Dive Brief:
- Barnes & Noble, Inc announced Thursday that it will separate its Barnes & Noble Education business from its Barnes & Noble Retail and Nook businesses.
- Barnes & Noble Education runs 714 stores on college campuses in the U.S., and the separation is set to be completed by the end of August this year.
- The company's stores reach 23% of the total U.S. college student population, according to Fortune, with total sales for fiscal 2014 at $1.75 billion.
Dive Insight:
Barnes & Noble announced similar plans to spin off its Nook Media business last year, saying that it was aiming to complete the separation by the end of Q1 2015.
By separating these businesses, Barnes & Noble will be in a better position to face many challenges it has seen in the past few years. These include Amazon's dominance in the book selling business and Nook's dipping popularity in the e-reader market.
"Separating Barnes & Noble Education will create an industry-leading, pure-play public company with more flexibility to pursue strategic opportunities in the growing educational services markets. At the same time, Barnes & Noble will be able to better capitalize on improving industry trends and merchandising initiatives within its core Retail business," said Barnes & Noble Inc. CEO Michael Huseby.
"Retail and the NOOK Digital Business will be able to leverage a more integrated technology infrastructure for improved efficiency and to better serve digital customers."
