Leading by the Book
As the man who turned around Waterstones and is now transforming Barnes & Noble, James Daunt has rewritten the rules of bookselling. Here the CEO of Barnes & Noble talks to RLI about creating bookstores that thrive by thinking locally, empowering staff and putting readers back at the heart of retail.
The largest retail bookseller in the US, Barnes & Noble (B&N) today has over 600 bookstores across the country, having opened 57 new locations in 2024 alone, as well as operating its online bookstore at BN.com. The business also controls the NOOK® Digital business, which offers eBooks and an audio book subscriptions service, the SparkNotes educational service and stationery and gift retailer Paper Source.
The business is owned by Elliott Advisors (UK) Limited and run by CEO and bookseller James Daunt, who is also Managing Director of Waterstones bookstores in the UK and Founder and Owner of Daunt Books.
“Of course, taking over B&N in 2019, we more or less went straight into the pandemic, which as you can imagine was very unhelpful,” explains Daunt. “But today, the team and I have the business working much better. We have a sharp focus on improving the book shops and we are now zoned in on expansion. We open around 60 new stores a year, all across the US and the company remains on a very strong growth trajectory.”
The company is in a state of near constant expansion; for example, the day before we spoke with James, the company had opened a new site on the outskirts of Seattle where first day sales reached almost $100,000.
Back in September the business unveiled the opening of its new Pasadena, Maryland bookstore, which offers close to 14,000sq ft of books, toys, games, magazines, gift items and more in a space formerly occupied by Party City. The design of the Pasadena store showcases the ambition of B&N to create exceptional local bookstores that marry the best traditions of independent bookselling with the resources of the historic chain.
The Pasadena location was just one of three new B&N bookstores that opened that month, alongside new stores in Florida and Washington.
As the list of offerings in the Pasadena site highlights, B&N are very successful in selling things other than books. While they are first and foremost a bookstore and a bookseller, they are very strong in the toys and games department as well.
“We are also well-known for products such as stationary and gifting. Almost all of that is paper-based, so items such as wrapping paper and greeting cards are prominent in our locations. If you were to visit one of our stores you can expect to see very strong brand partnerships with companies in those categories,” Daunt comments.
“So everything from Cavallini and Legami in the stationary and pen space through to Lego in the toy space and a lot in the educational space. We are also a big Ravensburger jigsaw puzzle seller.”
Our conversation with the CEO moves onto the subjects of strategy and guest experience, which led to a core reason as to why this company continues to grow. Daunt explains that, as a retailer, B&N give huge autonomy across the majority of tasks to their stores and shop staff, which makes them quite distinctive and unique.
Rather than following the trends that most large retail companies do, i.e. same layout, same product placement in each section of the store etc. the teams at individual B&N sites decide where they place everything and they conduct all of the replenishment themselves.
“There is guidance of course, but how that is interpreted is entirely as they see fit, to the best of their judgement within their own shop, because it is their community they are selling to. A key example is price, we do not have a national price for a book and each site has complete control over their pricing system.”
It is this system that Daunt feels makes their employees jobs more interesting and in turn, make B&N a better and more profitable retailer. This autonomy has also led to excellent retention rates as people feel empowered to take the initiative.
This element of control is mirrored in the company’s social media strategy. It is completely decentralised and each store takes care of its own social media content and output. This unique outlook on these platforms has worked in their favour, rather than one, company-driven feed, they instead have hundreds of accounts active at the same time, all producing content and spreading the B&N name across all 50 states.
A prominent topic in today’s world is sustainability and while the business does everything it can in terms of minimising energy use and are plastic free, it is their products that is their biggest asset in this area. As Daunt puts it, a book basically lasts forever; it can be kept, borrowed, lent or given to the next person to read. With stores all across the country, the sustainability of their supply chain is something the business will continuously look to improve on moving forward.
As our time with Daunt runs out, we ask, what does the future hold?
“I don’t feel that as a company, we have ever aspired to be more than a bookseller and at a store level, we have never aspired to do anything other than run shops better. This, however, is not a bad thing. We are very narrow focused and we are good at what we do, it has allowed us to expand the company in terms of both product mix and store fleet and it is what we will continue to do as we look forward to what the years ahead bring.”
