Sales for the nine-week holiday period ending January 3 declined 7.7 percent on a same-store basis at Barnes & Noble, and fell 5.2 percent overall compared to a year ago. With store sales of $1.1 billion, BN says they “experienced diminished traffic, and as a result, diminished sales, due to the unprecedented fall-off of retail shopping during the last quarter of the year.”
Like Borders, they say holiday sales improved towards the end: “After a slow start to the holiday season, our store performance improved and we were able to post comparable store sales increases during the last two weeks of the season, enabling us to meet our sales guidance for the period to date.”
BN.com suffered more, with comparable sales falling 11 percent for the holiday period, at $114 million in all. For the 48 weeks of the fiscal year, total store sales of $4.2 billion are down 2.6 percent overall (and 5.4 percent on a same-store basis), while BN.com sales of $423 million are down 0.4 percent.
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