Barnes & Noble CEO: Store Expansion and Revamped Loyalty See Bookstores Turning the Page

Bookstores — remember those? — have staged something of a comeback during the pandemic years, and the question now is can that really be sustained?

Driven by factors from streaming media overload to the timeless appeal of in-store, in-person shopping that has roared back, bookstores are returning, with healthy activity on the independent front, and category leader Barnes & Noble expanding to meet extant demand.

Acquired in 2019 by investment firm Elliott Management, which bought U.K. book chain Waterstones in 2018, Barnes & Noble is in growth mode again after sitting out COVID closures. It’s opening new stores and going all-in on customer loyalty.

Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt confirmed that the chain plans to open 30 new locations in 2023 in its first expansion since 2009 while speaking with CNBC Wednesday (April 5).

“I think we’ve got much better bookstores in place,” Daunt said. “We benefited from spending the pandemic time when we were closed turning around the stores, making them look better … and above all, giving each store the authority to do whatever it thought was most sensible in its individual location.”

Barnes & Noble currently has roughly 600 stores.

Daunt, who was managing director of Waterstones previously, has a reputation for giving autonomy to stores as opposed to enacting sweeping strategies at scale, signaling insight into the local nature of bookstores and what their strengths are in a digital media world.

“Secondly, people are reading a lot more,” he said. “The wind is in our sails, and obviously, it’s much easier to do when your customers are buying a lot more from you than when times are tough.”

He told CNBC that book sales spike every few years around franchises from “Harry Potter” to “50 Shades of Grey.”

“January 2023 was amazing, and we’re now starting April, having had February, March, a good start of the year, so it’s a strength that’s lasted well beyond the, sort of, conventional end of the pandemic,” he said.

It’s easy to forget that Amazon started as a humble bookseller on a 1990s novelty called the internet, but it now controls an estimated 60% of book sales. However, the downfall of store-based book retailing is more complicated than “Amazon did it.” Booksellers from now-defunct Borders to Barnes & Noble got in over their skis with megastores and eReaders that fell out of favor as audiobooks and other formats gained popularity, even though Barnes & Noble eReaders are still being sold, with the NOOK GlowLight 4 introduced in 2021 retailing for $149.99.

Return of the Indie Bookstore

As for independent bookstores, organizations like BookShop and IndieBound are redoubling support for independent bookstores in partnership with the American Booksellers Association (ABA), leveraging digital shopping features in ways that benefit indie booksellers.

It’s even taking advantage of buy button simplicity. The ABA announced in January that IndieBound — an ABA promotional web initiative — is now using the BookShop buy button to “eliminate consumer confusion, improve data for the indie channel, convert more consumers, generate more revenue for booksellers (thanks to a simpler purchase flow and higher conversion rate), and optimize the impact of Bookshop.org for independent bookstores. With a united front, the eCommerce market share for indies can grow significantly.”

BookShop buy button orders are fulfilled by independent bookstores.

As for the revamped Barnes & Noble loyalty program, it’s the first major change to the seminal loyalty program in over two decades and is a shot across Amazon’s bow.

“When we launched our membership in 2001, it was among one of the first and most successful retail loyalty programs,” said Shannon DeVito, senior director of books at Barnes & Noble, in a Wednesday email to PYMNTS. “It remained the same for the intervening 22 years, and we are more than ready for this update.”

“We developed two new membership levels with our customers top of mind,” she added. “Now every reader can earn stamps and save, and our most loyal shoppers will receive even more benefits. The response to the initial launch in test locations has been overwhelmingly positive, and in a matter of weeks, we will have rolled out the program to all Barnes & Noble stores.”

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