with over
5,000 titles in the areas of how-to, crafts, home design,
cooking and health.
