March 10, 2006

Retail Roundup

Barnes & Noble to open new store at Eastridge Mall

New bookstore debuts on March 15

Barnes & Noble, Inc., is headed Evergreen’s way, with a new bookstore opening on March 15 in the Eastridge Mall.

The store will stock close to 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and include a café serving Starbucks coffee. The new San Jose Barnes & Noble will be open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday, and employ more than 40 people.

The public is invited to a Preview Night Party at the new San Jose Barnes & Noble on Tuesday, March 14, from 6 to 9 p.m. A portion of the Preview Night sales will benefit the Evergreen School District. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place at 6 p.m. with District 8 councilmember Dave Cortese. Throughout the evening, music will be provided by the Benny Torres Jazz Trio. The St. John Vianney School choir will perform at 7:30 p.m. Clifford the Big Red Dog will be on hand to meet his fans.

Starting March 15, the first 200 customers to spend $50 or more at the new San Jose Barnes & Noble may redeem their receipts for a $5 Barnes & Noble gift card at the Eastridge Mall customer service desk, located at the upper level center court.

The new store will feature:

• The Barnes & Noble Membership Program. Designed for Barnes & Noble’s best customers, this program gives Members an additional 10 percent off virtually every item in Barnes & Noble stores and online at www.barnesandnoble.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 departments. Stocking over 15,000 titles in an easy-to-browse environment, “Barnes & Noble Jr.” departments are designed to appeal to children, parents, teachers and librarians. Children’s story hours will be held three times a week.

• Advanced technology music-listening system. The store’s music department will feature RedDotNet. RedDotNet enables customers to listen to any CD in the store, sampling up to 200,000 music titles by simply passing it under a scanner.

• Giant Newsstand. The store’s newsstand stocks over 1,500 titles, including hundreds of hard-to-find specialty magazines and out-of-town newspapers.

• Wi-Fi Service. SBC FreedomLink Wi-Fi 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. A single two-hour session costs $3.95, and an annual membership with unlimited access to Barnes & Noble and more than 6,000 SBC Wi-Fi hot spots is available for $19.95 per month.

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate Web site: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com.