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Organization (Notes)
3 Months Ended
Jul. 27, 2019
Organization
Note 1. Organization
Description of Business
Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. (“BNED”) is one of the largest contract operators of physical and virtual bookstores for college and university campuses and K-12 institutions across the United States. We are also one of the largest textbook wholesalers, inventory management hardware and software providers, and a leading provider of digital education solutions. We operate 1,491 physical, virtual, and custom bookstores and serve more than 6 million students, delivering essential educational content and tools within a dynamic omni channel retail environment. Additionally, we offer direct-to-student products and services to help students study more effectively and improve academic performance.
The strengths of our business include our ability to compete by developing new products and solutions to meet market needs, our large footprint with direct access to students and faculty, our well-established, deep relationships with partners and stable, long-term contracts, and our well-recognized brands. We expect to continue to grow our business by introducing scalable and advanced digital solutions focused largely on the student, increasing market share with new accounts, and expanding our strategic opportunities through acquisitions and partnerships.
Prior to the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2019, we had three reportable segments: BNC, MBS, and Digital Student Solutions (“DSS”). During the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2019, in an effort to streamline our retail go-to-market strategy, reinforce our company branding, and more efficiently focus our product development efforts, we realigned our business and sales organization into the following three reportable segments: Retail, Wholesale and DSS. For additional information related to our strategies, operations and segments, see Part I - Item 1. Business and Part II - Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data - Note 6. Segment Reporting in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended April 27, 2019.