With red ink rising and book publishers cutting costs, the pain is still moving to retailers even more.
Publishers Weekly has a depressing post up about Borders closing down 200 of its Walden Outlet stores — in this case, mall staples like Waldenbooks, Borders Express, and Borders Outlet. To give a good sense of scale, there will only be 130 of these stores left after the downsizings end.
Some food for thought:
Borders CEO Ron Marshall said that “through this right-sizing, we will reduce the number of stores with operating losses, reduce our overall rent expense and lease-adjusted leverage and generate cash flow through sales and working capital reductions.” The closing will result in the elimination of about 1,500 jobs, the majority of which, Borders said, are part-time positions.
You can check out a list of all impacted stores by clicking here.
What’s curious to me is how this might impact graphic novel sales, especially for younger readers. Keep in mind that while a lot of older comics readers have disposable income and methods of transportation, a lot of younger readers are being shuttled around from A to B — and their best chance of getting more comics is through the Borders and Barnes and Nobles out there, where Mom and Dad will be shopping for their books. What do you think, Rama readers? Sound off!
November 13th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
One of the stores set to close is the Waldenbooks in the Polaris Fashion Place (a mall) in Columbus, Ohio.
The only reason I mention it is because, up until a few months ago, there had been a B&N across the street, just a few hundred yards away. That is, until the B&N moved into a two-story mall expansion just outside the door to the mall closest to the Waldenbooks, making the two bookstores literally about 500 feet from each other.
I don’t think the closing of Walden is really that bad, because the reason that those stores are closing is that the people who used to shop at those tiny stores are now all going to the larger B&Ns, Borders, Books-a-Million, or online at Amazon. The only real drawback is that there are fewer places in the mall you can send your older kids and not have them bawling for some $60 video game (there are also two GameStops in the mall, on two different floors, one right on top of the other).
November 13th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I feel sorry for anyone losing their job, of course, but to be honest I didn’t realize there were any Waldenbooks stores left… The last ones in the Milwaukee area closed years ago, in part because B&N and Borders took over this town, all at or near the shopping malls, and made Waldenbooks irrelevant. They’ve pretty much shut down most of the indie shops too.
I guess maybe the Waldenbooks name still exists in smaller towns, where there’s a shopping mall but the town might not be big enough to justify a Borders store? For folks in those towns (say 100,000 people or less), finding comics and graphic novels (or ANY kinds of books) might be harder now if those mall stores start disappearing… Aside from a few hearty souls still trying to run an independent shop, who’s going to fill that void?
November 15th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
One of the kids who works at my video store has a second job at Waldenbooks; she got hired and on her first day of training was told they were closing that store January 5.