Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt explained how he turned around the company by ignoring data and listening to book lovers instead.
EXPERT OPINION BY JESSICA STILLMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, INC.COM @ENTRYLEVELREBEL
James Daunt. Illustration: Inc.; Photos: ; Adobe Stock
If someone took you in a time machine back to 2019 and asked you to place a bet on the future of Barnes & Nobles, you probably wouldn’t have bet on its success. The bookstore chain had lost more than $1 billion in market value since 2014 and was steadily shuttering stores. The cultural momentum was all towards e-readers and online shopping. Competitors like Borders had already gone bust.
But then CEO James Daunt took over. An industry veteran, he had founded his own chain of successful independent bookstores in the UK before being tapped to turnaround sagging British bookseller Waterstones. The private equity owners of Barnes & Nobles hoped he could work a similar miracle for the American brand.
Seven years later, he has
Seven years later, he has. Barnes & Nobles boasts strong sales and is set to open 60 more stores in 2026. The company is reportedly eyeing a return to the public markets with an IPO.
What’s the explanation for this unlikely and inspiring turnaround story? It’s not savvy marketing because Barnes & Nobles has no marketing department. Instead, on a recent episode of the Masters of Scale podcast, Daunt revealed an extremely unlikely secret weapon: kids with blue hair (and a healthy skepticism of data).
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Why Barnes & Noble ignores the data
Most retail chains strive for consistency. Eggheads at the company headquarters crunch vast amounts of data to determine what specific stores should sell. The goal is to offer customers a consistent, predictable experience with only numbers-driven tweaks to cater to local tastes. In-store leadership ends up with little say in what happens in their stores. On the podcast, Daunt tells host Jeff Berman his goal is to do the opposite.
Data he tells Berman can be hugely valuable
Data he tells Berman can be “hugely valuable” but “the data tends to be held centrally. Then we use the data to impose uniformity on the stores, and that really is the death knell for us. It works in almost every other branch of retail. It doesn’t work in books.”
While people value predictability when they’re buying vacuum cleaners or burgers, book lovers are excited by authenticity, personality, and genuine humanity. Numbers can’t provide those things. But the kind of book nerds who apply to work at a bookstores can. Which is why Daunt is so passionate about, as he puts it, “kids with blue hair.”
Source: www.inc.com
