Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. (

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name. Registering the fictitious name with ...

BNED, after its

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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 Basking Ridge is an Local government in New Jersey#Unincorporated communities, unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) located within Bernards Township, New Jersey, Bernards Township in the Somerset Hills region of Somerset ...

. BNED was part of the

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States. Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...

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 A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded Share (finance), shares of a particular stock or Security (finance), security on a particular stock exchange. Ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols ...

, "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

Columbia, Missouri Columbia is a city in Missouri, United States. It was founded in 1821 as the county seat of Boone County, Missouri, Boone County and had a population of 126,254 as recorded in the 2020 United States census, making it the List of cities in Misso ...

, for $174.2 million in cash. By December 2018, Barnes & Noble Education had operated or managed 773 campus bookstores under contracts. Two years later, Barnes & Noble Education operated 760 campus bookstores and school-branded

sites through its Barnes & Noble College Booksellers division at the end of 2020. 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 Chain bookstores of the United States Music retailers of the United States Barnes & Noble Companies based in Somerset County, New Jersey