LEONARD RIGGIO

Leonard Riggio was born in Brooklyn in 1941, the son of a boxer. He started as a clerk at the New York University bookstore in the 1960s while attending night school.

In 1965, he founded the Student Book Exchange near NYU with $5,000 borrowed from friends and family. In 1971, he bought the struggling Barnes & Noble flagship store in Manhattan for $1.2 million.

He then acquired B. Dalton Bookseller in 1986 for $300 million, bringing over 800 new stores into his network.

He took Barnes & Noble public in 1993 on the NYSE. At peak, the chain had over 700 superstores plus college bookstores.

He also acquired Babbage's in 1996, which eventually became the parent company of GameStop. He stepped down as executive chairman in 2019 when private equity firm Elliott Management took Barnes & Noble private for $683 million.

Barnes & Noble (owner 1971, executive chairman until 2019). B.

Dalton Bookseller (acquired 1986). Babbage's/GameStop (acquired 1996, divested).

Barnes & Noble College (sold to Follett in 2015). BN.com (launched 1997 to compete with Amazon).

Sterling Publishing (acquired 2003, educational books division).

Riggio was a hands-on retail operator, not a financial investor. He acquired undervalued retail assets, applied relentless operational discipline, and used scale to negotiate favorable publisher terms.

He competed through selection, superstore experience, and the in-store café concept — Barnes & Noble popularized the idea that bookstores should have coffee shops before Starbucks was everywhere. He was not a deal-maker who flipped assets but a builder who wanted to own and operate for decades.

The 1986 acquisition of B. Dalton for $300 million.

That deal instantly made Barnes & Noble the largest bookseller in America and gave Riggio the scale to negotiate favorable terms with every major publisher. It was the inflection point that turned a New York retailer into a national force.

The Nook e-reader. Barnes & Noble spent over a billion dollars trying to compete with Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad.

The Nook had a moment — it briefly held 20% of the e-reader market — but Amazon's scale and ecosystem advantages proved unbeatable. By 2016 the Nook hardware line was essentially dead.

The money and executive attention burned on the Nook was a decade of distraction from what the company actually did well.

Scale creates leverage. The bigger your purchasing network, the better your publisher terms, the lower your unit costs, the wider your selection.

Riggio believed retail was a game won by scale and operational excellence, not by clever financial engineering. He was a builder in an era when builders were still winning against Wall Street.

Born February 28, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York. Died February 27, 2024 — one day before his 83rd birthday.

Married to Louise Riggio. Six children.

He was raised in a working-class Brooklyn family and credited his father, a professional boxer, with instilling in him the conviction that you could build something from nothing.

Attended New York University (did not graduate initially, later received an honorary doctorate from NYU). He built his empire on street knowledge and operational instinct more than formal credentials.

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