For fans of Borders, not good news

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 11:20 am

I'm bummed. Borders is my favorite store in the world. www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-ap- ... 6826.story

Kyleb · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 12:09 pm

One of my wife's best friends had an executive position at Borders' corporate HQ. They have seen the handwriting on the wall for years that the big bookstore business model was in trouble. Some of the big factors:

- Wal-Mart, Target, and every other major retailer carry the best sellers and sell them at very low prices. That "robs" the real bookstores of their biggest sales opportunity.

- Amazon - both booksales and e-books. They take another big chunk of sales off of the top.

- Inventory. Borders has to keep 20,000 (or whatever) titles on the shelf at each store, on some books they may have 10 copies/store. So they have a huge inventory across the company. Amazon, for instance, has one inventory - sure, it is big, but smaller that the combine inventory at Borders. Also, Amazon doesn't have to have all those nice retail spaces.

One of my favorite activities is to browse through a well-stocked bookstore for an hour or two. I wonder if that'll be possible in 10 years?

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:22 pm

Kyleb wrote:

One of my wife's best friends had an executive position at Borders' corporate HQ. They have seen the handwriting on the wall for years that the big bookstore business model was in trouble. Some of the big factors:

- Wal-Mart, Target, and every other major retailer carry the best sellers and sell them at very low prices. That "robs" the real bookstores of their biggest sales opportunity.

- Amazon - both booksales and e-books. They take another big chunk of sales off of the top.

- Inventory. Borders has to keep 20,000 (or whatever) titles on the shelf at each store, on some books they may have 10 copies/store. So they have a huge inventory across the company. Amazon, for instance, has one inventory - sure, it is big, but smaller that the combine inventory at Borders. Also, Amazon doesn't have to have all those nice retail spaces.

One of my favorite activities is to browse through a well-stocked bookstore for an hour or two. I wonder if that'll be possible in 10 years?

I do the same thing. Thats how I end up buying most of my books.

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:23 pm

Whew! I just saw a list of the stores closing in the Chicago area and the one I go to is not one of them.

davidbray · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:43 pm

Where'd you find that list Pat?

davidbray · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:45 pm

Nevermind... and DANGIT. My local store is closing.

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:47 pm

Sorry to hear that David. It has to be a hollow empty feeling I'm sure. Maybe you can get some good deals on a close out sale I'm sure they will have.

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 3:46 pm

A ist of the stores closing nationwide can be found here http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7 ... losing.pdf

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 3:55 pm

Disregard the last link I posted because it doesnt work. try www.chicagotribune.com/news/borders-clo ... 5.htmlpage Click onto "Original Document (PDF) to bring up a format that has larger print.

davidbray · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 6:14 pm

Pat Carry wrote:

Sorry to hear that David. It has to be a hollow empty feeling I'm sure. Maybe you can get some good deals on a close out sale I'm sure they will have.

Yeah, pretty annoying really. We have a B&N, but their selection is pretty sad compared to Borders.

Pat · **Posted:** Wed Feb 16, 2011 9:36 pm

Crap, I hope this doesn't affect the order I placed last week on borders.com...I bought the entire Trailer Park Boys series on DVD's for 40% off; it's backordered. :shock:

Bill Greenwood · **Posted:** Thu Feb 17, 2011 9:01 am

Here in Boulder, the Barnes and Noble in larger, better, has more parking, and a small cafe.

The Borders is/was ok, in an upscale center.

I love books, real ones with covers and pages, sorry to see one go.

I used to own a small store.

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Mon Jul 18, 2011 10:27 am

It looks like Borders will soon be going the way of phone booths and land line phones. The news I heard this morning is liquidation of the remaining stores is going to happen soon. Bummer.

davidbray · **Posted:** Mon Jul 18, 2011 5:17 pm

dang, that's sad... are they going to continue the online store?

Kyleb · **Posted:** Mon Jul 18, 2011 8:35 pm

davidbray wrote:

dang, that's sad... are they going to continue the online store?

No reason not to. For a while, Border's e-store was just a webpage that fulfilled orders through Amazon. You "ordered" through Border's page, but Amazon shipped you the product in a Border's box and packaging.

Not sure if that is the current business model, but if the Border's brand and website are preferred by certain customers, that's a very low cost way of doing business.

Warbird Information Exchange

For fans of Borders, not good news

Who is online