In an earnings report released yesterday, Barnes & Noble announced that it will close its Memphis, Tennessee, Internet distribution center and lay off more than two hundred employees. The center, which opened in 2000 to ship online orders, is approximately four hundred thousand square feet in size. It is the smallest of the company’s eight distribution centers, which together account for 3.5 million square feet of operations. The company’s New Jersey and Nevada centers will fulfill all future Internet orders.
The report also indicated that during fiscal year 2006, the company opened thirty-two stores and closed eighteen. Next year, it anticipates opening thirty to forty new stores and closing nineteen. Last year, the company’s chain of nearly eight hundred U.S. stores generated $4.5 billion in sales.
