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April 10, 2008
Borders is dying
It's not just the big stuff, like the fact that publishers are starting to watch the company nervously for signs of insolvency.
No, it's small tip-offs like the fact that last week, when on two successive days I went to a Borders store in Richmond, Virginia to purchase my daily fix of the New York Times and the Washington Post (I was out of town, hence the need for a trip to the bookstore), I found neither paper on the shelves.
The third day, when the same thing happened, I asked one of the sales clerks why they were sold out so early (it was around 11 a.m.; usually they still have copies of both papers until at least the late afternoon).
He told me that the local distributor no longer supplies those papers to Borders.
Huh?
I mean, they were at the 7-Eleven across from my hotel, so it's not as if Richmond's a newspaper dead zone all of a sudden.
No, the reason Borders no longer carries the the Times and the Post is because it's broke and can't pay its bills.
How long do you think Kroger would last if suddenly it stopped selling bread and milk?
Precisely.
"Circling the drain" isn't just a medical term of art.
You don't have to be Peter Lynch to know that when a stock hits its all-time low at the same time its trading volume hits an all-time high (top), the rats are leaving the ship along with the smart money.
Fair warning.
April 10, 2008 at 10:01 AM | Permalink
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Comments
The *ONLY* things I get from Borders are cheap-o bargain-bin books, magazines that I can't get elsewhere, and coffee to drink while my friends and I plot out academic exercises.
The bargain books are great...I buy cookbooks and other quality hardbacks for $2 each. Magazines? This is the only thing I come in for -- you aren't going to find Brit Car Enthusiast, Make or 2600 anywhere else unless you subscribe. Most of the time, the more esoteric mags, I may only find one issue a year that interests me....
Meeting at the store downtown where I can get together with classmates is the ONLY real reason to go there.
Beyond that, *EVERYTHING* is Amazon. I just bought a few dozen ready to eat meals there that would have cost me five times as much from the local grocery stores (I saw them at dealnews.com...and thought I just bought two of these from the SuperTarget for $4.50 each...they were $1 each).
Amazon is killing these bookstores (and rightly so), and now they are going to kill the grocery stores (errr...eventually).
Posted by: clifyt | Apr 11, 2008 6:44:26 AM
You know, I look upon it as divine retribution. Great little bookstores disappeared because of the competition posed by mega-giants like Borders. It is only fair that there be circularity in the going under. I feel for all the people who work at these stores though. My Borders here is nearly always empty. The one I visited in DC recently wasn't doing any better. It's been obvious for a while that they're not doing well. Was it bad administration? How did this happen? I'll check out your link on the big stuff to see if that explains it.
Posted by: Milena | Apr 10, 2008 9:34:59 PM
