Blue Holiday for Chains

The nation's bookstore chains went into the holiday season with low expectations and, unfortunately for retailers and publishers, those expectations were met. Store sales at Barnes & Noble fell 5.2% for the nine-week period ended January 3, down to $1.1 billion. Comp stores were down 7.7%. Borders. however, did even worse—total sales were off 11.7%, to $868.8 million. Sales at its superstores were down 13.6%, with comp sales off 13.6%. Same-store sales for books were down 11%. Books-A-Million did better than its larger rivals, with sales down 2.5% and comp sales off 5.6%. All chains reported that after a very slow start, sales picked up in the second half of December; B&N noted that it had positive comp store sales in the last two weeks of the season. The comp store performance at B&N came in at the middle of its forecast, which had called for a decline in comps of 6%–9%. Borders did not issue a forecast for the season, but indicated it expected a challenging period.

While the weak store performance was expected, the 11% decline at B&N.com was a bit of a surprise. B&N.com generally has outperformed the company's bricks-and-mortar stores, and while sales for all online retailers were soft in the holiday season, ComScore put the overall decline at just 4%. Amazon said it had a record holiday, although it won't release sales figures until later this month. Borders's Web site was actually a source of relatively good news for the chain, as the segment generated sales of $20.3 million. The site launched May 27 and had sales of $19.1 million up until the start of the fourth quarter.