If you can't beat the competition with what you're doing, try seeing if you can beat them doing what they're doing. That appears to be the mindset, at least on piecemeal basis, for Barnes & Noble, which announced last week that it was expanding its BN.com Marketplace of third-party sellers to add several new categories of products, including arts and crafts, baby, consumer electronics, home and gift, and toys.
The company has added Abe's of Maine, Delivery Agent, Right Start, School Specialty, Inc., UnbeatableSale.com, Inc., Wayfair.com and others as new partners to the site.
"The expansion of BN.com Marketplace is an organic extension of our consumer value proposition," said John Foley, pesident of eCommerce, Barnes & Noble, in a press release. "If shoppers are buying cookbooks from BN.com, it's natural to offer them cooking supplies at the same time; if shoppers are buying new baby books, it's natural to offer them baby supplies as well; and so on across all of our categories. In this way, we can offer our valued customers a one-stop shopping destination."
Niraj Shah, CEO and co-founder of Wayfair.com, said, "Within the next six months, we aim to offer 500,000 of our home products -- from recliners and rugs to toasters and table lamps -- to Barnes & Noble customers."
Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom told Reuters that he did not expect the move to substantially boost Barnes & Noble's numbers. "It's an incremental traffic driver and helps with branding," he said.