Tattered Cover will chart its own course, says Barnes & Noble CEO on bookstore’s sale
In the case of how a sale of Tattered Cowl to Barnes & Noble would change the storied Denver bookstore, James Daunt is insistent: that will likely be as much as the group managing and staffing the enterprise.
Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, was in Denver Friday and Saturday to speak to Tattered Cowl’s booksellers, or workers. Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookseller, has provided $1.83 million in money to purchase Tattered Cowl out of chapter, masking $50,000 in again lease and $1.6 million in secured debt the shop owes.
Tattered Cowl’s dad or mum firm, Bended Web page, permitted the supply June 17, however the settlement wants the approval of the U.S. Chapter Court docket in Denver. The closing is ready to happen by July 31.
After a brief stint as an funding banker, Daunt opened a number of bookstores in Britain. He later turned managing director, or CEO, of Waterstones, Britain’s largest bookstore chain, after which CEO of Barnes & Noble, however nonetheless has his personal shops.
“I’m a pupil of different bookstores. I visited Tattered Cowl prior to now,” Daunt informed The Denver Put up whereas sitting at a desk among the many bookcases on the retailer’s important location on Denver’s East Colfax Avenue.
“It’s clearly one of many nice names in bookselling,” Daunt added.
And whereas TC Acquisition Co. LLC, an affiliate of Barnes & Noble, has made a suggestion on the shop, Daunt insisted that the e book chain doesn’t plan to remake the 53-year-old impartial enterprise in some sort of company picture.
“Barnes & Noble isn’t coming in, as such. It’s offering the entire construction. We’re there to supply all that’s obligatory for the groups to run an excellent bookstore,” Daunt mentioned. “Tattered Cowl goes to determine the way it turns into Tattered Cowl once more.”
After taking the helm at Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, Daunt mentioned he has inspired workers to run shops like impartial booksellers
“It’s the shop group that runs an excellent bookstore, whether or not it’s the Barnes & Noble in Fort Collins or Tattered Cowl right here,” Daunt mentioned. “A few of them will do it brilliantly, a few of them will do it shockingly awfully and a few of them in between.”
In Britain, Waterstones has purchased well-known impartial bookstores that also function below their unique names, resembling Blackwell’s, Hatchards, Foyles and Hodges Figgis.
“What we’ve achieved is actually empower these groups to reinvent themselves again to what they had been,” Daunt mentioned. “Hatchards now’s most undoubtedly not a Waterstones. It’s Hatchards. It’s a really, very distinct and completely different bookstore and dramatically extra profitable as a consequence of that.”
Hatchards is the oldest bookshop in the UK and the official bookseller to the royal family, in response to its web site.
The settlement between Bended Web page and Barnes & Noble requires the bookstore to proceed working below the identify of the Tattered Cowl E-book Retailer and to proceed its program of occasions. All 4 metro-area areas will stay open.
Daunt mentioned that he hopes “the overwhelming majority” of Tattered Cowl’s roughly 70 workers will need to keep on workers.
The lease on the East Colfax retailer will likely be prolonged by means of 2038 and the lease on the shop within the Aspen Grove purchasing heart in Littleton would run by means of 2030.
Underneath the possession of Joyce Meskis, Tattered Cowl Bookstore turned a Denver icon that hosted former presidents, future presidents (Barack Obama) and literary luminaries by means of the many years. Tattered Cowl additionally solid a nationwide fame for preventing censorship and defending First Modification rights.
In 2017, book-industry veterans Len Vlahos and his spouse Kristen Gilligan acquired controlling curiosity within the Tattered Cowl. Bended Web page, co-founded by Denver natives Kwame Spearman and David Again, purchased the struggling firm in 2020.
Tattered Cowl filed for Chapter 11 chapter lower than a 12 months after the demise of Meskis in December 2022. The dad or mum firm put the bookstore up on the market in March.