Following years of closing stores across the country, Barnes & Noble this week will open its first new Michigan bookstore in 13 years.
The 14,000-square-foot store at The Village of Rochester Hills shopping center is set to open Wednesday and will be the national bookseller's 10th "prototype" bookstore of the future _ and the first of its kind in the state.
The store is just over half the size of a traditional Barnes & Noble store and features a brighter interior with more cover-out book displays, lower bookshelves and plenty of non-book merchandise such as vinyl records, notebooks, board games, bottled water and Lego sets.
Staff will roam around with check-out tablets, letting customers make purchases without the need to wait in the cash register line. There is more dedicated shelf space for books on local history and local sports teams as well as more communal seating around the store's Starbucks cafe. Children can enjoy a unique Legos play table and "story time" area.
For Barnes & Noble, the store's modest real estate footprint could offer a less expensive way to lure customers away from rival Internet websites such as Amazon.com and back to making impulse purchases inside physical bookstores.
"The store looks a little different; not your typical Barnes & Noble," Frank Morabito, vice president of stores for Barnes & Noble, said Tuesday during a preview tour. "From the lighting to the paint color to the flooring, we really wanted to create a bookstore with a more contemporary feel."
Aside from the 10 new prototype stores, Barnes & Noble has generally been shutting down bricks-and-mortar locations amid flat or declining sales and less in-store foot traffic.
The Village of Rochester store marks the first new Barnes & Noble in Michigan since the company opened at Genesee Valley Mall in Flint in 2006.
In 2008, there were just under 800 Barnes & Noble stores nationwide, including 23 in Michigan. The company also owned the seven B. Dalton Bookseller locations in Michigan.
This January, the number of Barnes & Nobles was down to 627 with 18 in Michigan, according to the company's corporate filings. All of the B. Dalton bookstores were liquidated nearly a decade ago.
Rochester Hills already has one Barnes & Noble store on Rochester Road. That bookstore will remain open, company officials said.
"This is a really strong market for us, so we are excited to have the opportunity to support it with two stores," Morabito said. "We think it's going to add convenience to customers who live on this side of town."
The prototype store carries fewer copies of books than tradition Barnes & Noble locations, but still has 34,000 titles under its roof, Morabito said. He could not offer any estimate for the amount of books vs. non-book merchandise for sale.
"The focus is books, and we tell that story from the minute you enter the store," he said.
