On the day my Kindle arrived, I purchased some books from a “Going out of Business” Borders store. The dichotomy was not lost on me as I walked around the empty displays. I really knew that store. It was always busy on Saturdays and the checkout lines during the holidays were impatiently long. I remember chasing my then three year old son through the cd aisles as he grabbed discs and ran. I remember getting the remixed Beatles cd’s from a large POP display on the first floor, and the time my youngest son pulled out a large book about New York and screamed loudly… “Dad, it’s Chicago!” I remembered all of it, and now it’s gone.
Bookstores without books are depressingly ugly. Everything is for sale—even the bookcases and the fixtures. Most of the good stuff is already gone. Signs everywhere for you to buy 4 books for $16.00. Makes you wonder what their real mark-up is when you read that sign. Yeah, I know, they’re just trying to dump inventory.
Borders was given the green light for liquidation. Is anyone really surprised? The company has been losing millions and never took the online business seriously. I was never sure there was enough room for Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon… and now we know the answer – unfortunately it’s no.
The Borders online store wasn’t even Borders, but started as an alliance with Amazon in 2001. I don’t recall ever using the Borders website, which actually went live in 2008 as Borders.com. Think about that for a minute — they didn’t have their own branded website until 2008, a full 13 years after Amazon. If your product can be delivered in bits, streamed from a series of servers to land in your phone, laptop or iPad, it will happen eventually. It’s time to pay attention to the online world, segment the online customers and watch the digital devices being used. Rerun, this is Blockbuster Video and Tower Records all over again.
This store had lots of bad dvd’s at 70% off and cd’s nowhere to be found. It’s funny to see the books that still are not selling at ultra reduced prices — see Nichole Richie, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.
Did the iPad kill this store? Did my new Kindle? Did the Nook do this? Well, the answer is somewhere in between, yes, yes and yes. So I loaded up on some cheap books, and stood in line one last time. During checkout, I started a conversation with the clerk and asked her if they had sold all the cd’s. “Yes” she said. “they were the first to go”. You can say that again.
Sad indeed. Borders had a Target look and feel but underneath was a ‘Blue-Light special’. It will be interesting to see the cumulative impact on Amazon. Barnes and Noble no doubt will feel an immediate and positive impact in the short term; Amazon not so much. Booklovers are hands on explorers who think nothing of getting lost in a stack to find a gem – an adventure in the analog world, more of a distraction in the hypercompetitive and thin on-line world. The way i see it, Amazon just lost their footing in 399 bricks and mortar retail book stores in prime locations. Barnes and Noble wins the Battle, Amazon will surely win the war, and I’ll argue booklovers lose twice.