Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS) will begin concentrating more heavily on internet books sales and digital downloads in the coming year as the popularity of items like Amazon's Kindle and the new Ipad change how people are reading. Despite this, the book seller will maintain physical retail locations as a major part of its business through the transition into the "next chapter of growth,"according to new CEO William Lynch.
Lynch, who became Chief Executive on Thursday, believes the company needs to make the shift in order to survive changes in the market. "Electronic sales and digital books will be the key to our future," he said.
The 39-year-old Lynch joined the company just over a year ago. Since working with Barnes and Noble, Lynch labored to improve the company's e-commerce business, the bright spot in the third quarter, when same-store sales fell more than expected. Lynch also helped get the company's e-reader the "Nook" off the ground, though sales were not as impressive as Barnes & Noble had hoped, presumably for marketing reasons. Even still digital revenues grew by 32 percent for the year, indicative of major changes in the game.
Barnes and Noble has struggled in the last several quarters, but not to the degree that they have little choice in how they will proceed. Instead of having to choose one of the other, the nation's largest revenue generating bookseller will uphold physical locations to maintain its social purpose as well as adding more avenues to shop digital content.
Chairman Leonard Riggio also subscribes to the school of digitalization: "We want to integrate our traditional stores with our online offerings," he said. "We need to step up the pace to move into the future."
There appears to be a uniform desire with the executive board to move into the future with increased digitalization; however, the plans to speed the combination of stores and digital content have been decided upon; however, no timeline has been disclosed. What the executives are sure if is that no new physical stores will be built in the near future, though they remain confident the entity of the bookstore will maintain its importance despite increased digitalization.
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