An Amazon Rant turned into something else entirely: College Bookstores, Warehouse Jobs, And The Glories of Inefficiency
disclaimer: Yes, I work for Barnes and Noble. I also speak for myself, have better ideas on how to run a bookstore than the damnable corporate overlords, the information presented here is publicly available not derived from my position as ignorable field management mucking about in the trenches, and all opinions below are my own. Having satisfied the “code of conduct and business ethics” I now thumb my nose at the necessity for a disclaimer and wonder when we let the lawyers get in the way of a good drunken rant.
[note to self: copy that bit above as the new boilerplate disclaimer for business-related posts, and add it to my ‘about’ page for the blog.]
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Amazon is getting credit for expanding it’s warehouse work force from 20,000 to 25,000.
Amazon has at least one quarter of the business. (as much as 27%, by some estimates.) B&N, nationwide retail book seller, has a sixth.
source: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/retailing/article/54609-e-books-market-share-at-22-amazon-has-27.html – the numbers halfway through 2012 (according to PW) were 27% Amazon vs. 16% B&N
Out of courtesy, I won’t steal and embed PW’s chart, but you can find it in the article linked, which I recommend you go ahead and read […or here, direct link].
So Amazon is looking to increase its warehouse work force by 25% (alongside the additional warehouses built, economic activity, etc etc) and gee that looks great. “Amazon is creating jobs! Let Me Go Make A Speech About It!”
I know Amazon sells other stuff, but the huge investment in customer fulfillment logistics has to be wedded to the expectation on Amazon’s part that these moves will increase their overall sales, including their share of all book sales: Big, and looking to get bigger. A proportional increase in market share to match the increase in staff would take them from a quarter of the retail book business to a third, 33%, one in three of every book sold.
You know, just by hiring 5,000 people to work for, what was the figure, $11-15 dollars in hour? — doing physical labor in a warehouse, which should be admired, not denigrated as it is hard work but honest — but c’mon, even with Amazon stock options: this isn’t a career path. It’s a job, a decent job, but with exceptionally few opportunities for promotion and no lateral opportunities for advancement.
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B&N has a smaller share of the retail book business [it pains me to admit]. But B&N employs 34,000 full and part-time employees as of April 27, 2013, in 1300+ storefronts: the 675 superstores and the 686 college bookstores. [source: page 5 of B&N’s most recent annual report]
Damn. B&N now has more college bookstores than Big Boxes. This is… OK? That business decision is above my paygrade. It seems wrong, though. College bookstores are great, I have to admit: solid margins on textbooks, guaranteed customer base, extremely seasonal (the beginning of semester crush) but also regular and something that can be planned for, and around.
There are drawbacks though — and I’m going to take some space to say this even though it is taking me far away from my topic:
- College Bookstore locations are, in almost all cases, owned by the college and only the operations of the bookstore are leased. This is even worse than having a landlord, as the College owns the location and also still technically owns the business. I’m sure B&N signs multi-decade deals, or at the very least, provides strong incentives and options for schools to renew whenever the operational agreements expire — but this is not the rock-solid business some assume
Oh, look, there it is in the most recent SEC filing under “Risk Factors” (pgs 33-34):
[blockquote]
“B&N College may not be able to enter into new contracts and contracts for existing or additional college bookstores may not be profitable.
“An important part of B&N College’s business strategy is to expand sales for its college bookstore operations by being awarded additional contracts to manage bookstores for colleges and universities. B&N College’s ability to obtain those additional contracts is subject to a number of factors that it is not able to control. In addition, the anticipated strategic benefits of new and additional college and university bookstores may not be realized at all or may not be realized within the time frames contemplated by management. In particular, contracts for additional managed stores may involve a number of special risks, including adverse short-term effects on operating results, diversion of management’s attention and other resources, standardization of accounting systems, dependence on retaining, hiring and training key personnel, unanticipated problems or legal liabilities, and actions of its competitors and customers. Because the terms of any contract are generally fixed for the initial term of the contract and involve judgments and estimates which may not be accurate, including for reasons outside of its control, B&N College has contracts which are not profitable, and may have such contracts in the future. Even if B&N College has the right to terminate a contract, it may be reluctant to do so even when a contract is unprofitable due, among other factors, to the potential effect on B&N College’s reputation. Any unprofitable contracts may negatively impact the Company’s operating results.”
[/blockquote]
to that I would add:
- College bookstore locations vary greatly in size, but most are smaller than 20,000 sq.ft. – while the big box superstores start at 20,000 sq.ft. and most are a good bit larger.
- Operating a separate chain of college bookstores under the same trade name leads to brand dilution and customer confusion. Technically, if you bought it at a college B&N, I can’t even process the return at one of our trade stores. Yes, I know they’re only 6 miles away. Yes, I know they have a big B&N logo on the front, just like me. [Oh, of course I know a work-around. I’ve been working-around our computer systems for years]
- Related: So the B&N at Georgia Tech sells textbooks, iPads, computer software, college-badged sweatshirts, some home goods (dorm goods?) — they both rent and buy back textbooks, and (most hurtful) they have a larger manga selection than I do at my store. This is all because they are on a College Campus, operate as a College Bookstore, and That Is A Different Business. I don’t and can’t do any of that. But there is this Big Fat B&N logo right above the front door… Since the GT store is listed in the phone book as “The Georgia Tech College Bookstore” *no one and I mean no one* can find that telephone number, but oh boy howdy can they find the listing for “Barnes and Noble, Atlanta” so at my very fine bookstore not only do I get my daily call volume, I also [joy, joy] get to inform and educate the general public about the idiosyncrasies of our byzantine corporate structure, the hedgerow that exists between the college and trade divisions of my company, and why *I* can’t buy, sell, rent, order, or process a return on their textbooks for them. It’s fun. On top of an already stressful job, why, it might drive one to drink.
- The built-in divide extends to our website: use the store locator, and you’ll get the Trade locations but none of the college bookstores. Good luck even trying to find their address online. And yes, customers call my store every day looking for even this basic information on the two B&N College Bookstores in town.
- …of course, none of this would be material if we had more trade stores — but even before Riggio sold the B&N College Division back to Himself, our real estate/development office avoided placing trade stores to compete with the college bookstores. Per the disclaimer above: I have no inside knowledge of this, as that is above my paygrade; but I can read a map and have some idea of how real estate development works.
None of this would matter were it not for the deliberate muddling of the B&N/B&N College brands. This isn’t just a customer service issue: how much of the stock valuation and potential spinoffs, sales, mergers, buyouts or buy-ins of the Nook/B&N brands are potentially spiked because of uncertainty about which operations (trade, college, online retail, and online digitial) are included in any potential purchase or investment? The four, or five, Barnes & Nobles each need a brand and identity — hell, make that six Barnes & Nobles if we include the (recently-abandoned?) nook hardware. By keeping it all much-too-close, and by being secretive and playing the spinoff game too close to the vest: the whole company suffers.
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before I was sidetracked, I was talking about jobs.
Right now Amazon employs 20,000 warehouse serfs, and is looking to hire more. — 20,000 out of 88,400 full- and part-time employees [source, pg 3, 2012 Annual Report, pdf] — so order fulfillment is just a sideline for Amazon as they only dedicate a quarter of their staff to the task. One presumes the other 75% of Amazon is working on either web solutions, hardware, collectively hypnotizing Wall Street, or crushing my soul.
If one were lucky enough to get an Amazon warehouse job in Tennessee, what are the chances you could move up from that job, internally within Amazon, to Seattle and some sort of web, corporate, purchasing, accounting, or human resources position?
[I’ll leave that as an exercise for the student.]
Barnes and Noble, with even less book market share, employs more people: 34,000. Now of course that included the home office staff, our warehouse employees (yes, we have those too) but mostly it’s the booksellers in 675 Big Box Bookstores, doing the impossible and exceeding expectations daily*.
[* in 2008]
I am the first to acknowledge the bookstores have changed. In 2008, B&N had 718 Big Box Stores and the company employed 40,000 full- and part-timers. (not including seasonal hires: each December would add another 10,000 temp ‘booksellers’ to that total). The benefits, frankly, were awesome: even part-time, 20hr a week employees qualified for health benefits (in 2008) and (in 2008) the number of full time positions was roughly equal to the number of part-time. There was an employee development track, and a ladder: from part-time to full-time to “lead” to “dept. manager” and from there into a salary management staff position. In 2008. Or going back, from roughly 2000-2007 while the chain was still actively expanding, with multiple new store openings in each metropolitan area, annually and while the corp. still looked to develop talent from within.
Why, one could join the company in 2001 as a part-time, seasonal bookseller, but if one had aptitude, a willingness to work flexible hours, and kept showing up and doing the job – between training, on-the-job experience, and making the most of available opportunities: a bookseller could go from the back room to front of store and on to store management.
I did.
That door closed in 2008. While the chain was expanding, and promoting from within, opportunities abounded. Now, in 2013: we’re closing more stores than we open, and rather than look for talent in our own staff — sadly — there is a full-on corporate initiative to actively recruit managers from other retailers.
[If Len, Mitch, Dan, or Steve feel it is necessary to fire me for letting that slip, fine.]
In the 5 years past, B&N has gone from a culture that actively developed and promoted talent internally, even as far down as the individual store level, to… well, to what? To a caretaker organization merely overseeing their own long fall? Yet-another-retailer who hires only part-timers – because that’s what Wal-Mart is doing and we have to compete with the lowest common denominator? Paring back on customer service because payroll is the only variable the corporate office has control over, even when our own customers say the only reason they shop online is they no longer get the service in-store that they are accustomed to?
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A fading bookseller chain can only manage 25,000 bookseller jobs (we’ll assume the rest are in a warehouse or at corporate) while Amazon boasts 20,000 warehouse jobs (since they have no bookstores we have to consider these as equivalent) and Amazon is looking at adding 5000 more.
I would love to devolve this down to a single equation, but I think the whole post above kind of negates that.
Bookstore jobs were good jobs, up until Amazon ruined it, and my corporate overlords went Full-On-Wal-Mart on our employees.
Amazon Warehouse jobs are really excellent warehouse jobs. That said: warehouse jobs suck.
And it all comes down to ‘efficiency’
We’re losing jobs because the old jobs were ‘inefficient’ and for some reason that is bad.
Inefficiencies are Great. Bookstores should, honestly, be as inefficient as possible, as that is the singular bookstore characteristic that spawns discovery.
