Bookstores: Retailers with Positive Sales Growth

Both major retail book chains weathered the ongoing financial storm, and had solid (if unspectacular) holiday seasons. Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) was the stronger of the two with an increase in monthly spend per customer of 5% from December 2007’s $43.87 to $46.18, and an increase of 33% from November’s $34.81. Rival Borders (NYSE: BGP) also showed increases from the previous month but was essentially flat from the previous year, gaining 25% from November 2008 and 0.2% from December 2007 to $48.85. Sales data was compiled by Geezeo, for its Main Street Spending Index (MSSI).

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For Barnes & Noble, the increase in spending from November to December was stronger than in the corresponding period one year ago, with a one month increase of 33% compared to 15% in 2007. For Borders, the increase was slightly smaller than last year’s exceptional 49% gain.

In these tough economic times people are splurging on less expensive luxuries, like books, which should help Barnes & Noble and Broders in the near future.

Comments

[Kevin Hills...:]

How does this data on Borders reconcile with the fact that they posted huge sales declines and churned the management team?

The only way this can foot with the data Borders released is if new customer traffic declined dramatically.

Jan 06 02:41 PM

[elsewhere:]

As a bookseller I can say this is likely purely a function of the deep deep inventory and payroll cuts George Jones made in the stores. I'm heartened to hear that we have a higher average per customer per month number than B&N, it means we are doing what we can in a bad situation. The focus from what I have seen is cut cut cut to reduce debt, due mainly to Waldenbooks we have been in a bad debt situation for some time, and Jones, while ham-handed on the inventory needs of a bookstore compared to a department store, you need to carry more mid-stock and JIT inventory has caused us to chase titles, has reduced debt. I hope to a place where we can start to build and get enough inventory and staffing back to capitalize on the increases in efficiency and marketing we've seen.

Also a lot of time and effort was wasted getting borders.com off the floor, which still has some serious problems, but is much better than partnering with Amazon. This has left us in the stores with a crippled special order capability at the time we have low inventory of most items.

We're cut pretty much to the bone at the moment, we either will turn things around or won't.

Jan 12 08:36 PM