Beth wrote on January 7th, 2010 at 03:44:34 PMBarnes and Noble released holiday sales figures today for the period of November 1, 2009, to January 2, 2010. According to the press release:
Barnes & Noble store sales were $1.1 billion, a 5% decrease over the same period a year ago, with comparable store sales decreasing 5.4%. Barnes & Noble.com sales increased 17% for the holiday selling season and totaled $134 million. Barnes & Noble.com sales include nook™ revenues recognized since the product began shipping after Thanksgiving.
I’m not sure of CEO Steve Riggio’s accounting methods when he states, “We’re pleased we were able to ship all holiday orders for nook in time,” and unfortunately, there are no hints of nook updates, future nook plans, or any of the other juicy tidbits that sometimes leak with sales figures.
Interesting – nice find. I wonder how they’ll account for nook book sales purchased via WiFi from customers browsing in an actual brick and mortar location. Is that a .com sale because it goes through the Internet or a retail sale since it was generated in store and may have been prompted by a display / special offer / the whole store experience / that cup of Starbucks you drank while you browsed.
Scott,
That’s a great point. If it were me, I’d count that as a retail sale because–as you pointed out–the store experience created the sale. (And I know having a BN brick-and-mortar nearby was one of the reasons I decided to buy a nook.)
I would think that BN understands the value of the physical location promoting the sale of digital products, but I’d rather not make any assumptions.
Beth