“Termites don’t team with Orkin.”
Michael Norris, analyst for Simba Information, in news story about Borders’ bankruptcy. He is referring to Borders decision to contract it’s electronic sales to Amazon in 2001.
Borders is named for Tom and Louis Borders, brothers who started selling used books in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1971. Kmart bought the company in 1992, united it with Waldenbooks, then spun it off as a separate company in 1995.
The Wall Street Journal Online has a sortable list of the stores being closed (including one in Albuquerque and one in Santa Fe).
Man, one of my favorite pastimes used to be to browse Borders or Tower Records.
As a former bookseller for B&N, I used to consider Borders to be the “intellectual” bookstore because they carried so many books I wished we could carry. However, those books, cool as they were, were always dusty and rarely sold. We both became places for people to go to browse books they wanted to buy online.
Borders’ real downfall was their refusal to get in the ecommerce game. B&N understood it from the beginning and their innovations with the Nook carried them through last holiday season. B&N will definitely benefit from this but I can’t help but mourn the loss of another good bookstore. So many of my former peers are losing jobs, and not just any job but the noble profession of bookselling.
*sigh*
You can’t even find a good antiquarian bookstore anymore.
Sad.
🙁