Today’s top story was so interesting that I’m going to skip it today.
Barnes & Noble buys tattered cover
In a surprising move (to me, at least), Barnes & Noble has purchased Tattered Cover, a local indie bookstore chain in the Denver, Colorado area. Tattered Cover had been in business for more than 50 years, but a series of events, from COVID to bad PR to poor management, put the store, which regularly appears on lists of the best indie bookstores in the country, in financial trouble. Barnes & Noble is only paying $1.8 million for the company, including current inventory, because things are pretty bad there. Now, Tattered Cover’s fate is notable, especially to locals, but the real story for me is B&N buying an existing indie bookstore.
I can’t find any information about what the company plans to do with the deal, but there are a few possibilities that seem most likely.
First, B&N could leave Tattered Cover as is, with brand, locations, staff, personnel and all the other things that go into running a bookstore, perhaps with some B&N inventory management in the background. Independent bookstores are doing well by and large, and perhaps the private equity minds over there (remember that Barnes & Noble is owned by Elliot Investment Management, a New York-based hedge fund that also owns Waterstones in the UK) saw a distressed asset that, with some financial ballast, could be a profitable addition to their portfolio.
Second, Barnes & Noble could view this as a rapid, local expansion in that market. Locations, inventory, staff, and customer awareness are already in place. Presto: five rebranded Barnes & Noble stores where people already know where to buy books.
Third, a certain hybrid oddity like “Tattered Cover by B&N” or “Barnes & Noble at Tattered Cover,” which neither exploits the local affinity with the former store nor integrates the stores into the efficient organization that B&N wants to portray.
The most interesting direction would be a wholly owned Tattered Cover that remains the Tattered Cover company, at least from the customer’s perspective. Could that work? They could have the best (hey, this is a local shop, right? Love us like you love indie bookstores!) and eat it at the same time (private equity cash register noise here). That would send shivers down the spines of other independent bookstores – except maybe those on the verge of going out of business.
There’s a trend here in Portland (and I suspect other places too) of “restaurant groups” opening a bunch of new places that all look and feel like local, traditionally run individual restaurants, but are actually part of a much larger, more sprawling enterprise. Some of my favorite places are part of these enterprises, and I keep trying to figure out how much that matters to me. Would I rather eat at a place that is someone’s dream and livelihood? Yes. Does it change the actual dining experience in any significant way? As far as I can tell, not.
A Tattered Cover that’s owned by Barnes & Noble but is otherwise just Tattered Cover will be the biggest challenge yet to the 30-year-old dichotomy of “indie vs. everyone else.” I don’t think anyone can guess how it will turn out—or what to hope for.
