Barnes and Noble's surprising turnaround
I found it interesting that one of the things he did differently was to empower the local Barnes &amp; Noble stores to make placement&#x2F;marketing&#x2F;merchandising decisions themselves.<p>The way typical retail stores are run these days is a lot like the Fast Food model -- consistency above all else -- where the food has the same (lousy) taste no matter where it&#x27;s made.  Having spent a lot of time buying last minute gifts, retail, this year ... short of some stores being a mirror of others, each brand has the same products in the same places.<p>This works well at Walmart, Target, and other general retailers (the kind of commodity &quot;super-store&quot; arrangement I stopped visiting a long time ago).  Those retailers have recognized I don&#x27;t even want to walk <i>into</i> the store -- even my grocery store will bag my things and pop them in my car for me.<p>Barnes &amp; Noble seems to have figured out that it&#x27;s <i>really easy to buy a book</i>.  The previous management[0] thought they employed only cashiers, re-stockers and &quot;where can I find&quot;ers (the latter of which were <i>impossible</i> to find).  When financial struggles hit, the few employees who were there &quot;because they loved books&quot; left because their jobs were slowly turning into &quot;warehouse fulfillment for internet orders.&quot;  Our local location shut down shortly thereafter.  Further proof that this new strategy works is that the huge location was replaced by a combination book, record and other media store which is run &quot;like a record shop&quot; and feels like a mom-and-pop despite the square footage.<p>This strategy works <i>everywhere</i>.  Because I have a Microcenter location within 30 minutes of me, I buy 80% of my computer equipment <i>retail</i>.  I wanted to physically <i>touch</i> the laptop I was buying so I stopped in on a Saturday.  I don&#x27;t ask for or <i>want</i> help, usually, because ... I&#x27;m a developer and I come in pretty ridiculously researched ... but that didn&#x27;t stop no less than four people from asking to assist -- all while I stayed in the same section of the store.  Overhearing them serve other clients, I was impressed at how well they knew their products.  And if you haven&#x27;t been into one of these places ... the one over here took over a six screen cinemaplex.  It&#x27;s <i>massive</i>.  They have multiple models of 3D printers&#x2F;filaments&#x2F;accessories, multiple models of soldering irons and bench power supplies, IC components (loose LEDs&#x2F;resistors&#x2F;capacitors&#x2F;basic motor drivers&#x2F;timers), Ardinos&#x2F;Pis (well...sometimes) and piles of accessories for it.  Some of these things are <i>really hard to buy confidently online</i> or are really convenient if they can be returned&#x2F;replaced with the correct part in an hour.  They carry high-end, low-end and everything in-between[1].  I used to say that &quot;I shop there first because I don&#x27;t want to support their business&quot; but that&#x27;s granting myself credit I don&#x27;t deserve.  Frankly, the one gripe I&#x27;ve ever had about that place -- slow checkout[2] was remedied by common feeder and online pickup.<p>People tend to complain <i>everywhere</i> about lack of floor staff, but waiting behind three people for the &quot;one person in the whole computer department&quot; at Best Buy was typical of <i>all</i> electronics retailers 15 years ago.  I worked at CompUSA (I left a couple of years after the Windows 95 launch -- before they became a general electronics retailer) for 5 years -- we were half the size.  Average floor staffing was two in hardware (three, sometimes, since there&#x27;d always be a guy or two who only sold Macs), two in software&#x2F;accessories, one handling both depending on customers.  Microcenter had at least 4 people <i>just</i> in the laptop&#x2F;desktop section, three in the upgrades&#x2F;parts, one in mac, one in the Maker area and several in the 10-or-so-floor-to-ceiling aisles (that most electronics retailers ditched to control shrink).<p>Contrast that with my trip to Best Buy where three kids stood around talking to one another while I drooled over a Lenovo laptop.  Had any <i>one</i> of them walked up to me I would have been easy to persuade into buying that day.  I ended up picking it up from Microcenter (and it ended up being the best deal, too).<p>The takeaway, I think, is that <i>the one thing Amazon can&#x27;t give me</i> is the intelligence&#x2F;personal interaction with another human being who <i>knows what they are selling[3]</i> and can give me confidence that the choice I&#x27;m making is the right one.  This has to be done carefully, of course.  One of the <i>advantages</i> of buying online is the lack of pressure applied by a sales-person.  The places I seek out for retail shopping are ones where the staff is knowledgeable, consultative, friendly and not pushing me to buy something <i>right now</i>.<p>[0] I&#x27;ve never worked for them or a competitor and it&#x27;s been decades since I&#x27;ve touched retail, but a friend&#x27;s adult child worked there just before our location shut down.<p>[1] My children act like we&#x27;re going to the dentist when I tell them I need to make a <i>quick stop</i> there.  There&#x27;s no such thing.<p>[2] They still need work here.  A little while back I ended up there with only one of my credit cards.  The chip failed.  I handed them my ID, figuring they&#x27;d run it via magnetic strip having positive proof that I&#x27;m the cardholder.  A manager was brought up, and I even discovered I had my passport in my jacket pocket.  It was a hard no for a sub-$100 purchase ... that kind of pissed me off ... if I hadn&#x27;t had so many great past experiences, I probably would have sworn them off for good (as it was, I didn&#x27;t return for several months).<p>[3] Hell, Amazon can&#x27;t seem to give me results for what I <i>specifically ask for</i>.  Can we please stop filling search results with answers &quot;just because they are sort of like the thing you searched for&quot;?  It doesn&#x27;t work when &quot;OLED Laptop&quot; returns 400 results and the first page has <i>two</i> which have <i>anything</i> OLED related in them, let alone an OLED screen.  Even when you&#x27;re given a <i>filter</i> for AMOLED or OLED, most of the OLED results are then <i>missing</i>.  It happens with nearly every thing I search for using just Amazon&#x27;s search.  I find Google Image Search with `site:amazon.com` is the <i>only</i> way I can find things sometimes.