🠈 Barnes and Noble 🠊
Barnes & Noble
This is a place holder for the history of Barnes and Noble.
Barnes and Noble Time Line
An investor named Leonard Riggio acquired Barnes and Noble in 1971. Riggio then expanded the firm into the world's largest chain of book stores. In creating this corporate timeline, I decided to begin with Riggio.
- 1965: While attending New York University, Leonard Riggio created Student Book Exchange.
- 1971: Riggio acquired Barnes and Noble from Amtel. The company had only a single store at 105 Fifth Avenue and a wholesale operation.
Early History of Barnes and Noble
- 1886: Arthur Hinds opened Arthur Hinds & Company in the Cooper Union Building in New York City. He hired a Harvard graduate name Gilbert Clifford Noble (1864-1936) as a clerk.
- 1894: Gilbert became partner and the bookstore became Hinds & Noble.
- 1901: Hinds and Noble moved to 31–35 W. 15th Street in NYC.
- 1917: Noble bought out Hinds and began a partnership with William Barnes
William Barne's father Charles had established a book printing company in Wheaton, Il in 1873. William Barnes sold his interest in this publisher to Charles Wolcott Follett who grew it into the Follett Corporation. For a period, Barnes and Nobel reported its founding date as 1873.
- 1930: John Wilcox Barnes acquired Noble's share in the firm.
- 1932: BN moved its flagship store to 18th Street and Fifth Avenue.
- 1966: Amstel acquired Barnes and Noble two years after John Wilcox Barnes' death.
- 1974: BN began advertising on TV.
- 1975: BN began selling discounted books and expanded as a chain of smal discount bookstores.
- 1984: BN began selling books online through a service called Trintex.
- 1986: BN (which had 35 stores) acquired the B. Dalton chain with 979 stores from Dayton Stores for an estimated $275 million (Dayton developed Target and Marshall Fields).
History of B. Dalton
The B. Dalton chain of bookstores was established by Bruce Dayton as a Dayton's which established the Target chain of discount stores. Bruce changed the third letter of his last name from a "Y" to an "L" for a more literary sound. The family intended to create free standing stores but quickly expanded as a mall based chain
- 1966: Bruce Dayton opened the B Dalton in Edina, Mn.
- 1968: B Dalton acquired California based Pickwick Books.
- 1984: B Dalton created a division called Software Etc.
- 1987: Software Etc, with investments from Vendex International NV spun off as stand alone stores.
- 1989: BN acquired BookStop which had 22 stores.
- 1982: Gary Hoover and Steve Mathews opened BookStop in Austin, Tx. The company established book superstores in old movie theaters.
- 1989: BN acquired Scribner Book Stores, Inc. from Rizzoli International Bookstores which it added to B. Dalton.
- 1993: BN raised $77 million in capital with an IPO on the NYSE with the symbol BKS.
- 1997: BN launched its web site.
- 1999: BN held an IPO for its web store BarnesandNoble.com which it developed jointly with Bertelsmann AG.
- 2008: Yucaipa Companies acquired a stake in Barnes & Noble which they divested in 2012.
References:
- Wikipedia - Barnes & Noble (Drawn 2/1/2021)
- Wikipedia - B Dalton (Drawn 2/1/2021)
- Funding Universe - Funco (Drawn 2/1/2021)