Latest news with #JamesDaunt
Miami Herald
19-04-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
This once-struggling chain is making a major comeback
Over the last two decades, the world of retail has changed in major ways that would have been impossible for the average consumer to predict. The shift from shopping in person to online has been dramatic: global online shopping revenue hit $6.09 trillion in 2024, and projections show that number could hit $9.1 trillion by 2030, per Capital One. Don't miss the move: SIGN UP for TheStreet's FREE Daily newsletter The result of this shift can be seen at your local shopping mall or center: more stores closing locations or going bankrupt altogether, even names that seemed like they'd be around forever. A few of these include Big Lots, Joann, Express, and Forever 21. Related: This bankrupt retail chain is coming back from the dead Luckily, the Big Lots IP was purchased by Gordon Brothers, which then sold hundreds of its locations to Variety Wholesalers, which will gift it a chance for a second life. The other retailers haven't been as lucky. However, one legacy chain that many have worried about going under is making a remarkable comeback. And if you've ever spent a cozy night at home with a book in hand and a warm pet in your lap, you're going to be happy to hear this news. Amazon's ultra-low prices have caused major worries for retail booksellers, with chains like Borders and Waldenbooks unable to compete and eventually closing their doors. However, Barnes & Noble (BNED) is seeing a surprising and wonderful trend continue to grow: people coming into their stores to buy books instead of opting for cheaper prices online. Barnes & Noble has announced it will open 60 new stores this year, following an impressive 2024 where it opened more stores in a year than it did in the decade from 2009 to 2019. Related: Temu quietly makes drastic decision as consumers switch gears "As we open new bookstores across the country it is especially gratifying to come back to communities we once served," said James Daunt, CEO, Barnes & Noble. "Even moreso here, where we not only return to Bryn Mawr, but to the exact address we once proudly occupied. This new Bryn Mawr Barnes & Noble is a testament to readers' ongoing desire for bookstores as a place of discovery and community, and we are very pleased to be back." Barnes & Noble seems to have benefited from a few key changes - some strategic and some due to unpredictable circumstances. One part of the changes comes from the chain's 2019 acquisition by Elliot Management, an American investment firm. Swapping to a books-first strategy, Barnes & Noble locations also made unusual changes such as ditching the chain's signature forest green and dark wood. "Any design agency would have a heart attack if they could see what we're doing," Barnes & Noble chief executive James Daunt said back in 2023. Another part of the chain's trajectory is simply due to Covid, which drove Barnes & Noble's sales to $1.85 billion in 2020. While revenue did dip in 2021 as people started getting the vaccine and heading back out into the world, it then began a slow climb back up, making it back to $1.57 billion in 2024. Social media has also played a role in Barnes & Noble's momentous comeback. TikTok's #BookTok has billions of viewers, as well as dedicated accounts that regularly post reviews of new books. It's one of TikTok's most popular hashtags and has a simple effect that's great for bookstores everywhere: it just makes people want to go check out new books. Related: Iconic retailer bets big on going small with new store openings The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Barnes & Noble opening 60 new book stores in Florida, US in 2025. Here's what to know
As people spend more and more time on their phones and communicate with emojis and abbreviations, it was welcome news to learn bookseller Barnes & Noble is increasing the number of its stores across the United States and Florida. The company's actions and future plans run counter to businesses closing and declaring bankruptcy, including, most recently, Big Lots and 23andme. Here's what we know about Barnes & Noble's plans. Bookseller Barnes & Noble plans to open more than 60 new locations across the U.S. in 2025. "Barnes & Noble is enjoying a period of tremendous growth as the strategy to hand control of each bookstore to its local booksellers has proven so successful," the company announced. "The bookseller is experiencing strong sales in its existing stores and has been opening many new stores after more than 15 years of declining store numbers." To put it into perspective, the 60 stores in 2025 is more than the number of stores that opened in the decade between 2009 and 2019. Barnes & Noble has opened two new Florida stores in 2025: Naples: 4149 Tamiami Trail N, opened on Jan. 29 'We are thrilled to welcome our customers back into their brand-new Naples Barnes & Noble,' said James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble. 'We are very happy to have found this sizable space (a former Big Lots), just a mile from our previous Naples location. As we open bookstores in new areas across the country, we also aim to remain in those we have long served, and this beautiful — and quite large — new Barnes & Noble is a testament to that.' Tequesta: 151 N U.S. Highway 1, opened March 26 'Tequesta may be a small community, but they have shown outsized enthusiasm since we announced this new Barnes & Noble,' Daunt said in the news release announcing the store's opening. ➤ New Naples Barnes and Noble opens with a special appearance from author Janet Evanovich ➤ How Tequesta is growing: Barnes & Noble opens with Black Friday-style rush into bookstore New stores that have opened in 2025 include: Brentwood, California Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Bellevue, Washington North Canton, Ohio Gainesville, Virginia Grand Rapids, Michigan Houston, Texas Huntington Station, New York Issaquah, Washington Papillon, Nebraska Superior, Colorado That information has not yet been released, and Barnes & Noble did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment on April 15. Barnes & Noble said on its website there are about 600 stores across the U.S. Data company ScrapeHero said there are 659 Barnes & Noble stores in the U.S. as of March 10. States with the most bookstores are: California: 72 Texas: 52 Florida: 45 New York: 44 Virginia: 29 This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Barnes & Noble opening 60 new locations in Florida, US in 2025
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Barnes & Noble opens new bookstore in Issaquah
Barnes & Noble bookstore officially opened its new Issaquah location today. The new bookstore can be found in Issaquah Commons, in the space formerly occupied by Bed, Bath & Beyond. According to the company, the previous Issaquah Barnes & Noble store closed in May 2020. Author Marissa Meyer was at the opening, cutting the ribbon and signing copies of her books, including her new release The Happy Writer, and the New York Times best-selling young adult series The Lunar Chronicles. 'We are opening new Barnes & Noble bookstores at a pace unseen in decades, and we do so with a focus on returning to communities we once served,' said CEO James Daunt. 'We are so pleased to be back in Issaquah, and our booksellers are very excited to welcome customers into this stunning new bookstore.' The Issaquah location is one of five new Barnes & Noble bookstores set to open in February, alongside new stores in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In a press release, Barnes & Noble stated that they had opened more new bookstores in 2024 than in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019. The bookseller expects to open over 60 new bookstores in 2025. 'The readers here in Issaquah have been clamoring for our return,' said Store Manager Charlene Lee, Barnes & Noble bookseller of 22 years. 'I'm so happy to be part of the team bringing Barnes & Noble back to this book-thirsty community!' Find more information and upcoming events from the bookstore on social media @bnissaquah.
Telegraph
29-01-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Waterstones CEO James Daunt: ‘We have stubbornly held on in places like Middlesbrough long after M&S left'
James Daunt is running between meetings and apologies for having to dash off for a minute before we can begin our chat. While he is gone I squint at the books in his New York office, but alas the Zoom screen is such that I can make out only one title – a biography of the artist 'I try to knock through a non-fiction book once a week. I've just finished The Quiet Coup by Mehrsa Baradaran [about the market failures of American neoliberalism]. I'm reading a book on inflation at the moment. Although I'm having a tough time with novels at the moment. I haven't hit upon something that's made me feel 'wow'.' On second thoughts, perhaps you can deduce from this that Daunt cares very much about the health of In 2011, he was appointed managing director of Waterstones at a time when the chain was in a seeming death loop of forced branch closures and collapsing profits; by 2024 sales had reached £528.4 million, up 17 per cent on the year before, with profits for the same year soaring by £20 million to hit £32.8 million. In 2019, he became the chief executive of the then floundering So successful have both companies become that rumours are circulating that Elliott Management, the private equity firm that owns them, plan to float them on the stock exchange. Daunt, though, 61, dismisses such corporate gossip as though it were a bad smell. 'These are not my plans at all,' he says, reluctant to disclose any further details for both companies beyond their steady and remorseless growth. 'Much of it is pure speculation: one sees that a private equity firm buys a business and assumes that five years on, if the business is doing well, they will sell it. To be honest I lack the imagination to see why one would do things any differently to how we do it now.' Indeed. The success of Waterstones in the UK is a rare, possibly unique bright spot in a retail market otherwise dominated by the collapse into administration of big brands (Ted Baker is among the latest to be plunged into crisis) and declining profits ( Tumbleweed blows like empty beer cans along shuttered high streets up and down the land. This week 'What makes us different is that we stubbornly and tenaciously held on in places where other people have left, so you'll find us in Grimsby and Middlesborough long after M&S have abandoned these places,' says Daunt. The Waterstones vision is as much ideological as financial. 'We have a bookshop in Ayr because it matters that we are there.' So why is Waterstones soaring and everywhere else floundering? Covid helped: sales rose 73 per cent in 2021-2022 as half of adults doubled their reading time during lockdown and an artfully curated bookshelf became a Zoom must-have accessory. 'Most retailers appeal to a relatively small demographic – teenagers, or older men and so forth. We sell to everyone.' 'We have huge advantages,' he argues. 'What we sell has a fixed price that we don't set [book prices are set by the publishers]. So we are remarkably well protected from the consequences of excessive inflation.' Fair enough, but that fixed price is creeping up – it's now common for 'But inflation has been remarkably modest in the UK book market, much less than it is in any other. When I first started selling books in 1990, a paperback was £6. Nor do we sell items that go out of date. Also we are aspirational. Our reach goes beyond the middle class bracket. Many parents want their children to read.' His thoughts on the future of the high street are bleak. 'The movement to online is irreversible. There is nothing left in Newport Gwent, for instance, whereas 15 years ago there was a Next, a Marks. But once someone empties, everyone empties. In certain communities, particularly in the North West, physical retail will continue to die.' The fault, he says, lies squarely with successive governments who have failed to correct the 'The Tories were utterly useless at this. Mainly because they knew the lobbying power of the online guys, but the reason why the big guys are exiting from high streets is that it's really inefficient to run a physical store when you can run an online one.' Starmer's government has announced plans to overhaul business rates with a view to making big tech pay more. But experts predict that the proposed changes will instead make the situation worse, with bricks and mortar stores potentially having to pay an extra £482 million as a result of the changes. 'Obviously local government also needs to be financed, and it is significantly done so through business rates. If you reduce rates, does that mean rents go up, and that you are simply just transferring a ton of money to landlords?' Daunt's argument is for a system whereby some communities are taxed more than others. 'Sensible structures should be put in place so that Marylebone High Street, which is never going to struggle for occupancy, doesn't benefit in the way Barrow-in-Furness should.' He doesn't agree that one answer might be for shops to follow the Waterstones model, which places huge emphasis on the social and aesthetic experience of shopping and targets each shop directly at the needs of its local community. 'The problem is not the shop keeper or the environment. You need to provide an environment that allows them to thrive. And if you give an online retailer a massive incentive to open a huge warehouse, then you are stripping employment from local high streets, which is of huge social and cultural benefit. So don't shout at the retailer, shout at the warehouse, and this has to be something that starts in Westminster.' In person, Daunt has an air of careful affability. He was born in Islington in 1963. His father, who died in 2023, was the diplomat Timothy Daunt, while his mother, Patricia, brought up James and his two younger sisters – Eleanor, who works for a fragrance company, and Alice, who runs Daunt Travel, a high-end travel business. The house was bookish and he remembers school holidays as being 'very intellectual'. 'I was a nice middle-class child who was taken down to Caledonian Road library to pick out my books from a very early age and had my nose in a book from the moment I could read,' he says. 'Clearly if one is privileged enough to grow up, in my case with library books, it helps foster a love for reading. We were a nuclear family, although because of my father's job I was sent to boarding school [Sherborne, in Dorset] which is a way of being educated I suppose. I certainly haven't subjected my own children [Molly, who works for a security and counter terrorism think tank and is also completing a masters in middle eastern studies at SOAS university, and Eliza, who is studying history at Yale] to that.' His childhood sounds happy and culturally rich. Ten years ago, though, his mother fell off a horse at the age of 70 while riding in Jordan and was tetraplegic for the last eight years of her life; she died a month after her husband. Daunt clearly adored her. 'She was a tremendous adventurer. She seized life and didn't feel the remotest self pity over what had happened to her.' Daunt read history at Cambridge and on leaving joined JP Morgan in 1985, until Katy, at that point his girlfriend, suggested that perhaps he might want to do something else with his life. He set up his first Daunt shop in 1990, taking over an antiquarian bookstore on Marylebone High Street. 'Running a business is not at all the tradition of the Daunt family,' he says. 'Daunts tend to be either school teachers or public servants, and if you are neither of those things, you tend to join the church.' There is a vaguely ecclesiastical beauty about the original Daunt shop, with its gorgeous Edwardian gallery and lofty calm. It set the image for the subsequent five Daunt stores that followed, which, given their locations (Holland Park, Hampstead, Belsize Park), retain an air of monied exclusivity, something of which Daunt is well aware. 'There has always been the accusations [with Daunt Books] of being leafy or snobby, and it's a type that we undoubtedly are: you only have to listen to my accent to hear who I am. But the customer I could always identify was the taxi driver. They are and remain a really good customer base for us because they keep lots of books.' When he was asked to take over Waterstones by its new owner, the Russian oligarch Alexander Mamut, no one thought he could do it. Instead, Daunt set about applying the independent Daunt ethos to Waterstones and, in what seemed a particularly kamikaze move at the time, severing its relationship with publishers. No more in-store promotion displays paid for by publishing houses, a revenue stream that had brought in £27 million a year. And no more three for two discount tables either. He cleared out the management at a loss of 200 jobs and handed buying power to individual stores. 'I hate homogeneity,' he says. 'The idea is that each time you are creating a bookshop for the local community.' He has his critics. Some accuse him of being ruthless, an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove. Is he? 'I don't know if I'm ruthless but I am single-minded as to what a good book shop is. And I don't compromise on that and I never change my notion of what that is. I will never let people be useless. The key to that, and the bit people have found a bit ruthless, is that I require my bookshops to be run by Another argument levied against him is that he has too much power. Again, he demurs. 'Waterstones is not about I, it's we,' he says. 'We are very flat operationally. There is almost no hierarchy.' Still, Waterstones is undeniably a tastemaker. No one had heard of Alexander McCall Smith and his No 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series , for example, until Daunt decided to start 'pushing' it at Daunt books. McCall Smith is now a best seller across the globe. The same happened to Stoner , the 1965 novel by the American novelist John Williams, after a bookseller at Daunt overheard Ian McEwan praising it, read it and ordered 10,000 copies from the publisher. It's now a cult classic. 'Quite often its booksellers doing all that work [in promoting a book],' says Daunt. 'Although you can guarantee that publishers will say it's them.' With such reach and influence can come accusations of excessive curating, even censorship. Daunt bats them away. 'We get accused periodically of going all woke, it's nonsense. Or you get a bit of outrage from some author who says we are no longer stocking their book. And over the years I've been accused of not stocking almost every sort of book.' All the same, does he agree the book industry is increasingly convulsed by the subject of what can and cannot be published? As leading publishers shy away from books with a gender critical perspective, or books with a pro-Israel stance. 'I don't recognise that. Of course publishers make missteps. They go and clean up Do these 'missteps' affect what Waterstones select to buy? 'Our job is to curate a sensible array of books. And when it comes to books about the Israel and Gaza conflict, we've had some real bestsellers such as The Genius of Israel [by Saul Singer and Dan Senor, about Israel's strength as a nation]. Admittedly, this has been in areas with strong Jewish communities but it was ever thus. We are not dictating to anyone. 'Yes, sometimes we make mistakes. We made a mistake with Time to Think , an exposé of the Tavistock NHS gender clinics which multiple publishers refused to publish; it was eventually published by Swift in 2023] by underestimating how many copies we would need [when it was first published]. So when it sold out, we had to go back to Swift and ask for more copies. It's a problem for about 10 days. People say 'you are boycotting it'. We are not boycotting it; we've just sold out our initial order.' He agrees though that in the knee-jerk world of today's online culture, sometimes ideological conviction gets in the way of common sense. 'What happened with Baillie Gifford, for example, was a tragedy [the investment firm Daunt is not the easiest man to read. He is charming, courteous and at times evasive. He dislikes the idea he is a businessman but it's self evident he has an uncompromising instinct for how a business should work. He flushes slightly pink when I ask him what he likes to do when he is not trying to predict the next big literary trend. 'I like travelling and walking. I like going to the theatre and the opera. I'm afraid I'm very stereotypical in terms of what you'd expect me to be. I like nothing more than walking up a mountain and looking at birds and flowers and nature. I am what I sound like.' He continues to shuttle back and forth each week between Hampstead and New York, but it's clear London is his home. He also owns homes in Suffolk and on the Isle of Jura but he is resolutely not flashy. He and his family have backpacked through Ethiopia, Romania, Cuba and many other countries, for days at a time. On yearly trips to Jura, an island off the west coast of Scotland, they stay in a cave that usually shelters goats and deer. ('The aroma leaves something to be desired,' he says.) In worst-case scenarios, they sleep outdoors. 'I don't like waste,' he says. 'I don't like flamboyance, I live an extraordinarily privileged and lucky life but that doesn't mean I do blingy things. We still live in the same house we bought when the kids came along for instance. Life doesn't change in that respect.' How has such quintessential English reserve gone down in America? 'I really haven't noticed much of a culture clash at all. But I think that's because booksellers are the same tribe the world over. At heart we are all rather introverted and quiet.' And, when it comes to James Daunt and his vision of how things should be done, pathologically, admirably tenacious.
