Barnes & Noble reportedly is trimming staff after a disappointing holiday season.
Barnes & Noble cut lead cashiers, digital leads and other experienced workers in a company-wide clearing, CNBC learned from sources familiar with the matter.
Workers showed up Monday morning at various Barnes & Noble locations to be notified that they no longer had a job, CNBC reported.
A company spokesperson told CNBC: "Given our sales decline this holiday, we're adjusting staffing."
The number of affected workers couldn't immediately be determined. As of April 29 of last year, Barnes & Noble employed about 26,000 people.
The company late last year scaled back ambitions to become more than a bookseller.
The retailer had hoped that toys, games and other items would shore up its results, especially as Amazon.com Inc. ate away at its traditional business. But its non-book sales have flagged the past two quarters, and now the company is putting its focus back firmly on reading, Bloomberg reported.
Barnes & Noble will “place a greater emphasis on books, while further narrowing our non-book assortment,” Chief Executive Officer Demos Parneros said in a statement.
The failed foray is just one of the challenges bearing down on the chain. Customer traffic is down, and Barnes & Noble is losing market share. Though the release of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” reinvigorated sales a year ago, the company is now paying for that blip: Same-store sales fell 6.3 percent last quarter, with about half of that decline coming from the drop-off in Harry Potter demand.
Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book business also has languished, a further sign of Amazon’s tightening grip on readers. It all added up to a loss of 41 cents a share in the fiscal second quarter, compared with a deficit of 29 cents a year earlier. Analysts projected a 26-cent loss for the period, which ended Oct. 28.
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
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