rest in peace to the bookstore

rest in peace to the bookstore. there was a time when bookstores were dying. borders was gone and Amazon looked like it was taking over and Barnes and noble it looked like they were next. so how did Barnes and noble go from closing stores to opening more than it had in over a decade. hi i'm Natalie. I'm the founder of a startup and I love talking about tech and business lore that you can't ignore so follow if you like these kinds of videos. by the early 2000s the company had built its empire on these massive big box stores. high rent high overhead and very little flexibility at the local level. and at the same time Amazon was shaping customer behavior more convenience instant access lower prices and the ability to shop online. Barnes and noble felt this hit. they decided that they were gonna come after Amazon by becoming a tech company. in 2009 Barnes and noble launched the Nook which was a direct competitor to the Amazon Kindle. but as we know Amazon was not just selling a Kindle. it was building an entire ecosystem and Barnes and noble was not going to be able to compete with that. the Nook just became a massive money pit citing losses of over $1.3 billion and at the same time foot traffic was dropping sales were declining and Barnes and Noble was shutting down 150 stores in the 2010s. all of those signs pointed to bookstores becoming obsolete. however in 2019 Barnes and noble was acquired by Elliot Management for $683 million which honestly was a pretty good deal considering the size of Barnes and noble. and then of course the leadership changed. Elliot brought in James Daunt who actually was known for turning around Waterstones which is the UK's largest bookstore chain. his strategy was very simple. instead of running Barnes and noble like a tech company he started running it like an actual bookstore. he did the opposite of what big retailers usually do and he started giving power back to the local bookstore. instead of corporate deciding what was sold how much was sold and what inventory they needed to have local bookstores were empowered to curate their own inventory. so a Barnes and noble in a college town might look a bit different than a Barnes and noble in New York City. he also ended the aggressive pay to play model where publishers could pay a lot of money to get their books in the front of the stores. and if you walked into a newer Barnes and noble today it's meant to feel like a local bookstore and that was intentional. a lot of Barnes and nobles today are not these massive warehouse bookstores. some of them are even as small as 5,000 square feet. and after decades of decline Barnes and noble has entered into expansion. they opened 30 new stores in 2023 60 new stores in 2024 which is more than they had opened in the entire decade before. in 2025 they opened another 60 locations. now they have 700 locations nationwide. the world where everything is more digital and optimized for convenience Barnes and noble won by actually doing the opposite. they leaned into becoming more human. they stopped trying to replace Amazon and started doing what Amazon can't do. community discovery and the joy of browsing.