Borders is dead. Long live Borders.Follow

The book retailer will wind down its remaining 399 stores starting Friday after it couldn't reach an agreement with an earlier bidder, Najafi Cos., about an offer to keep the company running. Borders won't hold an auction, as there have been no proposals to keep the company operating, it said in a statement Monday.

"We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now," said Borders Group President Mike Edwards in a statement.

Liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners, who were the opening bidders for the planned auction, will now buy the chain's assets and liquidate them, subject to bankruptcy court approval. The deadline for bids passed Sunday without any offers.
Borders has 10,700 employees, and a phased rollout will close its stores by September. The company said it will complete the wind-down under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and expects to be able to pay its business partners.

The sale to liquidators, still subject to bankruptcy court approval, leaves no one to assume the company's business contracts, creditors said in objections filed in bankruptcy court Monday.

The chain, which once operated more than 1,000 stores, lost business as customers switched to e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle. Barnes & Noble invested in its own Nook e-reader.

It's getting harder and harder for professional novelists to sell their wares these days. Catwho, what are kindred spirits like us going to do?

At least books have a list price printed on them. I worked at Circuit City for the Christmas before they closed. The liquidators jacked up the prices before slapping the X%-off signs on a lot of the merchandise.

Some day we'll read in the newspaper about a drifter found dead in a ditch who's known only as "Spoonless".

Some day we'll read in the newspaper about a drifter found dead in a ditch who's known only as "Spoonless".

Try opening an electronic bookstore; make it friendly to all devices.

Sell coffee and heroin.

"So, which of you hobos wants a pomegranate & acai energy bar and some free-trade chocolate?"

There's a joke in there about calling me a ditch, and questioning why there's a dead drifter inside me.

NPR was discussing it today. Sounds like Borders made some f*cking AWFUL choices over the past decade or so. And that's not even in a hindsight sense--they were obviously dumb as hell when they made them. Dumping tons of cash into DVDs/CDs after the market had clearly shifted to digital media, choosing to refurbish their stores instead of buffing up their online presence, using Amazon for their electronic sales, when Amazon was already a competitor, etc.

Isn't diversification in business a good thing? When you concentrate on just one product, you saturate the market and then stop gaining shares/profit. Although I don't know that would necessarily apply to a bookstore, since there is such a wide variety of books.

I think the issue with Borders was that, once they were suffering from competition, they asked "What else can we sell besides books?"