In-Store Nook Booths Need A Better Mousetrap

This evening I walked into my local Barnes and Noble in San Jose, one of the bigger stores in the area. I went in to get a sense of how interested shoppers were in the new Nook Color that was announced this past week.

Sorry to say, it was disappointing.

The Nook selling stations were empty. Given it was a Friday night, the store is usually brisk with customers. I went in two hours before store close fully knowing that most Silicon Valley types like to hang out there after a work week. Tonight was no different than any other - a good deal of people. Every now and then I peeked around the book stacks to see if there were people looking at the Nook. What did I see? Few interested. So sad. I was ready to scream out to the patrons "Paper books are going to die! You need to get one of these Nooks!"

Here a brand new device that is Barnes and Noble's Hail Mary of sorts, wasn't being aggressively pushed. It was if, the store was out of touch with the importance of this new product offering.

Comdex: You Got To Sell Like It Was Your Last Day On The Planet

It reminded me a lot of what it was like as a young lad coming fresh out of college. My first job was working for a start up company in Palo Alto. In the latter 1980's, hardly anyone even knew about Silicon Valley. Startups? What's a startup? The little company I worked for (which eventually was bought out by Intel) would go to Comdex in Las Vegas every year. The CEO and I were good friends and he asked me to go and help them out in the booths. We worked our butts off. The goal was to bring in sales leads for the staff awaiting at the office. Our Comdex team did everything from demonstrations to sales pitches to answering questions.

Standing on your feet for 8 hours a day for four days straight while swarms of people come from all directions was grueling! But we managed to deal with it because we knew the company's survival depended on it. As a small company, spending a good portion of our marketing expenses on Comdex to generate leads was necessary. We could not fail.

Push It. Push The Product Real Good!

Tonight, it was clear to me B&A is not getting the device into the face of the consumer. I pretty much got this sense when I visited other Barnes and Noble stores in the past when the first Nook came out. People just don't look like they were nibbling.

Granted, the typical employee at a Barnes and Noble isn't a salesperson. They are used to shelving books, cleaning up the place, and ringing the cash register. So the aggressive nature from the environment itself is sort of, well, awkward. Its like hiring a librarian to sell cars. But if B&A is to survive, they need to hire aggressive sales people. People who worked in retail electronic stores and can push the product on commission. They need to get as many devices sold as possible in the next few years so that their customers will look to them to download future digital content. If they don't do this, they will be long gone.

Isn't it time for Barnes and Noble to make a big statement? To put everything on the table and show their customers that paper books are going away? How can that be said when book merchandise is taking up 90% of the floor space. Foot traffic from the entrance is spread out. It is going to the magazine rack, to the book shelves, to drink coffee.To succeed, they have to push the paperless book issue.

Build A Better Mouse Trap!

The Nook booth is an island without any attention. Barnes and Noble needs to put the Nook station in the middle of the store. Lose the stupid information booth! Move that thing to the side along with the point of sale stations. It doesn't generate the bulk of your future revenues, does it?

Barnes and Noble needs to make the floor space look like a Comdex show. Clog up the lanes and make it tight where people walk near the Nook booth so that they are forced to stop and marvel at your product. Don't let people wander to he aisles looking for other things. Make them get stuck in the Nook booth. Create your own traffic jam. You know what we did at Comdex? We used to get our bodies out into the aisles 3-4 people at a time and create our own baracade. People walking the aisles had to walk around us - into our booth! We weren't waiting for them to come into the booth, we went out there and nudged them in.

The Nook area looks so bland. You got a hi tech product. Make it look hi techy. The area looks like a stripped down Apple Store. Yawn. Throw some walls around with four points of entry off in each corner. Force the patrons into the middle of the "booth".

Leave the Starbucks coffee stations off to the side. And as I suggested in a previous article there is no need for hard copy inventory anymore. Let users download a portion of the digital books onto their Nooks to get a glimpse of the book and then allow them to submit to an in-store queue to get hard copy printout at a printer station. Let Kinko's handle the printing. It will also drive more business into the store too for local businesses!

Invest in a few 40" LCD Monitors that play quick motion video of the Nook Color. Make video that captures consumers attention so that they want to walk into the Nook floor space. Situate them in the Nook area. Situate another two in the front of the store. Situate another in the back of the store. All near the entrances. Turn up the volume so that it is just slightly less than annoying. Hang the TVs from the rafters down to just 10' off the floor. Dangle them so you can't miss them. The store shouldn't be a freaking library.

Change the visual merchandising displays in each store. Create a backdrop that is the color of the sky with white puffy clouds. Have a Nook Color hang down from midstream. Dangle 10 cardboard book covers of the latest NY Best Sellers. Dangle a cloud that says "These are only $9.99 with the Nook". Dangle in big letters "Add Color To Your Life! The Nook Color".

It has to look high tech or people won't buy it. It has to feel high tech or people will ignore it. It has to say cool all over it and not presented in a way like a stodgy, boring bookstore environment. You have to be hip. You have to be with the times. Set aside 20% of the floor for starters. Dedicate that to very comfortable cushy seating. Only people with Nooks can use the area. Make the patrons who do not have the Nook jealous. "Hey, they have the Nook and those cushy seats!"

All other people have to stand. You honor your patrons that are early adopters, not reward the people who come to use your store like a library. Over time, reduce book inventory, lease less store space. Cut down your costs. Create themed reading venues. A Safari room. A Tech room. A Kids room. Let your imagination run wild. Create a digital reading experience.

You have to make the place look hip. You are selling an experience. One that people won't forget. One where people WANT to come to share time with others. A place where you can download electronic books at reduced costs and sit down to enjoy it. Don't fall for the lending ebook idea. Its a stupid idea. I don't want to borrow an eReader and take home or read in the store a device I don't own. Reading is a personal matter. The information on the Nook is personal. It is my personal reading device and one that is part of my digital lifestyle.

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.