In some cases, it is apparent that faced with competition from a digital company. A bricks and mortar competitor is at sea. Barnes & Noble is a very nice chain of US bricks and mortar bookstores. James Riggio purchased Barnes & Noble in 1971 when it had a single store in New York City. And over his first 25 years as owner, built it into a thriving Fortune 500 company. With hundreds of stores and billions of dollars in revenue. But Barnes and Nobles has struggled for 20 years to find an effective response to amazon.com. Ever since the Amazon website went live in 1995. By my account even now, Barnes and Noble meets only nine of the 19 criteria for a bricks and mortar product company. To compete effectively in business analytics. Barnes and Noble's stock price was $37 in 1995. It was still $37 10 years later, in 2005. Ten years after that in 2015, it's stock price is now $27. A decline of 28%. By comparison during those 20 years. The S&P 500 index, is up more than eight percent per year, continually compounded. For the past 20 years, amazon.com has slowly crushed the life and joy out of Barnes & Noble. Over the 17 years since Amazon.com went public. It's stock price is up 350 fold an annualized return of more than 32%. News item April 2014, Barnes and Noble Chairman, Leonard Riggio disclosed his second stock sale in five months. Reducing his interest to 20% from 30% last year. Barnes and Noble shares dropped 12% on the news of Mr. Riggio's sale. Which he said he made for estate planning purposes. Maxim group analyst John Kinker, who has been bullish on Barnes and Noble in recent months. Described the sale as, obviously negative. Barnes & Noble has tried its own e-reader to compete with Amazons Kindle, the Nook. And its own website, BN.com. But both efforts seem underwhelming. Understandably, as the company does not want to turn itself into a pure online competitor to Amazon. A market where it has no competitive advantage. The Nook and BN efforts do not enhance any competitive differentiation. Between Barnes & Noble and Amazon they erode it. To me Barnes & Noble's basic value proposition is as a place to gather with other people. Maybe sit and study or have a cup of coffee while surrounded by books. There's the pleasure of people watching and the chance that you might meet somebody over a book. Something you'll never get on Amazon. Perhaps the only way to survive long term while selling this kind of intangible. Would be to persuade people to pay a cover charge at the door just like a bar that offers a live band. Barnes and Noble is in fact a kind of old fashioned club. Essentially people are paying to be with other people who like or love books. While being surrounded by tons of very expensive physical inventory. Right now a $25 Barns & Noble membership offers a 10% discount, and it's not mandatory. Maybe, a higher and mandatory membership fee would take Barnes & Noble all the way to exclusive club status. What do you think Barns & Noble could do to survive, and hopefully thrive again, someday? I'm interested in your thoughts and comments.