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To: Robohogs who wrote (10828)	7/19/1998 3:20:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Does anyone know how Barnes and Noble or Borders restock individual stores? Do they have a warehouse somewhere, do they go to distributors or do they go to the publishers? Amazon will have an advantage here since they will only need to stock one or two centers and not hundreds of books and they can only stock the biggest sellers (remember the old 80/20 rule - 80% of sales from 20% of products) and pay more for the lower sellers Jonathan, I have an sanwer to your question regarding BKS and BGP. Both firms have three fairly large wharehouse distribution channels. The merchandise in each store is barcoded and deducted as sold. Replacement merchandise is shipped in reasonable quantities as needed when the computer in each store sends a request. Most of the inventory is bought from the publishers bypassing the middle man such as Ingrams and B & T. It is interesting you mentioned the 80-20 rule. This is true but in the book business the fastest selling are the best sellers and they have the least gross margins. BKS and BGP make most of their profits on non bestsellers. That is in both 10Qs. Glenn