B. Dalton Bookseller was an American bookstore chain that started in 1966. It was founded by Bruce Dayton, who was part of the same family that owned the Dayton's department store chain. B. Dalton grew to become the largest seller of hardcover books in the United States, with 779 stores at its highest point. Most of its stores were located in indoor shopping malls, and it mainly competed with Waldenbooks. In 1987, Barnes & Noble bought the chain from Dayton's and kept running it until late 2009, when it was announced that the last 50 stores would close and sell their items by January 2010. In 2022, B. Dalton was brought back by changing the name of a Barnes & Noble location.

History

Bruce Dayton, who was part of the family that ran Dayton's, a department store chain in Minneapolis, Minnesota, started the B. Dalton bookstore chain in 1966. He used his name for the chain but changed the spelling by replacing the Y in his last name with an L. The name B. Dalton was chosen because it suggested quality, trustworthiness, and leadership.

The first store opened in Edina, a city near Minneapolis, in August 1966. A second store opened in St. Louis, Missouri, later that year. Although the chain was planned to operate in city centers and suburban areas, most stores were built inside shopping malls. In 1969, Dayton's combined with Hudson's, a store in Detroit, to form Dayton Hudson Corporation, which is now known as Target Corporation.

B. Dalton grew quickly during the 1960s and 1970s. It had 12 stores in 1968 and 125 stores five years later. By 1986, the chain had 798 locations. In 1968, B. Dalton bought Pickwick Books, and the two companies joined together in 1979. By 1978, B. Dalton had stores in 43 of the 50 U.S. states. It had more stores than Waldenbooks, the largest bookstore in the United States at the time, and earned more money than Waldenbooks. A main store opened in Manhattan in December 1978. Between 1983 and 1986, B. Dalton used the Pickwick name again for a discount bookstore.

By 1986, B. Dalton’s profits began to fall because competitors sold books at lower prices and because fewer new shopping malls were being built. Because of these problems, Dayton Hudson Corporation sold B. Dalton to Barnes & Noble. While Barnes & Noble owned B. Dalton, the chain bought Scribner Book Stores, Inc. from Rizzoli International Bookstores in 1989. It also started a video game store called Software, Etc., which is now known as GameStop. At the same time, B. Dalton closed some stores and moved others, while testing new store designs. By 1997, the chain had 528 stores, and it closed many more stores in the following years.

In January 2010, Barnes & Noble shut down the last 50 B. Dalton stores, except for two: one at Union Station in Washington, D.C., and another at Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, New York. The Roosevelt Field Mall store closed in January 2012, and the Union Station store closed in February 2013.

In February 2022, Barnes & Noble changed the name of its Oviedo Mall store back to B. Dalton, bringing the brand back into use.

Format

At first, B. Dalton focused on people living in suburban areas with middle-class incomes, with stores that had parquet flooring and wide aisles. Later, the store changed its strategy to reach more people, which allowed for more book choices. B. Dalton was also one of the first chains to show hardcover and paperback books next to each other. B. Dalton supported the PBS TV show Reading Rainbow from 1985 to 1987.

Software Etc.

In 1985, B. Dalton opened the first Software Etc. store, which sold computer books, magazines, and software. Software Etc. first operated inside B. Dalton bookstores but became its own separate business in 1987 and focused on operating its own stores. In 1994, Software Etc. merged with a competing company called Babbage's. In 1996, NeoStar Retail Group Inc., the owner of both Software Etc. and Babbage's, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and put the two store chains up for sale. By November of that year, NeoStar had not found a buyer and announced that all 707 stores owned by the company would close within the next year. However, by November 26, the plan to close the stores was stopped when NeoStar's assets were sold to a group of investors led by retailer Leonard Riggio. In 1999, the newly formed company Babbage's Etc. launched the GameStop chain and sold it to Barnes & Noble. This sale reunited the Software Etc. chain with its original parent company, B. Dalton. In 2000, Barnes & Noble purchased Funco, Inc. and merged Babbage's Etc. to make it a company completely owned by Funco. Funco later changed its name to GameStop, Inc. and became independent from Barnes & Noble by 2004. Since then, GameStop has removed the Software Etc. name from its stores.