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Bookstores: Retailers with Positive Sales Growth

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.