I found it interesting that one of the things he did differently was to empower the local Barnes & Noble stores to make placement/marketing/merchandising decisions themselves.

The way typical retail stores are run these days is a lot like the Fast Food model -- consistency above all else -- where the food has the same (lousy) taste no matter where it's made. Having spent a lot of time buying last minute gifts, retail, this year ... short of some stores being a mirror of others, each brand has the same products in the same places.

This works well at Walmart, Target, and other general retailers (the kind of commodity "super-store" arrangement I stopped visiting a long time ago). Those retailers have recognized I don't even want to walk into the store -- even my grocery store will bag my things and pop them in my car for me.

Barnes & Noble seems to have figured out that it's really easy to buy a book. The previous management[0] thought they employed only cashiers, re-stockers and "where can I find"ers (the latter of which were impossible to find). When financial struggles hit, the few employees who were there "because they loved books" left because their jobs were slowly turning into "warehouse fulfillment for internet orders." Our local location shut down shortly thereafter. Further proof that this new strategy works is that the huge location was replaced by a combination book, record and other media store which is run "like a record shop" and feels like a mom-and-pop despite the square footage.

This strategy works everywhere. Because I have a Microcenter location within 30 minutes of me, I buy 80% of my computer equipment retail. I wanted to physically touch the laptop I was buying so I stopped in on a Saturday. I don't ask for or want help, usually, because ... I'm a developer and I come in pretty ridiculously researched ... but that didn't stop no less than four people from asking to assist -- all while I stayed in the same section of the store. Overhearing them serve other clients, I was impressed at how well they knew their products. And if you haven't been into one of these places ... the one over here took over a six screen cinemaplex. It's massive. They have multiple models of 3D printers/filaments/accessories, multiple models of soldering irons and bench power supplies, IC components (loose LEDs/resistors/capacitors/basic motor drivers/timers), Ardinos/Pis (well...sometimes) and piles of accessories for it. Some of these things are really hard to buy confidently online or are really convenient if they can be returned/replaced with the correct part in an hour. They carry high-end, low-end and everything in-between[1]. I used to say that "I shop there first because I don't want to support their business" but that's granting myself credit I don't deserve. Frankly, the one gripe I've ever had about that place -- slow checkout[2] was remedied by common feeder and online pickup.

People tend to complain everywhere about lack of floor staff, but waiting behind three people for the "one person in the whole computer department" at Best Buy was typical of all electronics retailers 15 years ago. I worked at CompUSA (I left a couple of years after the Windows 95 launch -- before they became a general electronics retailer) for 5 years -- we were half the size. Average floor staffing was two in hardware (three, sometimes, since there'd always be a guy or two who only sold Macs), two in software/accessories, one handling both depending on customers. Microcenter had at least 4 people just in the laptop/desktop section, three in the upgrades/parts, one in mac, one in the Maker area and several in the 10-or-so-floor-to-ceiling aisles (that most electronics retailers ditched to control shrink).

Contrast that with my trip to Best Buy where three kids stood around talking to one another while I drooled over a Lenovo laptop. Had any one of them walked up to me I would have been easy to persuade into buying that day. I ended up picking it up from Microcenter (and it ended up being the best deal, too).

The takeaway, I think, is that the one thing Amazon can't give me is the intelligence/personal interaction with another human being who knows what they are selling[3] and can give me confidence that the choice I'm making is the right one. This has to be done carefully, of course. One of the advantages of buying online is the lack of pressure applied by a sales-person. The places I seek out for retail shopping are ones where the staff is knowledgeable, consultative, friendly and not pushing me to buy something right now.

[0] I've never worked for them or a competitor and it's been decades since I've touched retail, but a friend's adult child worked there just before our location shut down.

[1] My children act like we're going to the dentist when I tell them I need to make a quick stop there. There's no such thing.

[2] They still need work here. A little while back I ended up there with only one of my credit cards. The chip failed. I handed them my ID, figuring they'd run it via magnetic strip having positive proof that I'm the cardholder. A manager was brought up, and I even discovered I had my passport in my jacket pocket. It was a hard no for a sub-$100 purchase ... that kind of pissed me off ... if I hadn't had so many great past experiences, I probably would have sworn them off for good (as it was, I didn't return for several months).

[3] Hell, Amazon can't seem to give me results for what I specifically ask for. Can we please stop filling search results with answers "just because they are sort of like the thing you searched for"? It doesn't work when "OLED Laptop" returns 400 results and the first page has two which have anything OLED related in them, let alone an OLED screen. Even when you're given a filter for AMOLED or OLED, most of the OLED results are then missing. It happens with nearly every thing I search for using just Amazon's search. I find Google Image Search with `site:amazon.com` is the only way I can find things sometimes.