skyjedi2005 said:
I cannot wait for a conservative Republican in the USA to claim that Borders closed down because of Obama's supposed Socialism.
More likely Amazon has eaten up the market share of the other retailers brick and mortar stores in online sales.
Or it could be the so called great recession.
Also borders always had high prices.
Okay, I'll take the bait.
As a conservative Republican, I proclaim that Obama's supposed Socialism is the cause of The Rise of the Fall Borders, and all kitten death.
<rolleyes>
Why would republicans/conservatives say such a thing? Simply to execute partisan tomfoolery to its extent? Actual, I suppose Borders is falling despite America's recent taste for socialism. No one has stood up saying that Borders is too big/too important to fall. No one (as far as I have heard) is proposing a Gov't takeover of the bookseller to keep it in business. No one is talking bailouts. Good. As a capitalist, I say let the business fail.
If a business model doesn't make money, then it has failed and any business employing that model needs to jump ship, or go down with it like the captain. Borders was too expensive. Compared to other brick and mortar stores, their prices were often double. Compared to Amazon... forget about it.
Borders sucked at offering goods, which is where they were supposed to make money." As most of us well know, they did provide, however, a very valuable service: A place to preview books you otherwise can't get your hands on. Unfortunately for them, they didn't really monetize this service. Some people would purchase the books they wanted there, either through a sense of duty to fiscally reward the establishment that provided them the great service, or out of a sense of laziness that it was easier just to buy it then for a higher price than to remember to go home and order it at half cost, or even because they're just too anxious and can't wait 3-4 days for it to come in the mail.
Barnes And Noble isn't perhaps too far behind. Which will be a terrific shame. Losing one is bad for consumers, but losing both will be hard. And not just for consumers. How many Amazon sales are the result of B&N or Borders browsing? Quite a few I'm willing to bet. Letting the B&M stores do a lot of work of which you reap the rewards is a great way to make money. Until the B&M stores can't keep operating at a loss and they shut their doors. I wonder if Amazon will lose more $$$ in sales due to the closing of Borders than Borders needed to stay open? Perhaps it was in Amazon's best interest to "bail out" or "buy" Borders.
I was a manager at a Barnes and Noble store (#1946) when barnesandnoble.com rolled out. Employees were encouraged to direct business to the website whereever possible, even though the two ventures (B&M and .com) were separate throughout most of the company architecture. We were supposed to direct sales out of our store and on to the website (we even had a terminal in the store where customers could shop the website) but we were still expected to meet our store's sales goals. It was odd, but at least it meant that the bookstore could operate at a loss as long as corporate was convinced the stores made them money online. But there was a phase where B&N stores were forced to cut some costs and change some store policy just to compete with their own website. While I was there, I saw the average salary for frontline employees drop almost in half. Instead of providing knowledgeable staff, we then just had cheap staff. It helped the bottom line, for sure... but I think in the long run we lost credibility with a lot of our customer base. I left before all of these changes settled down, and from what I understand it's better than it was... but still not back to the way it was when I started there.
Bookstores provide a valuable service. In today's market, that doesn't always lead directly to a sale, the way the stores traditionally have monetized that service. They need to find a new way to monetize that service or else they will all go away.
Unless socialism steps in and decides that the tax payers should all pay to keep it around.