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Barnes & Noble Opening in Bridgehampton Commons

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Sarah deQuillfeldt, the manager of the new Barnes & Noble store in the Bridgehampton Commons shopping center, said planned to tailor the store's offerings to the community. STEPHEN J. KOTZ

Sarah deQuillfeldt, the manager of the new Barnes & Noble store in the Bridgehampton Commons shopping center, said planned to tailor the store's offerings to the community. STEPHEN J. KOTZ

Sarah deQuillfeldt, the manager of the new Barnes & Noble store in the Bridgehampton Commons shopping center, said planned to tailor the store's offerings to the community. STEPHEN J. KOTZ

Sarah deQuillfeldt, the manager of the new Barnes & Noble store in the Bridgehampton Commons shopping center, said planned to tailor the store's offerings to the community. STEPHEN J. KOTZ

authorStephen J. Kotz on Nov 28, 2023

Barnes & Noble will hold a grand opening on Friday, December 1, for its latest store — its first on the South Fork — when it opens the doors to its new location in the Bridgehampton Commons at 10 a.m.

The store is one of three stores that the giant bookseller is opening this week, with openings also scheduled in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Richardson, Texas.

Janine Flanigan, the company’s director of store planning and design, said Barnes & Noble is bucking the trend toward online shopping and had already opened more than 30 brick-and-mortar stores this year and planned to open 50 to 60 more in 2024. The company now has 608 stores, she added. The book seller opened a store in Riverhead last November.

Thanks to holiday shopping, December is the company’s busiest month. According to an article in The New York Times, Barnes & Noble sells about 20 million books during the month, with the week before Christmas accounting for 20 times the average week’s sales.

In a press release accompanying the opening, Barnes & Noble said the new Bridgehampton store “showcases the highly lauded bookstore design” the company has been using in its new stores.

The store’s manager, Sarah deQuillfeldt, who helped open the Riverhead store last year, said she planned to tailor the Bridgehampton store’s offerings to the East End community.

“Opening new bookstores is one of the most exciting parts of my job,” deQuillfeldt said in a release. “It is wonderful to get a chance to connect with the community and deliver a vibrant, local bookstore. This is truly a unique location in the Hamptons, and I am positive that our store will become an important and special place here.”

The company has long eyed Bridgehampton as a potential location for a store, with Leonard Riggio, the company’s founder, owning a home on Ocean Road in Bridgehampton.

A Barnes & Noble store had once been proposed as an anchor for mixed-use development planned by Konner Development for a site across Montauk Highway from the Commons, but the project was later dropped in the face of heavy community opposition.

Riggio sold his interest in the company in 2019 to Elliot Advisors, an investment firm, which named James Daunt as its chief executive officer.

Flanigan said Daunt recognized that book lovers enjoy browsing in stores and discovering new offerings.

“You can always go on Amazon for a quick purchase,” she said, “but if you are an avid reader, you want to see what’s available. It’s an experiential difference.”

The Bridgehampton store will occupy about 9,000 square feet in the space that was formerly occupied by the Collette consignment shop on the southwest side of the Commons.

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