After 15 years of declining store numbers, bookseller Barnes & Noble says it is experiencing strong sales at its existing bookstores, and that it expects to open more than 60 new brick-and-mortar locations in 2025.
"Barnes & Noble is enjoying a period of tremendous growth as the strategy to hand control of each bookstore to its local booksellers has proven so successful," the company said in a February news release. "In 2024, Barnes & Noble opened more new bookstores [57 stores] in a single year than it had in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019."
Barnes & Noble will open a store on April 23 in Naperville, Ill., in a space that formerly housed Pottery Barn, just up the street from its former location, reports Chain Store Age. The Naperville location is one of four new Barnes & Noble bookstores set to open in April, alongside stores in Florida, Nebraska and New York.
“We are very happy to return to Naperville, where for 25 years we were a community staple,” said James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Our longtime booksellers are as eager to be back in town as they are to welcome customers into their brand-new Naperville Barnes & Noble.”
The nation’s largest retail bookseller was acquired by British private equity group Elliott Investment Management in 2019. The all-cash deal was valued at about $683 million. The deal followed Elliott’s 2018 acquisition of Waterstones, the largest retail bookseller in the U.K.