Since he embarked on the Barnes & Noble redesign in 2020, Mr. Daunt has demonstrated that consistency doesn’t rank very high on his priority list. New York City has nine Barnes & Noble stores featuring four different logos above the front doors.
A lot of brands benefit from uniformity, knowing that your coffee or burger at Starbucks/McDonalds/wherever is functionally the same in Tokyo or Toronto. I think book stores and other "cultural spaces" might not benefit from this, and the more local flavor, the better. So, this lack of consistency might be more deliberate than it seems.
(As an aside, I dislike the uniformity of global brands and my favorite chain locations were ones unique to the location. This Costa Coffee in Sopot, Poland, being one of the more interesting examples: https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g274735-...)
If nothing else, uniformity doesn't add as much value to a brand that isn't selling its own product. Nobody really worries that the copy of a book they buy in one shop will be different to a copy bought in another. There are likely some benefits to consistency, like a familiar store layout or knowing that a shop will stock a good range of books, but these are kind of ancillary to the product (and my experience is that these things aren't that consistent across big chains anyway).
There is a great book shop in Dublin, Ireland called Hodges Figgis. It was bought by the UK chain Waterstones in 2011, but you wouldn't know it - they wisely decided not to interfere at all with such a locally beloved brand.
> There is a great book shop in Dublin, Ireland called Hodges Figgis. It was bought by the UK chain Waterstones in 2011, but you wouldn't know it - they wisely decided not to interfere at all with such a locally beloved brand.
In a sign that this works, there used to be a few actual Waterstones branches in Dublin, too, but they didn't survive the general decline in the bookselling industry.
I think Waterstones also own a couple of formerly independent shops in London where they've left the branding and operations alone, for similar reasons.
(From the article, the new Barnes and Noble chief exec previously ran Waterstones.)
So they're indistinguishable from a local business other than having corporate amounts of capital to weather storms, policies to control workers and inventory (what books to stock), and they send their profits out of the community. Neat
This is good. Means they're less likely to be impacted by temporary fads and I can count on them being around in a decade
> Policies to control workers and inventory
Policies are good and usually law abiding. Meaning that they treat their employees fairly, pay taxes and obey labor laws or they'll get sued.
> send their profits out of the community
The main beneficiaries are the patrons and people working there, who are as likely to live in the community than a mom and pop shop. The profit margin, if any, accrues to stock holders which are widely distributed to people with 401ks pensions and others. I'm okay with that
The existence of a policy doesn't make it fair, in fact the reason I abhor 1-size-fits-all policies is because of places like Amazon warehouses where you're fired for being late X times ("sorry, it's policy, my hands are tied :( ). Corporate policies are there to protect the company from lawsuits, and as a consequence they erode the agency of individuals which is literally dehumanizing. It's one step away from a human and one toward a robot. people should be treated like humans.
I don't know, I like policies. What's the alternative? Different rules for different people? How does that square with anti discrimination. Because I am willing to bet the ones that get disproportionate punishment will be a historically marginalized group. Same rules for everyone is a good thing. And it adds transparency and order.
Treating someone like a human doesn't mean firing someone for being late while not firing someone that does the same thing. Make the late policy lenient and applied consistently. That's more human
This requires the humans applying the policy to apply them fairly. For example, I've seen "friends of the boss" be hired into tech roles after failing the interview. The policy of needing to pass an interview panel is only for those not a friend of someone higher up. Technically the policy is fair, in practice it is not.
That is before we get into whether or not those policies treat people well.
But I don't have a good alternative, other than more and better policies I suppose...
Lots of "local businesses" are like that globally now.
For example, go to a pub in the UK - it's almost always owned by Greene King which itself is owned by a Hong Kong holding company called CK Asset Holdings [0] that has also provided VC to startups like Siri.
Or in North America, AB InBev and Molson Coors now have significant or majority ownership in most breweries, juice, and sparkling water companies, and according to a buddy of mine working at one of those are looking into taking minority ownership positions in local coffee shops and bars.
If Publishers had capital, they probably would have considered doing something similar with community bookstores. Heck, Barnes and Nobles operates the Harvard Coop and the MIT Coop (the student bookstores for Harvard and MIT)
P.S. Before the inevitable MBA bashing starts up, Private Equity and IB doesn't really hire from MBA programs (Wharton, Booth, GSB, and CBS are the only exceptions) - they prefer hiring directly out of undergrad at a couple target schools (Ivies, MIT, Claremont Colleges, UChicago, Northwestern, Stanford, Duke, USC, SMU, UC Berkeley Haas+EECS, UCLA, NYU Stern, UMich Ross, UT McCombs, GTown McDonough) and train internally. MBAs tend to end up in operational roles such as Consulting, Tech, or (if you were a flamed out ex-IB/PE/VC or attended undergrad abroad) VC-IB-PE.
My neighborhood in Brooklyn had our B&N move a few blocks and open in a new space. The new space is very different and very inviting. Bright lights, comfy chairs, lighter colors everywhere. I think it's less square footage but feels easier to get lost in (in a good way).
A lot of brands benefit from uniformity, knowing that your coffee or burger at Starbucks/McDonalds/wherever is functionally the same in Tokyo or Toronto. I think book stores and other "cultural spaces" might not benefit from this, and the more local flavor, the better. So, this lack of consistency might be more deliberate than it seems.
(As an aside, I dislike the uniformity of global brands and my favorite chain locations were ones unique to the location. This Costa Coffee in Sopot, Poland, being one of the more interesting examples: https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g274735-...)