Barnes and Noble Ousts Its CEO After Less Than a Year on the Job
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Dedicating more shelf space to games, toys and educational stuff is actually, IMO, a good part idea to a point. But I believe they have to A. focus on being a book store first and foremost, which means their have to be plenty of interesting books on the shelves for people to buy, and B. do a better job of integrating those initiatives to cross-sell across domains. And HUGELY important, they need to come up with a better "clicks and mortar" strategy to integrate their web presence with their physical stores. And bn.com simply needs to deliver a better experience in general, across the board.
From talking to friends who work there, it sounds like local store manager are given fairly little autonomy in terms of deciding what items to shelve as well. I think this is a mistake as the demographics around different stores is going to vary and the inventory should vary correspondingly. Giving the local managers (who should be more in touch with the local community) some flexibility should help. That and, of course, using analytics and BI / "big data" techniques to help map inventory to store locations.
I'm also liking that they've started selling "maker" themed items.. rPi's, Arduinos, drones, etc. But right now that stuff is just kinda sitting there. They should find more ways to tie things together by collaborating with local makerspaces and schools to have "math and science night" or little mini maker faire type events. They already do some of this, but I think they could do a better job of both promoting the Maker movement and selling more merchandise at the same time. Of course they also need to be somewhat price competitive and right now I think a lot of their maker stuff is running a bit on the expensive side.
Anyway... I guess I've ranted enough. And I've spent way more time than is healthy thinking about what I'd do if I were CEO of B&N. :-)