Talk:B. Dalton

Why Barnes & Noble bought B. Dalton.
Years ago, I heard in the business news outlets, perhaps the business section of our local paper, the reason WHY B. Dalton was purchased by Barnes and Noble. I put it forth here because I can no longer prove it to be true, and perhaps someone else can.

The numbers I'm going to use are made up, as I can no longer remember the actual ones. I'll say the numbers are: 5%, 6% and 7%.

As the story goes, Dayton, or Dayton-Hudson corporation had a requirement that all of their business units make a 7% profit each year. B. Dalton tried, and tried, and tried, but could never make 7% per year. They were however able to make 6% per year on a regular basis. So, the Dayton Corporation got fed up, and decided to sell them off. When word got around to Barnes and Noble, they looked at B. Daltons numbers, and were impressed! Why? Because the industry standard, or what most bookstores in the industry were making, was 5%! So what Dayton saw as a dog, B&N saw as a performer.

There is an entire second half, or alternate viewpoint, to counter the above story.

B. Dalton had the exclusive right to place a bookstore in hundreds of malls across the U.S.. The alternate explanation for why B&N wanted B. Dalton was so that they could then re-negotiate those mall leases to replace one small B. Dalton with one large B&N. Those were malls/markets that B&N could not get into so long as someone else owned B. Dalton, and their exclusive leases. LP-mn (talk) 04:18, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Not quite all gone yet
As seen here, the store at Roosevelt Field Mall is still around. May be a case of B&N keeping it open to maintain the trademark rights. As it's on Long Island and B&N is based in NYC, it's essentially in the backyard of corporate HQ. oknazevad (talk) 19:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * According to several news articles, the stores in Roosevelt Field on Long Island and in Union Square in Washington DC will remain open until their leases expire. I haven't yet been able to find the dates when that will happen. WaxTadpole (talk) 18:31, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The store in Washington Union Station has been a B&N for some time; see here.I don't know if this was the same spot in the station as the B. Dalton was in before, or a replacement. But it's certainly not a B. Dalton anymore.oknazevad (talk) 18:59, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The B. Dalton at Roosevelt Field closed about two months ago. It's been removed from the index of stores on the mall's website, although as of this writing it hasn't been removed from the mall map. WaxTadpole (talk) 20:19, 13 February 2013 (UTC)