Barnes & Noble's 700 Stores Make the Case for Physical Retail

Barnes & Noble, once seen as another casualty of Amazon, now operates more than 700 stores nationwide, according to Fortune, which examined chief executive James Daunt's turnaround of the chain in an episode of its "Behind the Business" series reported by Phil Wahba.

That number deserves attention from any owner weighing whether a storefront is worth keeping. The assumption that e-commerce would hollow out shelf space turned out to be a prediction, not a verdict, and a company that was supposed to be the clearest proof of it is instead the largest book chain in the country.

What is instructive is the framing Fortune put on Daunt's strategy: the plan to save the chain rests on "making it cool again." That is a merchandising and identity problem, not a logistics one. It suggests the threat to physical retail was never only the internet; it was stores that customers had no particular reason to visit.

For small retailers, the lesson is narrower than it looks. A chain of 700 stores has scale no independent can match. But the argument that justified closing stores for years — that the format itself was finished — is harder to make when the industry's designated victim keeps opening them.

This story was first reported by Fortune.