Book and music retailer Barnes & Noble is currently sinking, after announcing that its sales fell again in the latest quarter of the year, according to Money CNN. Beside this, it reported bigger losses that the same period of 2015, things being worse than what analysts were predicting.
Still, the most alarming aspect about the situation at Barnes & Noble is the fact that their long-term debt tripled in the last year, reaching $192 million. Also, they now have just $13.4 million cash at their disposal, down from $32 million in 2015.
Amazon is apparently invincible in its niche
For the past years, the company has struggle to make the impossible: compete with Amazon. As CNN Money states, in a world where consumers have gone mad for shopping online on Amazon, Barnes & Noble basically doesn’t stand a chance against the retail giant.
Their efforts to keep up with Amazon have been in vain most of the time. Not even the Nook e-reader, designed as a direct competitor for Amazon’s Kindle couldn’t save Barnes & Noble, as the sales fell down with 32% from last year, despite the fact that the device includes a lot of digital books.
And like this wasn’t enough, their new website had some notable glitches, making them fall even more.
As desperate as this situation might seem, there’s still hope
As you can see, Barnes & Noble is dealing with a lot of instability right now, so it’s pretty hard to believe that they will manage to turn things around. The fact that in the last five years they have switched between four CEOs also contributed to creating the current situation.
The first step in revitalizing the company is fixing the current online problems, said Ron Boire, current CEO. If the website will be fixed and the checkout experience improved, there are chances for improvement, the CEO added.
