Sniffing the breeze

[unixronin]

Just sniffing the breeze ... I've been getting one holy hell of a lot of special offer promotions from Barnes & Noble lately.  The latest one, in today's mail, is 50% off all after-holiday merchandise (understandable) and all DVDs and Blu-Ray discs 3-for-2.  It makes me wonder:  Is B&N in trouble that they're not talking about publicly, and trying to whip up revenue any way they can?  Did their Christmas season sales fall far short of expectations because hardly anybody has spending money to spare?

We have $125 in B&N gift cards sitting here.  If B&N might be on shaky ground, I'm wondering whether we should use them now while we know we still can.  Has anyone heard anything...?

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[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

Borders has been liquidating in store dvd and BR for sometime... i think they might be ditching that business aspect. could be the same for B&N

Borders did have amazon handle all their online fulfillment for a while... not good, but now they own it themselves.

B&N is trying to do something with ebooks with the nook, but everything points to that sucking, so ... failures?

i've seen a LARGE increase in marketing from online sales, B&N, Borders, EMS, others... like, out of control emails to the point of writing them to tell them to knock it off, or just unsubbing.

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[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Borders has been liquidating in store dvd and BR for sometime... i think they might be ditching that business aspect. could be the same for B&N

That sounds like it might be a possibility.

Say ..... they don't sell any Blu-Ray players, do they...?

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

pretty much no hardware... except their bookreaders/etc which are likely to not be discounted.

$200 is probaby about the lowest for a moderately future proof BR right now. $300 for a PS3-slim, keep yer eyes peeled for mega-sales. the e-conomy still bites but is on the side of the consumer.

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[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that post-christmas is traditionally a slow time for retail. One of the biggest issues retail companies have is trying to flatten out revenue over the course of the entire year. BN does run a lot of college bookstores, which should help level that out some, but the revenue from those is very much less than they're in-store and online sales ($65mil last quarter vs. total revenue of $1.2bil).

Given that they reported quarterly earnings at the end of Nov and while not great, weren't that bad either, they're not going anywhere. They likely are concerned about the projected same store sales numbers (projecting -1-3% for full fiscal 2010), but overall revenue is was up 4% over 09q2. They're still expecting 10q3 EPS to be between $1.30 and $1.50.

They have a minor issue with the Nook in that sales of it were way higher than expected. It's cost them quite a bit to deal shortfalls in shipped units. Given that, they're accelerating production schedules, so production costs will be higher than they originally forecast.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

They have a minor issue with the Nook in that sales of it were way higher than expected.

Everyone should have such problems. ;)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Last I heard, it was Borders that was teetering on the edge.

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

I've been getting hit by those smae emails a lot lately too.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

Many places are dumping after xmas inventory quick. You can hold out to see if they go lower but what I've seen says they just said FI and cut it to almost max to generate sales.

Boarders is doing something similar but they are not as obnoxiously promoting it nor do they have as much.

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

I recommend you use gift cards as soon as you can in any case. Many gift cards have fees that kick in after 3 or 6 months whether you use them or not.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

So far, there don't appear to be any fees on the B&N cards. But yeah, we've been planning to use them ... it's just finding something B&N has that we actually want to use them ON.

Barnes and Noble

[parishnurse.livejournal.com]

B&N has been listed as one of the companies that most likely will go under in 2010. Saw it on the "net."