Raymond Rose on Borders Books

[MisterP]

My sorrow, though, isn't for the death of this company but for its employees. They're the real victims here. In my store (which closed in April), we had an amazing group. There was the elementary school teacher who worked every weekend and made the most magical children's recommendations; the young woman who could guide both newbies and skilled knitters alike through the needlecraft books; the tattooed graduate student who could talk your ear off about Thomas Hobbes... or Batman, your choice; and the spitfire supervisor who could hunt down the perfect mystery novel. That's just five people in my store. Imagine the number of original, talented people in the other 600-plus stores that have closed or will close later this year.

As for that supervisor, she had been with Borders (and its various mall stores) for 19 years. In the end, did anyone from Borders tell her personally that she was losing her job? No. She read it in the newspaper. No letter. No phone call. Not even an e-mail.

...

The irony is that the very thing that Borders abused—its employees—could have saved it. All Borders ever had to do was talk to its employees to find out how to be a better bookstore. Those on the front line can tell you what works (better selection!) and what doesn't (glittery pink Jesus statues!). Borders wasted time and money on so-called experts when all the experts they ever needed were already on the payroll. Not to mention their many attempts to poll its customers. Do you want to know what your customers think? Why not talk to your store employees? They speak to the customers every day.

Borders also failed to realize that its employees were its greatest marketing tool. Any way you look at it, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and all the others all look the same and sell the same stuff. So how could Borders have distinguished itself? Its employees should have been its brand identity. That teacher with the magical recommendations? Put her on store signage! Tell the world her first name, store, and why she does what she does. Same thing for the knitter, the supervisor, and the tattooed grad student. Not only would this have given Borders the identity it so needed, it would have pointed out to consumers what a Web site can't do: listen and make a real, personal recommendation. It would have let the employees do what they are great at: hand-selling. All by simply saying, "Come on, ask us for a book."

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/48165-fatal-mistakes.html

[orwell]

1. Stop making sense...

...it's out of vogue in modern Amerika...

[JI7]

2. i'm hoping these employees will open up some smaller independent stores

i know there is a lot of competition from amazon and other online stores and the e readers.

but i am still not convinced that book stores can't be profitable.

for me personally i enjoy being in a bookstore, you can't get that experience with the alternatives. in a book store you can come in contact with books you don't know about and would not consider.

i know some people were starting to go to the stores but then order from amazon.

but i think with small indie stores people might start to buy even if they pay a little more if they know what they are getting in return. the suggestions made in the OP would work well with smaller idie stores.

and yeah, do away with glitter statues and other crap that have nothing to do with reading. it use to only be bookmarks, journals, booklights and other related stuff that was sold. but they started bringing in all this other crap.

[RandySF]

3. I hated losing our Borders but...

It was hard to justify shopping there. They never seemed to have the book I was looking for and when they did, it was marked up at unrealistic prices. And before someone talks to me about the overhead of running a brick-n-mortar store, their ONLINE prices were just as bad. I was always able to find what I wanted at better prices with Amazon.

[sweetloukillbot]

11. Not marked up.

Everything was priced at suggested retail price. Online discounters sell them for cheaper, but Borders wasn't marking up - that's impossible with books. Books have their prices clearly marked on them. When I was a consumer, before I was an employee I never minded paying more, because at the time (mid 90s) Borders was the only place to have a deep enough inventory for the stuff I would be looking for. Best Buy and Wal Mart had better prices, but they treated books, video and music as loss leaders and never had decent inventory.
Things changed after 2000, but in the mid-to-late 90s, when Borders was expanding and booming, the stores were staffed with smart, passionate employees who were treated especially well. I prided myself on knowing everything in my section and where exactly it was, if not by title, than at least by the look of the spine. And I wasn't the only person in our store with that dedication.

[femmocrat]

4. I will miss Borders, too.

Their employees were very nice and helpful (compared to the uppity jerks at B&N).

They really didn't have a great selection though. Too many romance novels and young adult novels taking up space, IMO. But I did like their children's section and bought a lot of books there for gifts and for school. I always did some of my Christmas shopping in Borders.

I went to their going-out-of-business sale last week and the books were only 20% off. I thought I could pick up some classics for my book shelves, but there wasn't anything there that I wanted. I didn't leave empty-handed though. I bought some crossword books and a couple of paperbacks.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

5. Ain' that always the way ?

"Borders wasted time and money on so-called experts when all the experts they ever needed were already on the payroll. " I've seen it so many times over the years. They pay big bucks to consultants who tell them the same thing the employees were trying to tell them.

[eomer]

6. My local Borders always had the worst of the worst - Coulter and her ilk - front and center

on the display table that greets you when you walk in the door. I complained a couple of times, nothing changed, so I started driving about 10 miles further to a Barnes and Noble that didn't do that crap. Never went back.

[ejpoeta]

7. they might have had to pay those employees more money! the fact is they wanted employees that are

paid minimum wage and replaceable and they became replaceable too. it's easy to say talk to the employees, but who values those invisible people who actually work in the stores. what do they know. we go through this with my husband's work. they refuse to listen to the employees who have plenty of good ideas for how to make things better and how to save money. what do they know. they are just dumb employees.

[southernyankeebelle]

8. Corporations have lost their moral compass a long time ago. That is the

problem they never take the employees advice. They ask and do nothing. It is just like every major department store.

[morningglory]

9. Thanks for this. They will be missed. My sorrow is for the

local bookstores they put out of business as well.

[caraher]

10. I lost Borders twice

Back in the mid-'80s there were three major ultra-cool businesses in Ann Arbor: Schoolkids Records, Zingerman's Deli and Borders Books (the original store). The common thread? All had fantastically knowledgeable employees. To sell books at the original Borders there was a general test of knowledge of books as well as an exam in some specialty area. It was a haven for underemployed PhDs; it was not at all unusual to wind up chatting with one's former TA or someone else who held a doctorate in whatever field of knowledge or literature you were browsing.

Then Tom Borders sold it and it became a chain. Some of the old faces carried on, or moved up the corporate ladder, but the vibe definitely changed... within a few years you were more likely to see a high school kid at the counter than an expert on medieval English poetry. Borders reincarnation as a chain introduced to the nation the concept of a bookstore made for comfortable browsing, and that was some comfort as an Ann Arbor institution faded in glory.

Now it's pretty much indistinguishable from B&N, and the main effect of Borders' demise will be reduced competition in the high-volume bookselling business.

Of the other places, the Ann Arbor Schoolkids exists today only as a small online store, but Zingerman's continues to thrive, and seems to be constantly expanding.

I think for any brick-and-mortar store, the indispensable component is people. Just about anything but food can be had faster and cheaper online, so there's not much else to sustain a business apart from excellent employees.

[Demeter]

12. Not surprised to hear Borders Abused its Employees

It did the same with its customers.

[sweetloukillbot]

14. I can't speak for the past 10 years. And I can't speak for other areas of the country.

But between 1996 and 2001 I was treated incredibly well at Phoenix area Borders. Started as full time, set schedule, 25% store discount (part timers got 33% to make up for no charge acct), 2 weeks vacation to start, a store charge account w/ a $300 credit limit, a $35 month credit applied to said charge account, 401K, excellent health insurance, stock options. I made quite a bit of money off the stock options. The store offered employee appreciation days 3 or 4 times a year offering 40% off. Pay wasn't great, but it was about $2 above minimum at the time, which for retail was pretty nice.
During my time there I was promoted twice, once after taking a second part-time job in my chosen field. Raises totaled about $3 an hour all told. The store had an incredible amount of autonomy - we booked local artists and paid them well, we hosted big-name authors, touring musician in-stores, and a plethora of children's events. We designed our own merch displays. We were LGBT-friendly - offering partner benefits to employees in the mid 90s. The staff was knowledgeable, made up of retired teachers, BA graduates who couldn't get a job in their field, local musicians, deejays, etc. There was no dress code - employees didn't even need to wear nametags. The store was run like a funky independent bookstore only in a big-box setting.
Honestly, I saw Michael Moore's "The Big One" and I couldn't understand what the Borders employees depicted were complaining about - it was easily the best retail job I'd ever had.
It started looking like there was trouble in 2000. The stock started tanking and the benefits were slowly rolled back. And around 2001 everything started going to shit. That was when they realized they were getting screwed by not going online, losing out to Starbucks' expansion, etc. I stuck around for the discount after going full-time at my other job, but eventually realized that getting cheap books and CDs wasn't worth my time.
I was a true believer, but I also realized pretty early where the company was making mistakes and got out before it got too bad.

[bhikkhu]

13. I will miss our local store...

It was the only new bookstore in town, and one of the nicer places to go. We went there yesterday and used up our remaining gift cards...it was sad to see the shelves emptying, and big price tags on all the displays and furnishings. The people who worked there were already gone, I think, replaced by a temporary crew to handle the liquidation. Sad...