In terms of how a sale of Tattered Cowl to Barnes & Noble would change the storied Denver bookstore, James Daunt is insistent: that shall be as much as the crew managing and staffing the enterprise.
Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, was in Denver Friday and Saturday to speak to Tattered Cowl’s booksellers, or staff. Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookseller, has provided $1.83 million in money to purchase Tattered Cowl out of chapter, overlaying $50,000 in again hire and $1.6 million in secured debt the shop owes.
Tattered Cowl’s dad or mum firm, Bended Web page, authorized the supply June 17, however the settlement wants the approval of the U.S. Chapter Court docket in Denver. The closing is about 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 scholar of different bookstores. I visited Tattered Cowl previously,” Daunt instructed The Denver Publish whereas sitting at a desk among the many bookcases on the retailer’s foremost 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 proposal on the shop, Daunt insisted that the e-book chain doesn’t plan to remake the 53-year-old unbiased enterprise in some form of company picture.
“Barnes & Noble isn’t coming in, as such. It’s offering all the construction. We’re there to supply all that’s obligatory for the groups to run a very good bookstore,” Daunt stated. “Tattered Cowl goes to determine the way it turns into Tattered Cowl once more.”
After taking the helm at Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, Daunt stated he has inspired staff to run shops like unbiased booksellers
“It’s the shop crew that runs a very good bookstore, whether or not it’s the Barnes & Noble in Fort Collins or Tattered Cowl right here,” Daunt stated. “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 unbiased bookstores that also function below their authentic 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 stated. “Hatchards now could be 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, based on its web site.
The settlement between Bended Web page and Barnes & Noble requires the bookstore to proceed working below the title of the Tattered Cowl Ebook Retailer and to proceed its program of occasions. All 4 metro-area areas will stay open.
Daunt stated that he hopes “the overwhelming majority” of Tattered Cowl’s roughly 70 staff will wish to keep on employees.
The lease on the East Colfax retailer shall be prolonged by 2038 and the lease on the shop within the Aspen Grove purchasing middle in Littleton would run by 2030.
Below the possession of Joyce Meskis, Tattered Cowl Bookstore turned a Denver icon that hosted former presidents, future presidents (Barack Obama) and literary luminaries by the a long time. Tattered Cowl additionally solid a nationwide fame for combating 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 yr after the loss of life of Meskis in December 2022. The dad or mum firm put the bookstore up on the market in March.
