Barnes and Noble’s board didn’t give a more specific reason for Boire’s departure, adding only that “it was in the best interests of all parties for him to leave the company”.
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The bookseller said it will immediately begin a search for a new CEO. Prior to joining Barnes & Noble he was president/CEO of Sears Canada, and before that was chief merchandising officer and president of Sears and Kmart Formats at Sears Holdings.
Before being the CEO of Sears, Ron was CEO of Brookstone, a chain that improved on his watch but nevertheless filed for bankruptcy protection two years after he left. And in his 17 years at Sony he had tech experience in personal mobile products.
Barnes & Noble has 640 stores across the country, and been seeking for ways to better compete against online seller Amazon by expanding into a wider variety of music, art supplies and toys in addition to books and stationary.
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Under the watch of Boire the Nook division was totally gutted, but not outright killed. The NOOK Store features more than 4 million digital books in the U.S. plus periodicals, comics, apps, movies and TV shows, and offers the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices through Free NOOK Reading Appsavailable for Android, iOSand Windows.
