A Conversation with Len Riggio

It's been 20 years since Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio acquired the B. Dalton Bookseller chain, a deal that moved B&N from a largely New York area bookseller to a national powerhouse. In an interview with PW's Judith Rosen, Riggio reflected on how his early days in New York laid the groundwork for creating the country's largest bookstore company.

“If I were to tell my story, six of the 10 chapters would be during the formative years,” said Len Riggio, founder and chairman of Barnes & Noble Inc., referring to the 22-year period that began in 1965, when he opened his first bookstore, the Student Book Exchange, in New York City's Greenwich Village. Six years later, in 1971, he acquired the Barnes & Noble name and flagship store in Manhattan, then moved his business to a national level with the 1987 purchase of Dalton, which had 797 outlets. During that early period, said Riggio, “we shaped New York bookselling as much as New York shaped us.”

For Riggio, one of the highlights of his early bookselling years was a radio and TV ad campaign that he undertook in 1974 to inform consumers that Barnes & Noble, which until then had been predominantly a textbook store, was now a general bookseller. The TV ads depicted people realizing that they could find what they wanted at Barnes & Noble and featured the slogan “Barnes & Noble. Of course! Of course!”

In addition to capturing awards and increasing foot traffic, the ads provided Riggio with a key insight. At the end of the campaign, when he looked around the flagship store and the annex across the street, Riggio realized that his customer base hadn't changed—they all came from within a one-mile walking radius. He calls that his “basic incubation point”—the stores were still essentially neighborhood bookstores.

“That convinced me,” Riggio said, “that we could open these stores elsewhere in America. People said we were crazy when we decided to take the New York experience and roll it out nationally.” Before that happened, though, B&N acquired two local chains, Bookmasters and Marlboro Books. The latter gave the company a toehold in mail order, which served as the precursor for its online business. It was one of the first to sell via the Internet through Trintex, a joint venture of Sears and IBM.

The biggest change in New York bookselling since Riggio's start is the rent. “Many bookstores proliferated in those days of lower rents. Fifth Avenue really was book country, and many of those stores have closed.” As an example, he cited the Doubleday Book Shop on Fifth Avenue. At the time it closed, B&N was paying $1 million in rent. Prada took the lease for $8 million.

“The other change for me,” Riggio said, “was that New York City was this wonderful marketplace of secondhand book dealers. It was kind of like books on every corner, and it added character to the city. Book Row has disappeared. These things will be missed.”