New York, NY – June 17, 2009 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, will open a new flagship bookstore on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York, at 150 East 86th Street and Lexington Avenue on June 19. The new store will stock more than 400,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and include a café serving Starbucks coffee. The new Upper East Side Barnes & Noble will be open every day from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., and employ 200 people from the community.
At approximately 55,000 square feet spanning two floors with elevator access, the bigger, better, and all-new Barnes & Noble will serve as a community center for the Upper East Side. The store will provide the Upper East Side’s biggest selection of adult books, with expanded Arts, Cooking, Travel and Literary Fiction sections; children’s books, with BN@School, Educational Toys and Games areas in a spacious B&N Jr. section; the Upper East Side’s largest music selection and the largest Blu-ray disc selection in Manhattan. The deluxe Gift Department will offer exquisite and curated products in addition to a huge selection of unique puzzles and games.
Special enhancements for the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble include an advanced cashwrap cueing system, a custom neighborhood mural in the store’s lobby with a video wall and video streams of live information and entertainment displayed on video walls throughout the store, and stroller parking in the B&N Jr. section for families on the go.
“The new Upper East Side Barnes & Noble has combined the best elements of our bookstores and provided them to customers in a dynamic and engaging way,” said Store Manager Amy Fitzgerald. “The new space will quickly grow into the premier community center and events space for families and book lovers on the Upper East Side.”
To celebrate the grand opening of the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble, the new store will host an array of eclectic and popular authors, including Lewis Black, Buzz Aldrin, Jodi Della Femina, Emeril Lagasse, Jane Green, David Carr, Peter Yarrow, and Dorothea Benton Frank. On Tuesday, June 23, at 4 p.m., the store will host an “Our Time” CD event with Broadway’s stars including Kelli O'Hara, Michael Cerveris, Mary Testa, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Sherie Rene Scott, and others.
On June 19, the day of the grand opening, the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble will host a Winnie the Pooh Storytime at 10 a.m. Students from P.S. 169 and P.S. 198 will be in attendance.
Other upcoming children’s events will include a celebrity Storytime with Joy Behar reading from her Max Goes to the Dogs, a Father’s Day drawing demonstration by Chicken Soup illustrator David Gavril, a very special event with “pop-up” masters Robert Sabuda (Peter Pan) and Matthew Reinhart (Jungle Book), a CD signing with children’s musical performer Dan Zanes, signings with authors Jon Scieszka (Trucktown: Smash! Crash!) and Mindy Aloff (Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation) and many more. These events will all be in addition to the regularly scheduled Storytimes on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. and Sundays at 11 a.m.
Barnes & Noble will welcome customers to the new Upper East Side store with the following grand opening promotions. While supplies last, customers will receive a free Barnes & Noble Green bag with any purchase. On tables throughout the store, select titles originally priced from $9.98 to $99.99 will be $5.00, while supplies last. All CDs will be 40% off, Educational Toys & Games and Games & Puzzles will be 20% off. The Barnes & Noble Café will feature a free Tall Brewed Coffee with any 1LB® Starbucks Coffee purchase.
Barnes & Noble is the nation’s top bookseller brand for the sixth year in a row, as determined by a combination of the brand’s performance on familiarity, quality and purchase intent; the top bookseller in quality for the second year in a row and the number two retailer in trust, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. The new store will feature:
- The Barnes & Noble Membership Program. Designed for Barnes & Noble’s best customers, this program gives Members 40% off hardcover fiction and nonfiction bestsellers, 20% off all other adult hardcover books, and 10% off virtually everything else in Barnes & Noble stores and online at Barnes & Noble.com. The annual fee is $25.
- Rapid special-order service. Can’t find it on the shelf? Barnes & Noble’s massive warehouse inventory is available in real-time, enabling its booksellers to order and confirm the availability of over one million titles at the click of a button.
- Large-scale children’s department. Bigger than most typical bookstores and stocking more than 15,000 titles in an easy-to-browse environment, the “Barnes & Noble Jr.” department is designed to appeal to children, parents, teachers and librarians. Children’s Storytime will be held twice a week.
- Advanced technology movie, audiobook and music-previewing system. The store will feature RedDotNet, the most advanced listening and previewing technology. RedDotNet enables customers to preview select DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, audiobooks or CDs in the store, sampling a title by simply passing it under a scanner. Connected to the company’s online electronic catalog, the store’s listening stations make “browsing with your ears” a reality. Thanks to the latest technology, RedDotNet stations also allow customers to view a three-minute clip of more than 7,000 DVDs. Additional music titles are available for special order.
- Newsstand. The store’s newsstand stocks hundreds of hard-to-find specialty magazines.
- Wi-Fi Service. AT&T Wi-FiSM service allows customers to use their laptop computers and personal digital assistants anywhere in the store or café to communicate online, surf the Internet and connect to corporate networks at speeds 50 to 100 times as fast as a dial-up connection. A single two-hour session costs $3.95, and an annual membership with unlimited access to Barnes & Noble and more than 50,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hot spots also is available.
- Community Center. The store will serve as a local community center, hosting a number of community events throughout the year. They will include author readings and discussions, book clubs and programs with local literary and cultural organizations. The store also will partner with local schools to host bookfairs to help raise money for schools, literacy and arts organizations in the community. For more information, please contact Edwin Tucker at 212-369-2180.
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