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And so it ends. Borders, which went bankrupt and announced designs to close hundreds of stores last February, is going to finish the job. Hilco Consumer Capital and Gordon Brothers are purchasing what is left of the chain, and plan to liquidate the 399 remaining stores and lay off 11,000 employees. (The companies focus on purchasing up once-mighty brands: they also acquired Polaroid and The Sharper Picture.)
It's tempting to blame e-books for Borders' death. Amazon released the first Kindle in 2007; Barnes & Noble, while slow to respond, came up with the Nook two years later. Borders, however, only dabbled in e-books-selling Sony e-readers at first (via kiosks that shoppers always seemed to ignore when I checked) and more recently partnering with Canadian e-book company Kobo. The last time I was in a Borders, which was last week, the first thing I encountered when I entered was a great big table of Kobo readers. But it was clearly far too little, far too late.
But while the rise of the Kindle and its competitors may have helped do the chain in, it clearly didn't start its death spiral. Borders been ailing for years-and shuttering stores along the way-and its strategies for getting healthy usually seemed to make things worse. I mean it wasn't until 2007 that it decided that it made sense to have its own Web site rather than to outsource online sales to archival Amazon.com.
While Borders was busy giving the Web and e-books short shrift , it was also doubling down on the notoriously tricky business of running brick-and-mortar superstores. Until late 2010, San Francisco had four Borders stores-three of which were within a mile and a half of each other. I'm no retailing genius, but I couldn't figure out how the city could support so many giant bookstores in so little space. Now we know it couldn't: the three ones that were practically neighbors are all gone now, and the last store will close as part of the final shutdown.
(Borders' smarter rival, Barnes & Noble, only had one store in San Francisco, although that, too, is now gone; there will be no major chain bookstores in the city once the last Borders is history. We're lucky, though-a bunch of excellent independent stores which managed to survive the Borders/Barnes & Noble era are still with us.)
Bottom line: If e-books didn't exist, I am positive that Borders would have still collapsed in much the same way. It might have cratered even if the Net had seldom been invented. I am sorry to see it go, & sorry for the fogeys who will be out of work. But the market worked. Borders is dying because it basically wasn't excellent at selling books in the 21st century.
But while the rise of the Kindle and its competitors may have helped do the chain in, it clearly didn't start its death spiral. Borders been ailing for years-and shuttering stores along the way-and its strategies for getting healthy usually seemed to make things worse. I mean it wasn't until 2007 that it decided that it made sense to have its own Web site rather than to outsource online sales to archival Amazon.com.
While Borders was busy giving the Web and e-books short shrift , it was also doubling down on the notoriously tricky business of running brick-and-mortar superstores. Until late 2010, San Francisco had four Borders stores-three of which were within a mile and a half of each other. I'm no retailing genius, but I couldn't figure out how the city could support so many giant bookstores in so little space. Now we know it couldn't: the three ones that were practically neighbors are all gone now, and the last store will close as part of the final shutdown.
(Borders' smarter rival, Barnes & Noble, only had one store in San Francisco, although that, too, is now gone; there will be no major chain bookstores in the city once the last Borders is history. We're lucky, though-a bunch of excellent independent stores which managed to survive the Borders/Barnes & Noble era are still with us.)
Bottom line: If e-books didn't exist, I am positive that Borders would have still collapsed in much the same way. It might have cratered even if the Net had seldom been invented. I am sorry to see it go, & sorry for the fogeys who will be out of work. But the market worked. Borders is dying because it basically wasn't excellent at selling books in the 21st century.
By Harry McCracken, Technologizer
Tags: border, amazon.ie
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Relate post:
World Cup final
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Triple-A Home Run Derby thrills fans
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Watch the Last Space Shuttle Launch Live VIDEO
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