by CIO Staff

Barnes & Noble v. Amazon: The Players

News
Sep 15, 20011 min
BPM Systems

The founder Leonard Riggio

The son of a semiprofessional boxer, Riggio dropped out of New York University to open a student bookstore in 1965. In 1971, he bought an unprofitable seller of textbooks in Greenwich Village called Barnes & Noble. The rest is history.

The online defender of Barnes & Noble’s honor Stephen Riggio

Stephen, Leonard’s younger brother, worked at the mother ship before founding Barnesandnoble.com in May 1997. He is now vice chairman of the dotcom and acts as CEO.

The outsider Jonathan Bulkeley

Bulkeley, who started America Online’s British operation, was named CEO of Barnesandnoble .com in November 1998. He abruptly left in January of 2000, relinquishing the operation to the Riggio family.

The technology leader Gary King

King was hired as CIO of Barnesand-noble.com in December 1998, after 11 years at Avon Products. Now executive vice president of operations and CTO, King oversaw the creation of Barnesandnoble.com’s infrastructure and supply chain capabilities.

The nemesis Jeff Bezos

Once the upstart competitor, the Amazon .com founder is the number-one Web bookseller. But he’s still got to convince Wall Street that he understands what profit means.