"Borders: down and out at last" Topic

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Too bad. I saw tons of room for opportunity but alls for nought now. And I understand they'll be no sales to soften the blow – all stores to be shuttered on Friday.

Bah.

That sucks. I like going to a brick and mortar books store. I like to browse and am often suprised to find books I didnt know I was looking for. The internet is great when you know what you are looking for but the browsing experiance isnt the same.

This article says the stores will be in liquidation until September. I don't see as statement one way or the other in the one Flashman provided.

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…no sales to soften the blow…

Big Lots, here they come!??

Ah, according to CBSNews, the liquidation may start as early as Friday. That translate to "the big clearance sale starts," not "stores shuttered."

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The worst thing about them closing down will be the lack of magazines that they offered. The good news in these parts is that "Books a-Million" will be opening soon. Hope that they will have a good magazine/periodical section.

So what's going to happen to the online store? Only a few Dollars away from getting another $5.00 USD award. There's this store I keep frequenting link , especially for periodicals, calendars and cards, but when it goes there won't be a major book retailer in the area, since Barnes & Noble closed years ago and storefront is still boarded up.

@ Parzival and all – I meant to post a different article this morning and naturally can't now find the reference to closing immediately with no sales …

May we be so lucky as to have sales at least though I complained about the last ones.

It wasn't the book and music sellers that brought down the company, it was the corporate leadership who ought to suffer for this. They ought to liquidate all the senior management who screwed the company so badly, and then put Rupert Murdoch in charge as penance for his misdeeds… And I DO mean liquidate… though a fine pink mist would do just as well.

Cpt Arexu
a former Borders bookseller

Boarder's is another victim of a market place that is still in a radical flux due to the advent of the internet. Most likely you had management that lacked vision and commitment to make the correct changes in order to stay relevant and in business. Barns and Noble continue to hold market share in part due to their Nook hand held reader and a user friendly online presence. Amazon of course has a considerable advantage in the current market as long as it continues to innovate and maintain excellent customer services.

Sad as I am to see another brick and mortar store take a dive, Boarder's perhaps has only itself to blame. After all there was a time that both Barnes and Noble, and Boarders due to their vast size were driving other small locally owned bookstores out of business. Those mom and pop stores could not compete with the price breaks and inventory that the giants could provide. The mom and pop stores that did and continue to survive learned to go the extra mile in customer service. They learned to tailor their business to local taste in order to retain their clients while growing their business by offering specific services online.

Boarders just did not appear to have the capability to adapt and now it is dying off. In the end this is the way of markets. Innovation and changes in the market environment will always have winners and losers. Trains used to be the way to travel but the advent of affordable automobiles and inexpensive fuel supplanted that once dominant judgernaught. The railways that still thrive today do so by focusing on freight and leaner manpower.

The challenge for any business today is that with the internet changes in market forces occur at a far greater pace than many can comprehend. This also has an impact on the workforce in that we as workers will also have to constantly adapt and innovate in order to stay relevant in our jobs as well. Welcome to the future.

When my nearest large Borders closed the WH Smiths two doors down decided it could also cull which magazines it stocked.

As there was no longer any competition it could concentrate on the titles that sold large numbers, rather than on having a similarly large range to that on offer in Borders.

"That sucks. I like going to a brick and mortar books store. I like to browse and am often suprised to find books I didnt know I was looking for. The internet is great when you know what you are looking for but the browsing experiance isnt the same."

This is true, of course. However there are many people out there that like to browse at the bookstore and then order it online from Amazon. It only makes sense for Borders to close when the purpose of your business has gone from being selling things and making money to just being advertising for your competitors.

Unfortunately, it means smaller book print runs in future, so it gets even harder to find things unless you see them immediately. My demographic doesn't drive the market though, so I might as well suck it up. eventually I'll probably have to get some sort of loathsome e-reader.

Not a good day for the US in general, either – between Borders and Cisco that's 17,000 more people in the unemployment line.
-Kle.

Not a good day for the US in general, either – between Borders and Cisco that's 17,000 more people in the unemployment line.

Yup and tack on another 5000+ state workers here in Texas. I just took early retirement to avoid the next layoff scheduled at the agency I work for next month.

Dave

Well, I cannot speak for other Borders, but the one near my home seemed to always be manned by the goofiest kids (IMO…).
Big grommets in their ears, tattoos all over their faces, excessive piercings, 'inappropriate' clothing, a 'don't bother me' attitude if you needed help finding anything, etc…
When my daughter (who is a teenager) thought it was 'creepy' to go in there, that is when I knew maybe we should shop somewhere else.
In fact, I think there were a few kids who worked in there do did not know what a book was!

I will miss it, as my wife and I used to met up there on "date nights" (it was a good central meeting spot after work), but those days were well behind us as the kids behind the counter has more metal in his mouth than all the change in the till…

P.S. After writing this, I feel like an old geezer telling kids to 'get off my lawn…'

So many factors at work:

1) low interest rates encouraged over expansion – building huge lots with huge rents.

2) mediocre staffs -though that varied from location to location but the inconsistency didn't help. B&N is not systemically better. Neither has shined company wide though there were pockets of excellence around the country.

3) technology changes, consumer preference

4) prolonged high unemployment

5) the political environment that created and continues to sustain 4.

Had the economy recovered on a more normal schedule they may have been able to hang on longer – when folks are spending, errors can be paved over in the short term.

It's sad: for a long time government had little impact on day to day living for most people – those days are no more and I fear enough folks aren't savvy enough to see the connection.

And here's a new wrinkle:

Barnes & Noble's position is only slightly better and, if there's a choice in your community, folks will be spending at Borders to take advantage of the sales so more lackluster sales from B&N in the short term.

The first round of Borders' closings already took a chunk out of B&N's income: link