Borders: the downfall

[jbcohen]

What are the causes of the downfall of Borders books?

[ucfgrad93]

I think part of their failure is they did not adapt to changing times quick enough. With physical record and movie sales on the decline they still had large amounts of space dedicated to CDs and DVDs.

[RainingLemur]

http://www.quora.com/Borders-Books/W...for-bankruptcy

Mark Evans, an exec for Borders up until 2009, states a few reasons. I found this to be a fairly interesting read.

[JeremyR]

I think what hurt them with the music and video stuff is that they never really competed with other big box stores in terms of prices, but simply selection. You wanted something Best Buy didn't carry? Borders might carry it.

B&N was basically the same, but they devoted a much smaller portion of their store to it (basically one section about the size of an old retail music store, while Borders, it was like 1/3 of their giant store)

There also seemed to be a big deterioration about 5-6 years ago. Stores got run down and trashy, the personnel became surly and unhelpful.

And B&N did a really good job with how they integrated the Nook with their retail stores, as well as the whole Nook Color thing. Borders' e-reader seems to have been from a different company, at least there is some separation.

[cfrizz]

Over expansion, and failure to adapt quickly to the emergence of ereader/ebooks.

[CHunter_Author]

Yeah, Kobo is just simply not up to snuff with Nook and the other e-book platforms. And selling CD's and DVD's is what did in the Virgin store. That should've been a sign right there to adapt.

[CazMar]

In the case of Borders Australia it was mostly a case of people running the business who didn't really understand that it was all about selling books! The store in Adelaide (in a prime position) was within walking distance of 2 universities, yet they didn't even make an attempt to stock books recommended for courses and in fact totally neglected the non-fiction section. Too many cookbooks, not enough depth or good content. They aimed at the easy popular read market but then were trying to compete with supermarkets etc. Ebook readers were very popular but they seemed to have no one on hand who could demonstrate them or knew much about them.

[remcdonald]

Actually speaking from a bookstore selling perspective not changing is what did Borders in. Kobo is a fine device and is doing very well independent of Borders and anyone saying they aren't up to snuff with Nook or Amazon hasn't used one recently. But Kobo couldn't save what was already lost. If you look at Chapters/Indigo here in Canada who are nicely surviving where Borders fell the difference was adapting to change. A few years ago almost all of the movies/dvds went out of the stores in favor of selling them online, they still have a few but just stuff they know will sell in quantity. What they did instead was redesign their stores to give prominent locations to their gift/toy/kids merchandise and also upgrade the quality of the merchandise they sell in there to make them a higher end retailer for those goods. As for selling textbooks or increasing non fiction what people don't understand with that is the incredibly thin margins on books. Sure you might sell a few textbooks but the margin on them is less than 5% and they only sell once a quarter or semester whereas changing over to a bestseller you can sell 5000 copies in a few weeks and then move the rest to backstock and still make money off them in the long run. The numbers game unbelievably favors being fiction and easy reading material heavy even if you are close to a university or any other structure.

[xg4bx]

based just what i noticed on my last several trips to the local borders:

the book stock and selection was suffering. theres no reason they shouldn't have a current mass market paperback instore.if i wanted to order it i'd have sat home on amazon.

an increased assortment of things that had nothing to do with books, they don't need half the store taken up by greeting cards and toys. nobody ever bought magazines, they sat there and read them. why carry a full selection of something no one buys?

an influx of manga. again, nobody ever bought it. kids just sat in the aisle and read it. no need to carry a full selection.

they just made stupid choices and tried to be a jack of all trades yet a master of none. the actual books in the bookstore suffered.

[OtterBooks]

Full cover price books in a market where nobody has to pay full cover price.

[Renaldo]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Over expansion, and failure to adapt quickly to the emergence of ereader/ebooks.

Yeah, probably not. Borders was one of the very first retailers to sell ereaders and ebooks. They were partnered with Sony for years. Before Kindle even existed, you could go to Borders and buy a Sony ereader. Then you could go to Borders and buy books for it (through the Sony store, but that was still way more than any other retailer was doing).

[djulian]

I think it didn't help them to have Amazon run their online operation for the first several years. I remember seeing a Borders (by Amazon) price and then realizing I could get it cheaper if I just ordered from Amazon.

That's why I started shopping at Amazon to begin with--I hadn't paid any attention to them before that.

[Phogg]

I so expected to see a YouTube video with Hitler in this thread.

[jbcohen]

There is an old theory that says "when technology shifts everyone goes back to zero and past successes guaranty nothing." Perhaps Borders failed to grasp this concept.

[OneandonlyDoc]

Originally Posted by Renaldo

Yeah, probably not. Borders was one of the very first retailers to sell ereaders and ebooks. They were partnered with Sony for years. Before Kindle even existed, you could go to Borders and buy a Sony ereader. Then you could go to Borders and buy books for it (through the Sony store, but that was still way more than any other retailer was doing).

Part of the problem was that they simply partnered with other entities rather than developing their own platforms. I imagine part of what hurt Borders was the fact that they didn't develop their own online bookstore until well after Barnes and Noble (their largest B&M competitor in the States) had established themselves as a viable (and attractive) alternative to Amazon....which is who Borders "partnered" with in order to do online sales.

I'm not saying that's what killed Borders, but I think it was a significant piece of the equation. So was the fact that Borders didn't develop their own proprietary e-reader, a la Amazon and Barnes and Noble (though I disagree that Kobo is not of the same caliber as the Kindle or the Nook -- I like my Kobo much better than either of those e-readers, and I've played with all of the above).