April 22, 2005

Retail Roundup

Barnes & Noble coming to Eastridge

Barnes & Noble, Inc., the world’s largest bookseller, signed a lease agreement to open a new bookstore at the Eastridge Shopping Center in Evergreen.

The new store—expected to open in November 2005 as part of the $100 million renovation by General Growth Properties (GGP)—will stock close to 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and include a cafe serving Starbucks coffee.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. operates 820 bookstores in 50 states. For the third year in a row, the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive® named Barnes & Noble number-one in quality among the country’s retail brands.

In addition to its retail operations, Barnes & Noble is one of the largest book publishers in the world. Its subsidiary, Sterling Publishing, publishes more than 1,100 new titles a year and has an active list of over 5,000 titles.

The new store will feature:
Membership program—Designed for Barnes & Noble’s most loyal customers, this membership program gives members an additional 10 percent off virtually every item in Barnes & Noble stores and online at www.bn.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—Bigger than most typical bookstores and 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.

Music-listening system—The store’s music department will feature RedDotNet, the most advanced listening technology. 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. Connected to the company’s online electronic music catalog, the store’s listening stations make “browsing with your ears” a reality.

Giant newsstand—The stores’ newsstands stocks over 2,000 titles, including hundreds of hard-to-find specialty magazines, out of town and even foreign 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 cafe 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 6,000 SBC Wi-Fi hot spots is available for $19.95 per month.

“We’re delighted to welcome Barnes & Noble to Eastridge,” said Sue Wareham, senior marketing manager for Eastridge in San Jose and Stonestown in San Francisco. “Barnes & Noble is just one of many popular, national retailers that will be part of the all-new Eastridge when it opens later this year.”

Eastridge Shopping Center, located at Tully Road and Capitol Expressway, is targeted to re-open sometime in August. The mall is owned by General Growth Properties, which owns, develops, operates or manages shopping malls in 44 states.

As of March, 2004, GGP had ownership interests in or management responsibility for more than 200 regional shopping malls. For more information go to www.generalgrowth.com.