page_title: B. Dalton
section_title: 1980s and 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: B. Dalton / History / 1980s and 1990s
caption_attribution_description: English: A B. Dalton Bookstore in Slidell, LA.
context_page_description: B. Dalton Bookseller was an American retail bookstore chain founded in 1966 by Bruce Dayton, a member of the same family that operated the Dayton's department store chain. B. Dalton expanded to become the largest retailer of hardcover books in the United States, with 798 stores at the peak of the chain's success.
  Located primarily in shopping malls, B. Dalton competed primarily with Waldenbooks. Barnes & Noble acquired the chain from Dayton's in 1987 and continued to operate it until a late 2009 announcement that the last 50 stores would be liquidated by January 2010.
context_section_description: By 1986, discounting practices by rival book chains had caused declining profits for B. Dalton stores, as had the decrease in new shopping malls. As a result of the declining profits, Dayton Hudson Corporation sold the B. Dalton chain to Barnes & Noble. Under Barnes & Noble's ownership, B. Dalton acquired Scribner Book Stores, Inc. from Rizzoli International Bookstores in 1989, and began a video game store called Software, Etc. (now GameStop). At the same time, the chain began closing outlets and relocating others, while opening other prototypes. By 1997, the chain had shrunk to 528 locations, and continued to close many more over the next decade.
  In January 2010, Barnes & Noble closed the last 50 B. Dalton locations, except for the stores at Union Station in Washington, D.C. and Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, New York. The Roosevelt Field Mall location closed in January 2012 and the Union Station location closed at the end of February 2013.
caption: A B. Dalton store in Slidell, Louisiana, a few weeks before it closed
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