Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. ( doing business as BNED, after its

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...

ticker symbol) is one of the largest operators of college bookstores in the

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. As of the end of 2020, Barnes & Noble Education operated 760 campus bookstores and school-branded

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sites through its Barnes & Noble College Booksellers division. The company is headquartered in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. BNED was part of the

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...

national retail bookstore chain until 2015, when Barnes & Noble separated its higher-education operation from its retail trade stores and Nook brand ebook operation. The company's main competitor in the management of on-campus college bookstores industry is Follett. It is not unusual for college campuses to replace their bookstore operators with their main rival after the current store management contracts expires.

History

In February 2015, Barnes & Noble had announced plans to spin off its college bookstore assets and create a separate company called Barnes & Noble Education. On August 3, 2015, Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. began trading on the

under the ticker symbol, "BNED". The company operates stores dedicated to selling college textbooks, both on and off campus. In June 2016, Barnes & Noble Education completed the acquisition of Promoversity, a custom merchandise supplier and e-commerce business that works with the collegiate bookstore business and its customers. In February 2017, Barnes & Noble Education had acquired MBS Textbook Exchange, a major textbook distributor based in

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, for $174.2 million in cash. By December 2018, Barnes & Noble Education had operated or managed 773 campus bookstores under contracts. In July 2019, BNED revealed that the company had turned down several offers by California-based Bay Capital Finance to take over the company citing that the offers by Bay Capital were "substantially undervalued BNED, were highly conditional and not credible." Unlike its former parent company, BNED was diversifying its business by the acquisition of many digital services companies to increase the number of services offered by its Digital Student Solutions division during its past four years as an independent company.

Digital Student Solutions division

In March 2016, Barnes & Noble Education enlarged their Digital Student Solutions online services division by acquiring LoudCloud Systems, a digital platform and analytics provider to clients in higher education, the for-profit sector, and K-12 segment. In August 2017, Barnes & Noble Education acquired Student Brands for $58.5 million. In August 2018, Barnes & Noble Education acquired PaperRater, a service that helps students write papers and identify plagiarism.

References

External links

Barnes & Noble College
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barnes and Noble Education Bernards Township, New Jersey Bookstores of the United States Music retailers of the United States Barnes & Noble Companies based in Somerset County, New Jersey