Another CEO of a leading business group has to leave on reasons of poor business performance. Barnes & Noble has announced the exit of CEO William Lynch. While the business of Barnes & Noble has been battered for some time considering the increasing movement of customers from book store purchases to e-commerce purchases, the consumption habit from physical books to e-readers have also taken their share from the booksellers pie. The company had to face a good hit from Amazon, which had been selling books at a lower cost online, and subsequently captured the e-reader market through Kindle.
With an aspiration to join the digital reader market, Barnes & Noble had announced its e-reader line up in 2009 with Nook. However the Nook line of e-readers, and subsequent launch of Nook tablets have not been able to successfully compete with the Kindle line, and has lead to huge dent on Barnes & Noble. More recently, Nook sales saw a dip of 34 % in last quarter, signalling the need for the business to re-work its digital strategy as well as overall business strategy. Some of the fallouts of the mess – a possibility of the business bringing an end to the manufacture of the Nook tablets, and shutting down some of its prime retail stores to cut costs.
William Lynch, had joined the company about 3 years back and is credited to have led the development of Nook e-book store, e-readers and tablets. With dipping financials, the company had recently decided to separate the Nook business, and is also looking for a partner to make the Nook tablets under a “co branding” agreement. The company, however plans to continue making the Nook e-readers. While the Nook line of readers was able to ensure that B&N stays competitive and also offered e-reader customers a choice of device, it also lead to an overall dent in the groups financials.
As a fallout of the declining business, and related changes – the reorganisation has led to the exit of William Lynch. Amongst other changes is the appointment of CFO Michael Huseby as the Chief Executive of the Nook Media. Huseby will also take over the role of President of Barnes & Noble.