As I recall, Borders was taken down more by their own decision to focus heavily on physical-format music sales (and movies/media), which ultimately turned out to be a VERY bad idea because, y’know, technology. It was literally “Borders Books & Music,” and Barnes and Noble was scrambling to keep up with that… but then the wind changed and it turned out that hitching their horse to CDs bit them in the ass when digital distribution turned from piracy tech fad into the mainstream accessible norm.
Additionally, I seem to remember reading that (somewhat paradoxically) Borders’ absolutely abysmal online sales platform also contributed to its demise, and part of the reason that Barnes and Noble survived was because theirs wasn’t as terrible? Which makes a kind of sense… if there was only space in the market for one of them against Amazon, the one that offered better competitive services in that sphere would probably be the survivor.
Law of unintended consequences: I believe Amazon will now be forced to collect state sales tax on all purchases in each and every state where they have a Whole Foods store.
(The tax has always been owed; Amazon just didn’t have to collect it in most places they didn’t have a physical bricks-and-mortar presence. And most folks conveniently forget to pay the state.)
Around here (D.C. area) there are Amazon Lockers popping up all over the place. Until a few months ago, it seemed that all of the Lockers were in No. Virginia (and those were in 7-Elevens), but now I have 8 or 10 of them near me in P.G. County; most of them are in grocery stores and one is in front of (not inside) a Target. They also have a standalone “store,” which is basically a Locker with a flesh-and-blood employee on the premises. So Amazon already has a bit of a physical footprint, at least in this area. They don’t really gain much (again, in this area) by moving in with Whole Foods, unless something else is afoot where those stores are concerned. (And speaking of, we just had a WF open near here a month or two ago.)
I’d always understood that an owner of Aldi’s owned TJ’s, but Aldi itself did not. (According to Wikipedia: “From 1979, it was owned by Aldi Nord’s German owner Theo Albrecht until his death in 2010, when ownership passed to his heirs.”) But there sure seems to be a substantial amount of overlap in products. Anyway, looks like we (in the US) are getting Lidl soon.
Am I totally imagining, or did Amazon at one point actually run the web site for Borders? I may be confusing them with Target, who I am certain did use Amazon for their website, about 10 or 12 years ago.
Borders did have a good music selection, but much of it was overpriced compared to other brick & mortar vendors where I lived at the time (and possibly none of whom still exist). Come to think of it, Best Buy had a very good selection for a while, up until 1996 or 1997. (I discovered this at BB, and found this one as an import when it wasn’t in print stateside.) It was as though someone who knew what they were doing stocked all the music for BB stores in the early- to mid-90s, and when the good merchandise ran out (or that person/team quit), BB never put in any more effort beyond the music dept. in (for example) a Target store.
As a former (international) Borders employee, I’d say that on this side of the world they managed themselves into the ground without any Bezos-assistance.
When I traveled around UAE & Oman, they still had Borders (and Virgin Megastore), but that was about 5 years ago. Looks like those may still exist: http://www.almaya.ae/our-reach/details.aspx?cat_id=2 I wonder how that works, in terms of distribution etc.
I was working there before broadband internet was mainstream here so online shopping hadn’t yet taken over, but Borders definitely had some niches that very few other retailers could match. World music, jazz, classical - then there was the range of books, multiple aisles of history, computing, pretty much any topic. 30 second snippets and two page samples on Amazon doesn’t compare to being able to browse through a book with a coffee, or listening to entire tracks.
If they’d kept that focus, maybe a few stores would be around still. Unfortunately they adopted a strategy of chasing after sales of the new best-selling books and movies, which they could never win against stores like Big W (who’d sell Harry Potter at a loss) or JB HiFi (same deal with CDs and DVDs).
It could be that those stores in the Middle East aren’t run by morons
Basically you ask for it to be delivered to the locker near you of choice. I can actually walk to 2, a 7-11 and a Safeway which are across the street from each other. After it is delivered you will get an email with a code to use at the locker. Enter the code and the correct door pops open giving you access to your loot.
Agreed. We have a discount/outlet bookstore near here called Daedalus. They have listening stations like Borders used to have – in fact, I wonder if they obtained some old fixtures from Borders.
When I visit Texas, I love visiting Half Price, although I seemingly can’t leave the store unless I’m $50 or $100 poorer (mainly with CDs). We do have used bookstores around here but it’s probably just as well (for me) that they aren’t like Half Price.
Yeah, when they did wind down here in the US, I visited a store when it was nearly empty – they were even selling the fixtures. However, they still had an endcap unit completely filled with Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. Seems they couldn’t get rid of them (in my area).
I really couldn’t say… They still have (or had) Woolworth’s over there. Also Pizza Inn – I gather that they still exist in the US but I don’t remember seeing one in 25 or 30 years. They mainly drank instant coffee; when I did find a Starbucks, a small coffee was 1.75 – which seemed fine until I remembered that 1.75 in Oman is about US$5.
