Borders Bankruptcy

As you may have already heard, Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday and announced the planned closure of 200 of their 600+ stores. The Wall Street Journal provided a list of the stores closing. One of them? The only Borders in the state of Alaska. (Also of note to me: the Kailua Borders will also close and in Ohio the Sawmill & Kenny Rd stores are both shutting their doors as well.) So pretty much every Borders I've ever been to. It is safe to say I will not be shopping at Borders in the foreseeable future.

I live in a fairly large town. We have countless restaurants, half a dozen mutli-plex cinemas, two Costcos, three Walmarts, two Targets, and three major book stores - one Borders, one Barnes & Noble, and one large independent store that specializes in used books. I would probably be sadder to see Borders go, but for the fact that they've never carried my books (selfish of me, but true) and the customer service at my local branch leaves something to be desired. Mostly, I'm just bummed that B&N and Title Wave are going to be so much more crowded when it was already hard to find a chair.

And I'm curious to see what company will move into their retail space - it really is a beautiful free-standing building in an excellent location. The fact that Borders tanked there has nothing to do with the excellent, high-traffic, high-visibility location and everything to do with a decade of poor business decisions. Do you remember ten years ago when you clicked on "Buy It Online" at the Borders website and you were redirected to the "Borders" tab on Amazon? Really, how small did they think this whole interwebz thing was gonna be that they decided to siphon all their early-adapter web-business to one of their competitors rather than establishing their own online storefront? And no one can deny they've been distinctly behind the curve on ebooks which have saved B&N as brick and mortar store sales decline.

The times, they are a'changing and Borders is finally going to have to catch up. Here's hoping they can restructure as a company and haul themselves out of bankruptcy. It's a shame for the publishing houses for whom Borders' "debt" of millions has become "loss." (Penguin is out over 40 mil.) It will be interesting to see how they evolve and whether they survive.