What Happened To Borders Bookstores? - Grunge (2024)

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What Happened To Borders Bookstores? - Grunge (4)

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ByTaylor Haggerty/

You might remember Borders bookstores. They were all over the country in the early 2000s, selling all kinds of books and even multimedia like CDs and movies. Their stores ranged from small outlets in shopping malls to huge buildings packed full of books. In 2003, according to NPR, there were more than 1,200 of the stores nationwide. But by 2012, the chain had liquidated and closed all of its locations.

Bookstores like Barnes & Noble still hold ground in the bookselling market, and the oldest bookstore in America is still standing after more than 150 years. Clearly, people are still reading, and they're going to bookstores to discover new favorites. Borders, a familiar sight and staple storefront for more than four decades, faced plenty of problems in its final years. But what was the final straw for the bookselling giant? Was it a shift to online sales and e-readers, or something else?

The store didn't have great online sale strategies

When Borders first entered the scene, there wasn't really an online marketplace. It made its name by being a big box store where everyone could find something they wanted, according to NPR. But when the internet came around, customers found other ways to get their reading fix.

Other retailers created websites to help move products along. But Borders opted to go a different route. The store actually opted to use Amazon to sell its online products, according to Time, instead of creating its own online marketplace. Time reports that the decision meant Borders handed over control over its online presence and that the lack of cohesive branding likely hurt the store in the long run.

Borders did have its own website for a while. Surprisingly, it was actually hurting the company, and according to Lit Reactor, that website cost the company $20 million to maintain even before it started working with Amazon. That's not exactly a recipe for success.

E-readers and digital books were more popular

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The creation of the internet marketplace led to another trend that hurt Borders' prospects. On top of buying physical books online, readers started to shift to electronic books (via Time). Over the early 2000s, e-books outpaced the sale of physical books, according to Time.

Other outlets saw the change coming and adapted. Barnes & Noble created its Nook e-reader to compete with Amazon's marketplace, according to Time, but Borders never created its own e-reader. In an online essay about the bookstore's closure, former Borders Director of Merchandise Planning and Analysis Mark Evans in part blamed the slow adaptation to e-books.

"[Borders] also dropped the ball on e-books," Evans wrote. "But by the time this became an issue they were just trying to figure out how to keep the whole house from burning down around them, so I find it more understandable."

Without a place to direct people interested in e-books, Borders missed out on a market that could have brought in more sales.

It invested too much in selling other media

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Borders might have started out as just a bookstore, but it didn't stay that way. The stores later shifted to selling DVDs and CDs and opted to heavily focus on that market in the 1990s, according to Time. But ultimately, it wasn't as great a success as business executives might have hoped for. The iPod and other MP3 players came through shortly after the shift, and it drew customers away from the physical media Borders was selling (via Time).

According to Lit Reactor, Borders filled almost half of its retail space with CDs. That left them with a lot of empty or underutilized space later on when CDs fell out of fashion, including warehouse space. According to Evans, it took a lot of resources to fill the empty space and the loss of revenue that came around when CDs fell out of fashion.

Their troubles with real estate strategy

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Another issue that pops up during a Borders post-mortem is somewhat easier to understand. The hypothesis is that Borders went on a commercial retail buying spree and bought up too many storefronts — and simply didn't have enough money to support them. According to Time, a vast majority of its stores were also in close proximity to other booksellers like Barnes & Noble. So on top of the shift to online sales and e-books, there were too many physical bookstores (both other stores in the chain and competitors) around wherever a Borders was operating.

According to NPR, Borders bought up plenty of real estate in the 1990s when the business was doing well. It might have been that they couldn't sustain that level of expense, and eventually it caught up with them. That theory is backed up by former employee Mark Evans, too according to NPR. He says they didn't do as well with relocating stores to better locations, and their storefronts couldn't compete with other stores in the area. The company was also trying to recover from massive debt, according to Time, even before the market crash in 2008.

The workplace atmosphere might have played a part

What Happened To Borders Bookstores? - Grunge (9)

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The issues with online sales and real estate were all pretty visible from the outside. But there's also some commentary on the differences in workplace atmosphere between Borders and other retailers. Barnes & Noble, for example, gave its employees an opportunity to try other things. According to Lit Reactor, some were able to work as baristas or fill other roles in addition to cashier or bookseller duty. And a different seller, Half Price Books, also offered better policies for workers, including paid hour-long lunches, full benefits, and better wages. Those factors probably didn't lead directly to Borders' closure, but they didn't help them, either.

Borders closed its doors for a variety of reasons. Some of those were due to management, while others were the result of a changing market. But the bookselling industry is still going strong. From at least some analyses, Borders' disappearance even allowed independent booksellers to expand and flourish in different parts of the country. But for many, the loss of the traditional big-box storefronts is still a sore subject.

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What Happened To Borders Bookstores? - Grunge (2024)

FAQs

What happened to the Borders bookstore? ›

Borders USA closed its remaining stores on Sunday, September 18, 2011.

What caused Borders to go out of business? ›

Borders Group filed for bankruptcy in 2011, as it failed to make the transition to the digital age and was unable to compete with its competitors. In 2011, the company closed 399 stores and laid off 10,700 employees. That was all about why borders go out of business.

Why did Borders fail but Barnes and Noble didn't? ›

Borders made a losing bet on CDs and DVDs

Borders "went heavy into CD music sales and DVDs, just as the industry was going digital," and "Barnes & Noble was pulling back," says investment researcher Peter Wahlstrom, as quoted by NPR. Borders' "big bet in merchandising" turned out to be a losing one.

What year did Borders close? ›

Why did the Borders collapse? ›

Borders' demise wasn't a quick one, but a slow, agonizing suffocation. They clung to outdated strategies while the world of retail shifted beneath their feet. Their failure to adapt to the rise of e-commerce and the changing consumer landscape proved fatal.

Is Borders now barnes and noble? ›

Barnes & Noble did not take over Borders' stores, subsidiaries, or business. Following Borders' bankruptcy filing in 2011, Barnes & Noble did purchase Borders' customer listing and other intellectual property, which is the source of the confusion. However, Borders gift cards were not part of that transaction.

Who is Barnes and Noble's biggest competitor? ›

Competitor comparison
  • Walmart Inc Headquarters. 2,100,000. $648.1B.
  • Amazon.com Inc Headquarters. 1,521,000. $574.8B.
  • Costco Wholesale Corp Headquarters. 316,000. $242.3B.
  • Target Corp Headquarters. 415,000. $107.4B.

Are Barnes and Noble doing well? ›

Barnes & Noble sales have been rising, and last year grew more than 4%, according to Shannon DeVito, director of books. "What has changed is, I think, my hope that we're going to be here for decades and decades and decades now," she says.

Does Barnes and Noble still exist? ›

After a series of mergers and bankruptcies in the American bookstore industry since the 1990s, Barnes & Noble is the United States' largest national bookstore chain and the only national chain.

What lessons can we learn from border failure? ›

One of the key lessons from Borders' experience is the importance of adapting to technological change. Borders' reluctance to fully embrace e-commerce and digital books contributed to its decline.

What is the history of Borders bookstore? ›

1971: The year Tom and Louis Borders opened a bookstore in Ann Arbor, Mich., and called it the Borders Book Shop. 1984: Kmart Corp. purchases Waldenbooks, which began in 1962 with a single Walden Book Store in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Why are Barnes and Noble failing? ›

But Barnes & Noble has been in steady decline for years, largely because of the rise of Amazon. Sales have dropped each of the past five years as the company closes stores. Barnes & Noble's attempts to transform for the digital era by selling Nook tablets fell flat, and its stock price has suffered.

How many border bookstores are left? ›

Giant bookseller Borders Group Inc. will begin liquidating its 399 stores nationwide, including huge sales at its 18 remaining stores in Southern California.

Does Barnes and Noble accept Borders gift cards? ›

According to the article, the plaintiffs in the case seem to be disappointed that they couldn't use their Borders gift cards to buy things at Barnes and Noble. The three plaintiffs sought legal representation at the end of 2011, after they discovered Barnes and Noble would not honor Borders gift cards.

Why did Borders Group go out of business? ›

The demise of the Borders Group was due to a lack of innovation and facing that disruption was coming, which resulted in it being unable to compete with more agile competitors. In the early 2000s, Barnes & Noble began closing stores and reducing personnel as book sales fell.

Can I use a Borders gift card at Barnes and Noble? ›

According to the article, the plaintiffs in the case seem to be disappointed that they couldn't use their Borders gift cards to buy things at Barnes and Noble. The three plaintiffs sought legal representation at the end of 2011, after they discovered Barnes and Noble would not honor Borders gift cards.

How many locations did Borders have? ›

Borders had 642 stores when it filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 16.

Is Waldenbooks still around? ›

Waldenbooks was founded in 1933, and within 15 years, it had grown to over 250 locations. It merged with Borders in 1994 and slowly began downsizing stores. By 2011, all remaining Waldenbooks stores closed when its parent company, Borders Group, filed for liquidation.

Does Amazon own Borders? ›

Internet retailer Amazon.com has sealed a deal with arch-rival Borders to absorb its e-commerce operation and develop closer ties with the high street. Amazon will take over Borders.com, which had hitherto tried to compete against Amazon in the online book-selling arena.

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