Saving Grace: Books-A-Million as a New Anchor for the Susquehanna Valley Mall

The life and culture that Books-A-Million provides appears uncharacteristic for the mall in which it resides. While other vendors in the Susquehanna Valley Mall of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania seem to host few enthusiastic customers or sit vacant all together, this Books-A-Million stands out with its huge displays of literature and merchandise. Older folks wander its aisles and take a liking to the more classical selections it houses, while teens and young adults peruse the lines of comic book, movie, and novella merchandise in hopes of finding some sort of memorabilia for their favorite stories. People of all ages, backgrounds, and interests are drawn into the Books-A-Million because of all it has to offer to ordinary mall patrons and book fanatics alike: giving the slowly declining Susquehanna Valley Mall a hopeful light… but has it always been this way? How did this Books-A-Million become a sort of saving grace for this Central Pennsylvania shopping mall?  

 

(powered by Time Graphics)

In order to see the true importance of this Books-A-Million, we must first understand the nature of the place in which it resides. The Susquehanna Valley Mall was opened in 1978, anchored by a Boscov’s that still operates in the establishment today. The Boscov’s bustled with business, giving perfect leverage for a shopping mall to enter the same area. The mall attracted business with two main anchors, Boscov’s and Bon-Ton, and 400,000 square-feet of retail vendors and food destinations. 20 years later, the mall expanded to include J.C. Penney’s and Sears as two more anchors and other stores full of commercial diversity. This mall was the biggest commercial success the Susquehanna Valley had ever seen, and thrived as such for almost another 15 years after this expansion (Revolvy). 

A place for booklovers in the Susquehanna Valley Mall didn’t come about until the mall’s expansion, however; a Borders opened its doors around the early 2000’s. The mall’s expansion allowed more of a diverse selection of vendors, making a perfect destination for a chain bookstore such as Borders to plant its roots (Purscell).  Borders, a national bookstore chain that expanded from Waldenbooks in the early 1970’s, moved into the Susquehanna Valley Mall around 1998-2000 and operated in exactly the same spot that the Books-A-Million sits today. Borders, due to its similar structure to the Books-A-Million chain, served almost the same purpose of providing a diverse source of entertainment and literature for the greater Susqueha-

The main entrance of the Susquehanna Valley Mall

nna Valley area. Although there is little information I can find about the success of this particular Borders chain in the Susquehanna Valley Mall, it is quite obvious that its ending did not come about in as positive of a light as its beginnings.  

The Borders of the Susquehanna Valley Mall, and all other Borders chains in the United States, closed their doors due to bankruptcy in early 2011, leaving readers with no home in this quaint shopping mall. Unfortunately, the entirety of the Susquehanna Valley Mall was heading in the same direction just a short time after. By 2015, the Susquehanna Valley Mall had hit an economic downturn it had never experienced before. The major anchors of the mall, such as Sears and Bon-Ton, closed their doors and took with them much of the mall’s business. Not only that, but smaller retailers failed to keep their doors open due to a lessened influx of customers, leaving a large amount of vacancy in the heart of the mall. To this day, the mall still suffers and holds about 25 vacant spaces unable to be filled by promising retailers.  

News coverage on the rapid downfall of the Susquehanna Valley Mall and other Central Pennsylvania shopping malls.

Anchors Away: The Downfall of Central Pennsylvania Malls 

Considering the economic turmoil of this quaint shopping mall, its hard to imagine having such a successful book retailer operating behind its doors. While over half of the vendors sit untouched by consumers and others slowly lose stability, Books-A-Million continues to provide for the greater Susquehanna Valley’s literary community. To me, it seems as if the deterioration of its neighbors aided in its own success.  

The Books-A-Million in the Susquehanna Valley Mall opened on October 28th, 2011, just a few short months after the Borders closed its doors. The announcement of a new book and entertainment hub in the mall excited loyal customers, for the vacancy of the Borders was a painful jab to an already vulnerable commercial area; customers who had begun to lose hope by the emptying of valuable businesses in the mall now had a worthwhile reason to return (Book Store Opens). Although there is little allusion as to why this Books-A-Million was chosen to replace the Borders that came before it, the fact that it did alone has brought a positive light to this dying shopping mall.  

The storefront of the Books-A-Million of the Susquehanna Valley Mall, courtesy of their Facebook Page.

I do have to admit that when visiting this Books-A-Million in the middle of a Friday afternoon, I saw few unique factors that would have made the store shine the way it does. Having grown up outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which offers hundreds of similar chain retailers to those that are offered in the greater Susquehanna Valley, I walked into this Books-A-Million and saw an identical store to the Books-A-Million I went to back home. It’s eye-catching displays, wide selection of novels, and aesthetically pleasing stationary were all things I had seen before, and I dismissed them from being unique or worthy of my attention immediately. It wasn’t until I did a bit of online snooping that the significance of this little chain became clear to me.  

This Books-A-Million is not just your ordinary bookstore; it’s a beating heart of culture and literary engagement in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Not only does this Books-A-Million provide classic and popular literature for its patrons, but it also hosts engaging activities for young readers, features worthwhile items that it wants its customers to investigate, hosts family-friendly events, and even has had a few authors come in to talk about their work. Books-A-Million runs a Facebook page that advertises these exciting opportunities for literary exploration, so that booklovers are informed and can communicate with one another about different aspects of the store. It was through this social media platform that I was finally able to observe the kind of cultural landmark this Books-A-Million creates for the greater Susquehanna Valley. Not only is this Books-A-Million a place for the reader, but it’s a place for family and community.  

Books-A-Million is not just a simple bookstore that mall patrons pass by on their way to their favorite clothing retailer or the Cinnabon down the hall: it is a locale for every type of booklover. Tim Cresswell, human geographer and scholar, says that place is not just a simple location on a map, but a “way of seeing, knowing, and understanding the world,” (Place: A Short). Books-A-Million is a place for every type of reader, regardless of background or identity, to fall in love with literature and understand its importance. It opens its doors to the greater Susquehanna Valley in ways that promote community, exploration, entertainment, and creativity for all people. Although you may enter this Books-A-Million and see it as just a place to pick up the book you’ve been dying to read, or even just another ordinary vendor in a shabby shopping mall, it has the potential to be so much more and has proven itself as such so far. Books-A-Million is that not-so-conventional bookstore that communities such as the greater Susquehanna Valley need in order to keep literature alive.  

 

Sources:

Nonperiodicals

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction.

Images

Books-A-Million. Books-A-Million Storefront. Facebook, www.facebook.com/Books-A-Million-386640151734113/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2019.

News Radio 1070 WKOK. Susquehanna Valley Mall. 6 Feb. 2019. News Radio 1070, www.wkok.com/susquehanna-valley-mall-not-being-sold/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2019.

WNEP News Station. Anchors Away. Digital file.

Web sites, e-sources

Book Store Opens Friday. The Daily Item, 26 Oct. 2011, www.dailyitem.com/b-briefs/article_f80cf1c9-116d-5a41-8e77-566c52e5c0ef.html. Accessed 1 Mar. 2019.

Purscell, Tricia. “Susquehanna Valley Mall: Under One Roof for 30 Years.” The Daily Item, 22 Nov. 2008, archive.fo/20140204020957/http://www.dailyitem.com/0100_news/x691306146/Susquehanna-Valley-Mall-Under-one-roof-for-30-years. Accessed 1 Mar. 2019.

Revolvy. “Susquehanna Valley Mall.” Revolvy, www.revolvy.com/page/Susquehanna-Valley-Mall?stype=folders. Accessed 1 Mar. 2019.

WNEP News Station. “Shoppers Concerned as Anchor Stores Close in Local Malls.” WNEP The News Station, wnep.com/2017/01/05/shoppers-concerned-as-anchor-stores-close-in-local-malls/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2019.

Within the Borders of Forty Years

A Narrative in Four Perspectives

History

By Melani M.

I grew up an hour and a half away from the original Borders bookstore, but it wasn’t until I heard the chain was being liquidated that I realized this; I hadn’t even known that the chain was founded in my home state. My grandparents lived next door to the manager of the Borders in my local mall and he is essential to any picture my mind forms of the chain. When the store closed, he left the state to find employment and I haven’t visited that mall since they both left.

The sorrow caused by Borders’s liquidation is still palpable in the residents of Ann Arbor Michigan where the store was founded forty years before. Members of the Facebook group “Borders Class of 2011 and Before” are still exchanging memories and experiences asking, “where are my peeps store #514?”  Many also shared in the sadness that in last season’s finale of “The Simpsons” Homer said “just like Borders I’ll always be there.” Some of those leaving comments admitted they cried. It’s been two years since the last store closed, but they still haven’t stopped grieving that something once so great had to die.

When the Borders brothers first opened their used bookshop at 211 South State Street in 1971, they had eight hundred square feet and five hundred dollars of inventory to work with. By 1974 the store had changed its location three times and occupied a two story building totaling 100,000 square feet; an unheard of amount of space for a bookstore at the time.

Though the brothers owned the store, it was Joe Gable, whom they hired as a manager, who really established the foundations for the Borders experience though his efforts to “make it the best bookstore in America” (Leopold 2).  Before the inventory got too large to allow him to do so, Gable would personally unpack each shipment, stock the shelves and arrange the displays.  He operated with the understanding that it was his responsibility to connect the customer to the right book.  You would not find instruments in a section of music books because in his words “he did not create museum displays” (3). They were a bookstore and customers should be able to see that by their stock.

Happy Employee
This was a drawing by a former Borders employee to show his happiness after being hired at the flagship store.

Gable also took pains to make sure he had well informed staff. As Archibald MacLeish says in “Free Man’s Books”  “True books are sold by the enthusiasm of those who love them “because they persuade readers to talk” (13). Often the books recommended by staff members sold more than the national bestsellers. In order to work at Borders applicants had to pass a qualifying test to show their literary knowledge (which I admit I failed with only one correct answer) and were assigned to work specific sections.  Everyone was also required to clean the store and help with customer service, but according to one former employee, they loved to do it (Leoplod 3).  The environment led to several marriages between co-workers and many satisfied customers.

 

The Borders brothers expanded to a second store in the 1980’s.  When they sold the twenty one store chain to K-Mart in 1992, coffee and non-book items started to become regular additions to the inventory. In Ann Arbor, Borders patrons were expressing dissatisfaction with the switch from paper to plastic bags and many refused to enter the store again because it didn’t feel like Borders anymore. According to Gable, they tried to “take the book business which is complex and boring and make it simple and sexy” (Leopold 5).

 

Present

By Jordan T.

I entered a Borders Bookstore for the first time when I was I was about nine years old. I went in for the purpose of finding a childrens dictionary that my teacher required us to have. And although Borders was not the bookstore I went to all the time, it’s a place that I remember very well. It is a place my father loved taking me to. In my experience, Borders was a place for families: a place for academic and personal needs.

What remains of Borders in Ann Arbor is the redesigned storefront: five compartmented spaces on the first floor, and the second floor is split into a business space and a University program (Greenberg).

The owners of the restaurants inhabiting the old Borders space are hoping that their food will attract people and boost the economy of Ann Arbor like Borders once did.

Borders catered to college kids in the area as well as the local community. The fact that the bookstore’s storefront has been broken up into five restaurants, a large business, and a University program seems to suggest that the college students aren’t necessary for the new businesses in town to thrive.

Borders had something for everyone and when the Flagship store in Ann Arbor closed down it devastated not only the Ann Arbor community, but also the business owners in the surrounding area. It has been reported that foot-traffic in the area has decreased significantly since its closure. Borders seemed to function as a hub for the town. “Thousands more people were on our sidewalks when Borders was open,” Susan Pollay said.  “It also brought a greater diversity of foot traffic: young and old, campus related and not, townies and visitors” (Lizzy Alfs). People have also said that when Borders closed it felt like losing a family member. This bookstore was not just a bookstore.

Slurping_Turtle_Sign-thumb-646x430-1466533-300x199

According to the demographic, Ann Arbor has a very large Asian population. As a result, many Asian restaurants line the streets of Ann Arbor and it only makes sense that another one, The Slurping Turtle, would appear in the old Borders storefront.

Screen Shot 2013-11-17 at 2.31.17 PMIn Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morely, Roger, the owner of Parnassus, loved bookselling. For him, bookselling was not a job so much as it was a way of life. He strived to bring the joy of reading into peoples’ lives, just as Borders did. 

Even though Borders didn’t just sell books, it was a place for people to buy entertainment. By selling entertainment they were selling happiness to many. Borders did their best to make it a place for people to enjoy themselves. They held events that made Borders a part of the community. It was a space for more than consumerism. People had a hard time letting go of Borders because of their emotional attachment to the store. People felt strongly about Borders because it was a part of their lives.

In Reluctant Capitalists the author states: “Independent booksellers […] claim that the chains’ standardized look is of a piece with their […] homogenous selection. And, it is charged, the impersonal, bland experience of shopping at a chain is alienating for customers and demeaning for books” (Miller 88). But for the people of Ann Arbor, this rings untrue. People loved Borders. The citizens of Ann Arbor did not see this Borders store as a part of a chain: they saw it as theirs. Borders had been a part of Ann Arbor for 40 years and the people who lived there […] grew attached to it (Lizzy Alfs). Those who spent their time in this Borders store saw it as secondary home for them. Borders was a part of Ann Arbor just as a small independent bookstore would be part of its town.

 

Space and Objects

By Stephanie H.

19230109
A panoramic shot of a typical Borders store

The Ann Arbor store began as a product of its local community when Tom and Louis Borders opened their used bookstore in 1971. It is easy to invent a picture of the two-room store above the LakeArt’s Supply with books lining the walls and either tables or more bookcases taking up the center area with other wares, space allowing. The early Borders locations have also been described as community centers, so there were probably chairs located in the space for customers to sit down and discuss their finds.

For the final Ann Arbor Borders I was unable to find a blueprint of the location and it is difficult to distinguish between photographs of the flagship and the hundreds of other Borders locations, but there is a description of the store included in Mary-Brook Todd’s A Place for Everything: Examining the Organization of Children’s Materials in Bookstores & Libraries. It is described 6114738313_24b1b5fb1e_oas being organized by subject and then broken down alphabetically by author or series, notated by signs above the sections to call attention from far away and within the isles to guide customers. The collection included Fiction in genres such as Science Fiction/Fantasy, Historical Fiction, and Mystery Thrillers as well as Non-Fiction such as Art, Music, Cooking, and General Science. Though both were represented the non-fiction options were limited, implying that there was a greater focus on entertainment reading. Popular series were given specialty displays, while books covering controversial issues were grouped into “Family Issues” or placed in an entirely different room labeled “Teaching Reference”. The other major distinctions made for collections were the children’s literature and the multimedia, which were grouped together and separated from the rest of the store (Todd). While the factual description of the store is useful, it is Todd’s commentary under “Key Findings” which truly pique my interest.

The item on the Key Findings list that most caught my attention was the comment “Organization not based on community needs or demographics” (Todd). I wish she had spent time to expand this observation, because it is my assessment that this is the major divide between chain stores and independents and could be used to pinpoint the moment Borders no longer “belonged” to the Ann Arbor community. Limited by the master plan for all of the chain stores, the Ann Arbor Borders was forced to become less connected with the community that had created it and more standardized with what the Borders Group wanted the chain to become as a whole.

While the standardization as studied by Laura J. Miller in her book Reluctant Capitalists is often criticized as being bland or impersonal, as seen in Borders it also offered an opportunity to streamline the book shopping experience, which has been at the top of consumer demands for years (Miller, 88). As Miller explains, the chain no longer cared to be seen as “high-brow”, instead moving towards a modern look that would attract a wide array of customers once they transitioned into suburban malls. In particular, they focused on bright colors, contemporary materials, bold signs, and better lighting (Miller, 92).  All of these traits became iconic in Borders stores around the globe, the basic ingredients, and were what worked together to create uniformity no matter the size or shape of the building. This concept is shown below in my mock-floor plan of a typical Borders bookstore. I created it by studying photos of various locations and pulling out some of the persistent themes such as the furniture and color pallets. This technique was chosen over mapping out a particular store in order to highlight how similar all of the locations truly are.

 

We return again to Christopher Morley and his enigmatic “Professor”. In Parnassus on Wheels Parnassus is a wagon that contains more than one might assume, it is a bookstore and it is a home. Regardless of where it is, the moment you enter it you are taken far away. Through the stark separation between what is inside the space and what surrounds it, Parnassus becomes a sort of liminal space. With all the isolating qualities of the standardized chain stores, the fact that you can enter a store in Pennsylvania only to travel across the country and enter another of the same name in California and feel as if you’ve returned to the original evokes that same sense of liminality. The stores within a chain, with all of their carefully chosen swatches and shelving, form a network and a community that cannot be contained by a single town. While one might mourn the loss of a personal connection between a town and its book provider, it’s hard to deny the appeal of always feeling like you can escape to your favorite bookstore, no matter where you are.

Cultural Function and Literature Definition

By Chelsy B.

Borders started out as a small college town second hand bookshop. However, Tom and Louis Borders did not allow the college setting to define their inventory. The Borders brothers went beyond the academia, specifically pushing their focus away from textbooks, and reached out to a larger community.

In 2004, Borders reached an agreement with the Starbucks subsidiary, Seattle’s Best Coffee to operate cafes in its domestic superstores under the Seattle’s Best brand name.

Seattle’s Best Coffee Cafe in Borders of Santa Barbara, CA.

This allowed Borders to become a space for which books, coffee, and food were all accessible. There were now tables and chairs and a space where conversations could be held. In other bookstores, independent or chain, I feel as though there is still a library-like reverence for quietness. Borders physically created a separated space within its walls to promote discussion. There is literally a line drawn between the two parts of the store, as seen in the different flooring of this Santa Barbara Borders. This distinction allows for a place within the bookstore to facilitate discussion.

This is reminiscent of Habermas’ idea of the public sphere. Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the public sphere is a realm within social life in which public opinion can be formed and which is accessible to all. The engagement within the public sphere according to Habermas is blind to class positions and the connections between activists in the public sphere are formed through a mutual will to take part in matters that have a general interest.

The image Borders wanted to portray to its customers is a welcome space for the sharing of ideas and interests. The space itself becomes the moderator in its broad collection, unbiased in its large inventory. It is also a place for discovering new ideas. Therefore Borders configuration of ‘literature’ is works that bring people into a discussion with the text(s) and one another. Literature is for people, it is not defined by any specific genres or limited to any niche interests. It has a diverse openness quality that is unique to the Borders experience. Ultimately, instead of the book finding the person, it is about the people finding the book.

New Paperbacks Table Borders in Madison Square Garden

However, outside of that ideal into actuality, Borders focus of literature rarely strayed beyond the bestsellers. The bestsellers were the focus of the store, shown to the customers through windows and the first tables and shelves within the store itself. The largest section in the store was dedicated to fiction and all other sections were pushed off into back corners and behind tables of novelty items. In those sections, it was difficult to tell what was quality because everything was in the publishers bought space. There was only a few handwriting recommendations on books in various sections but read like something taken off of an Amazon review. It felt artificial and there was no sense of the personal in this bookstore when I believe book selection is one of the most experiences a true reader could ever have.

I didn’t visit the Borders in my hometown often because my experience was always the same. It was a very confusing space to navigate. Trying to trek towards the actual books, I would get stuck between the music/DVD section and the Seattle’s Best café. I would pass by people setting their coffee cups on the books stacked on the ‘New Paperback’ table while looking at their new DVD or CD. This happened too frequently and I wanted my experience to be dedicated to search the stacks for a hidden gem or seeking out a novel by a specific author. I found that I could not trust a bookstore that had customers that disrespected the physical book and the space of a bookstore as a whole.

 

Sources:

Floorplan powered by thinglink.com

Text:

http://www.michigandaily.com/news/former-borders-books-building-have-several-new-tenants (greenberg)

http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/one-year-later-borders-closure-leaves-its-mark-on-downtown-ann-arbor-retail-environment/ (Alfs)

http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/well-known-chef-bringing-slurping-turtle-noodle-house-to-ex-borders-building-in-downtown-ann-arbor/ (Freed)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg8jWhAkELY

 http://annarbor.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm

“Borders Class of 2011 and before.” Borders Class of 2011 and before. Facebook, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. https://www.facebook.com/groups/229620883744332/

Leopold, Todd. “The Death and Life of a Great American Bookstore.” CNN. Cable News Network, 12 Sept. 2011. Web. 24 Sept. 2013. http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/12/first.borders.bookstore.closing/index.html.

MacLeish, Archibald, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. A Free Man’s Books: An Address ; Delivered at the Annual Banquet of the American Booksellers Association. Mount Vernon [u.a.: Peter Pauper, 1942. Print.

Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2006.

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1955. Print.

Todd, Mary-Brook. A Place for Everything: Examining the Organization of Children’s Materials in Bookstores & Libraries. The School of Information. University of Michigan, n.d. Web.

Images:

Bomey, Nathan R. N.d. Photograph. Ann Arbor. Borders’ Rise and Fall: A Timeline of the Bookstore Chain’s 40-year History. Ann Arbor News. Web. http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/borders-rise-and-fall-a-timeline-of-the-bookstore-chains-40-year-history/.

Bowen, Ross. 2012. Photograph. 14 Nov. 2012. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. http://www.ashvegas.com/russ-bowen-of-wlos-kmart-confirms-tunnel-road-location-closing.

Constant, Paul. “Books without Borders My Life at the World’s Dumbest Bookstore Chain.” Portland Mercury, 1 Sept. 2011. Web. 03 Dec. 2013. http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/books-without-borders/Content?oid=4613534.

Hollister, Sean. N.d. Photograph. Borders’ Kobo EReader Available for Pre-order, Ships June 17th. Web. 30 Sept. 2013.

Linder, Brad. Borders Launches New Amazon-free Web Store. 2008. Photograph. Huffpost Tech, 28 May 2008. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/05/28/borders-launches-new-amazon-free-web-store/.

Steiner, Robert J. Popular Holdings Singapore. 2008. Photograph. Singapore. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://www.streetdirectory.com/stock_images/travel/normal_show/12101451200320/119363/popular_holdings_signage/.

http://joelcomm.com/borders-twitter.jpg

Panoramic of store – Space and Objects

 

 Genre signs – Space and Objects

Borders: Streamlining or Sacrificing?

What do you see when you hear the word “bookstore”? Close your eyes, take a breath, and say the word to yourself. Say it again. Does the image change? Is it a memory or an imagined place you explored in a dream or a picture you saw browsing the web? The first thing that hits me about my mental bookstore is the smell. It has a noted presence, but doesn’t smother or choke you when you walk over the threshold. The smell of paper and ink and glue and coffee and blueberry muffins. A clean smell, but a clean that has been lived in and loved without the sterile undertones of chemicals. The space is populated by wooden bookcases, a warm breed of either cherry or a dark walnut, low rows in the body of the space and seven feet tall along the perimeter with ladders to assist reaching the upper shelves. It has an open ceiling with a balcony level on the second floor of more tall bookcases, second hand and collectibles. A modest café sits to the left, a children’s space with a small stage to the right. I can never figure out where the register goes.

19230109
A panoramic shot of a typical Borders store

Over the course of my previous two posts we’ve explored the outer dynamics of a bookstore through our case study of the Borders in Ann Arbor, Michigan such as the immediate surrounding area and the history of its development. While these are vital forces that shape a bookstore it is the expression of these forces, the internal space and organization of the store itself, which the casual observer and customer interact with directly. Following the theme of my post on the history of the Borders Group, I will begin by focusing on the Ann Arbor flagship and then expand to a generalization of the chain as a whole. Unlike independent stores which are personal expressions of the direct owners, chain stores focus on the idea of uniformity across their various locations because they want to create a standard image of the “Borders experience” in their customers minds.

first_borders-thumb-400x483-69708
The first Borders location

The Ann Arbor store began as a product of it’s local community when Tom and Louis Borders opened their used bookstore in 1971. Although little information is available on the specifics of the floor-plan of that location, it is easy to invent a picture of the two-room store above the Lake Art’s Supply. Books lining the walls and perhaps either tables or more bookcases taking up the center area with more wares, space allowing. The early Borders locations have also been described as community centers, and so there were probably chairs located somewhere in the space for customers to sit down and discuss their most recent finds.

sections
An example of the genre signs found in Borders

Although it is hard to recreate an idea of the original location, the final incarnation of Borders Bookstore in Ann Arbor is a different story. I was unable to find an exact blueprint of the location and when searching through photographs it is difficult to distinguish between the flagship and the hundreds of other Borders locations, but there is a description of the exact store included in research done by Mary-Brook Todd of the University of Michigan titled A Place for Everything: Examining the Organization of Children’s Materials in Bookstores & Libraries. It is described as having a clear organizational scheme based off of subject and then broken down alphabetically by author or series, notated by signs above the sections to call attention from far away and within the isles to guide customers more directly. The collection included Fiction in genres such as Science Fiction/Fantasy, Historical Fiction, and Mystery Thrillers as well as Non-Fiction such as Art, Music, Cooking, and General Science. Though both were represented Todd notes that the non-fiction options were more limited, implying that there was a greater focus on entertainment reading than instructional or technical. Popular series were given specialty displays, while books covering controversial issues were grouped into “Family Issues” or placed in an entirely different room labeled as “Teaching Reference”. The other major distinctions made for collections were the children’s literature and the multimedia, which were grouped together and separated from the rest of the store (Todd). While the factual description of the store is useful, it is Todd’s commentary under “Key Findings” which truly pique my interest.

Borders+Begins+Liquidation+Sales+399+Bookstores+FzSM3ecgYvll
Borders liquidation signs, creating visual chaos in the store

While she does state that the large signs throughout the store are helpful in directing customers quickly, in her Key Findings list only three lines down she also expresses that there were too many displays located throughout the store, which disrupted her exploration (Todd). This comment stuck me as odd considering the fact that  chain stores like Borders are often thought of as having a strong emphasis on the accessibility of their layout, aiming for a more hands-off role for the staff members. My assumption is that this comment speaks to the commercialism of book selling and the growing influence major publishers can have over the set-up of a bookstore through the ability to rent display spaces. When there are multiple organizations designing displays for a single space it makes it difficult to coordinate the overall store design, which could cause the results to be overwhelming or simply aesthetically displeasing to customers. With so many options of reading materials available, publishers sometimes find themselves shouting their advertisements in order to be heard over the rest.

The second item on the Key Findings list that caught my attention was the seemingly throw-away comment “Organization not based on community needs or demographics” (Todd). Out of everything in this short section of her study, I wish she had spent time to expand this observation, because it is my assessment that this is the major divide between chain stores and independents and, if able to be traced through the history of the store, could be used to pinpoint the moment Borders no longer belonged to the Ann Arbor community. Limited by the master plan for all of the chain stores, the Ann Arbor Borders was forced to become less connected with the community that had created it and more standardized with what the Borders Group wanted the chain to become as a whole.

Laura J. Miller dedicates an entire chapter to the type of standardization seen by Borders bookstores world wide in her book Reluctant Capitalists. Chapter four begins with the sentence “The history of retailing in the United States has shown that standardization is fundamental to a mass merchandising strategy” and then the following thirty pages of chapter four continue to outline the history and reasoning behind this process (Miller, 87). In 1922 standardizing techniques were being applied to grocery, drug, and department stores, but bookstores were still held in a sacred space similar to the early Borders locations or any number of used and independent booksellers you can find today, although over the years even those locations have started to subconsciously conform to the expected “idea” of a bookstore.

While the standardization is often criticized as being bland or impersonal, as seen in Borders it also offered an opportunity to streamline the book shopping experience, which has been a demand from consumers as our society continues to move faster and faster (Miller, 88). As Miller explains, the stores no longer cared to be seen as “high-brow”, instead moving towards a modern and casual look that would attract the wide array of customers available to them once they transitioned into suburban malls. In particular, they focused on bright colors, contemporary materials, bold signs, and better lighting (Miller, 92).  All of these traits became iconic in Borders stores around the globe, such as the bright yellow and red paint that was present in almost every store, the pine paneled shelving, the black leather chairs, the stark white on black signs, and the fluorescent lighting hanging from the ceiling. These were the basic ingredients of a Borders store and were what worked together to create uniformity no matter the size or shape of the building. This concept is shown below in my mock-floor plan of a typical Borders bookstore. I created it by studying photos of various stores and pulling out some of the persistent themes such as the furniture and color pallets. This technique was chosen over mapping out a particular store in order to highlight how similar all of the locations truly are.

So, I ask again: What do you see when you hear the word “bookstore”? We’ve reached the same point as the conclusion of my previous post, to Christopher Morley and his enigmatic “Professor”. In Parnassus on WheelsParnassus is a wagon that contains so much more than one might assume, it is a bookstore and it is a home. Regardless of where it is, on a country path or a busy street, the moment you enter it you are taken far away. Through the stark separation between what is inside the space and what surrounds it, Parnassus becomes a sort of liminal  space. With all the isolating qualities of the standardized chain stores, the fact that you can enter a store in Pennsylvania only to travel across the country and enter another of the same name in Washington and feel as if you’ve returned to the original evokes that same sense of liminality. The stores within a chain, with all of their carefully chosen swatches and shelving, form a network and a community that cannot be contained by a single town. While one might mourn the loss of a personal connection between a town and its book provider, it’s hard to deny the appeal of always feeling like you can escape to your favorite bookstore, no matter where you are.

 

SOURCES

Floor Plan powered by thinglink.com

Images found through Google search

TEXT

Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2006.

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1955. Print.

Todd, Mary-Brook. A Place for Everything: Examining the Organization of Children’s Materials in Bookstores & Libraries. The School of Information. University of Michigan, n.d. Web.

The Order to Borders

The way a bookstore is laid out tells the customer a lot about the store or company owner and its values. Some bookstores, such as Borders, have lots of space between their shelves to make it easy for the customers to walk and find what they are looking for with ease. The shelves are clearly labeled with their designated section titles. In Borders, the books are arranged by author and title. By ordering a bookstore this way it allows the customer to search for whatever they are looking for with little to no help from the bookstore staff.

The Borders in Ann Arbor was two floors. All books were clearly marked—categorized and shelved in alphabetical order. Large signs helped customers locate books of their interest or the DVD’s and music they were looking for. Many bookstores have different ways of arranging their shelves and not all of them look exactly the same. Most bookstores use signs to indicate the section categories, but the amount of space between the shelves differ. Some line the walls with shelves, while others take a large amount of space and fill the floor with stand-up bookshelves like Borders did. In the picture below you can see how the shelves line up on the floor. The amount of books in this store does not overwhelm the person that looks at this photo. It is very organized and the positioning of the shelves gives the store aisles like those of a supermarket. The section labels cannot be seen in this photo as it was taken from a distance, but the space and organization allows the consumer to navigate this very large store with ease.

This particular Borders store has an ample amount of space, which most smaller-scale bookstores do not have. The space allows the store to contain massive quantities of books without the problem of shelf limitations. That being said, the store owners still have to select the titles and authors they wish to sell. The space enables more of a selection, but it still would not be able to carry every book ever created.

I have made a very simple floor plan of this Borders. It is not accurate, but it is meant to show how the store utilizes the space it has, how it enables the customer to walk through the store without being overwhelmed by the quantity of books, and it shows which sections have their own separate rooms.

 

Due to a technological issue the tags I have put on the boxes above are not working. For the full image the link to the floorplan with tags is here: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/448576385586298881#tlsite. The two sections that have their own rooms are the the Children’s section where the multimedia is held and the Family Issues and Teachers references. The title “Family Issues” contains many controversial works which are kept among the teacher’s references. Teachers are the ones that are probably most interested in the controversial works, as they are usually the ones to teach banned books.

In Tim Cresswell’s “A Defining Place” he discusses the quote “[there is] a place for everything and everything [is] in its place” (Cresswell 2). This is essentially what a bookstore is. Every book, especially in a chain bookstore like Borders, has a place on a shelf that is categorized and alphabetized. “[The phrase a place for everything and everything in its place] suggests that there are particular ordering of things in the world” (Cresswell 2). He is correct in making this assumption because even in our own lives, with the way we keep our bedrooms, dorm rooms, houses, etc. we have a way of keeping things. Even when our possessions are in disarray, we tend to know where they are. Disarray is still technically an order. If our possessions had a place before and they are out of place an order is still technically kept. But when we think about space we tend to think about it in terms of how much room we have to keep our possessions in a particular type of order. The two  things cannot be easily separated. In terms of a bookstore the space dictates how many books the bookstore can hold. But the way that the books are arranged within the limited space is of great importance to the store owners and the consumers.

“Space […] has been seen in distinction to place as a realm without meaning– as a ‘fact of life’ which, like time, produces the basic coordinates for human life. When humans invest meaning in a portion of space and then become attached to it in some way (naming is one such way} it becomes a place” (Cresswell 10). What Cresswell is saying here is that humans create meaning by forming an emotional and or physical attachment to a space. Essentially what Cresswell’s argument boils down to is that if a storefront doesn’t have anything for sale the empty storefront is a space– an open area. The books, music, and movies that Borders Bookstore was selling made it a place for people to go. People formed attachments to the merchandise that was sold and it thus became an important place to the people of Ann Arbor.

The fact that this space was transformed with bookshelves and books among music, coffee, movies, and small places to sit made this bookstore more like a house. People came to congregate in places like Borders because it provided comfort and enjoyment. The “stuff”, the merchandise and all that Borders sold made people feel welcome and made it a place for everybody. Without the objects or the merchandise a store wouldn’t really be a store at all. The books, music, movies, and the coffee bar made Borders precisely what everybody wanted it to be. It was somewhere to shop for wants and needs- a place where people could feel like they were at home. They kept large spaces between the bookshelves and made the store large enough so that people could feel comfortable. The organization of everything only added to the comfort by enabling the consumers to find what they were looking for without the help of a store clerk or the store owner. Borders tried its very best to allow its customers to feel comfortable alone amidst the bookshelves within the space the store provided.

Bibliography:

Cresswell, Tim “A Defining Place”

Influenced by:

Borders in Ann Arbor: It’s All About Subjects – University of MI

Borders: Moving Through Space and Time

 

djernst
D.J. Ernst in Selinsgrove, PA

As any good college town, Selinsgrove is home to its very own used and rare bookstore. During store hours, D.J. Ernst attracts a casual walker with its outdoor display of 50₵ paperbacks, an opportunity no truly bookish person can pass up. Standing on the front stoop you are pulled further by the scent of paper and glue, and upon entering you are rewarded by an amount of books you could not previously of imagined standing outside the small, one room store. The walls are lined with shelves, more 50₵ treasures are stacked on the edges of the floor, and in the center of the space sits a display of collectables and hardbacks, as well as a few back issues of Best American collections. Whenever the store is open you can be certain to find Homer, the owner, sitting behind the counter in the back, often either reading one of the books surrounding him or carefully gluing some loose bindings. When you ask him about his store he will be quick to admit it’s often a struggle, but the love of it all is what brings him to work each morning. He knows his stock better than any high-school aged part-time employee at the Books-a-Million in the mall down the street, and is always able to shepherd the university students that have made the short trek down to his store to the books they need.

As you peruse the wares, it’s hard not to think about the differences and, sometimes even more importantly, the similarities between this place and the chain bookstores. At face value it seems almost impossible to bridge the gab between these two types of shopping experiences, but as seen by the Borders Group this relationship can be much closer than one might expect. I’ll let you decide on the relevancy of the fact that Borders closed its doors in September or 2011, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves already.

In 1971 Tom and Louis Borders opened the first Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor,

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The first Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor, MI

Michigan while they were undergraduates at the University of Michigan. It was a small,two-room second hand shop located above 209 State Street that probably held a similar air as D.J. Ernst in Selinsgrove, but by 1975 they bought out another local store. Wahr’s had been operating for 80 years, specializing mostly in textbooks and school supplies,an important asset to universities in the area. This store was located at 316 South Main Street, and in order to assist with managing this expansion the brothers brought in Michael Hildebrand and Harvey James Robin. No longer focused on simply one small location and their inventory more than doubled, keeping track of all the books was no longer something that could mainly be managed mentally. Louis developed the store’s own custom inventorying and sales projection system, which they began selling to regional independent bookstores across the nation in 1976.


View Borders History in a larger map, modern storefront of the original Borders Location

Over the following thirteen years Borders continued to expand, opening new locations in places such as Atlanta and Indianapolis, with the next major development of the company in 1985 when they opened their first superstore, which now included a coffee bar and was a symbol for all future Borders bookstores. In 1989 they hired Robert F. DiRomualdo. Formerly the president of Hickory Farms, DiRomualdo was a Harvard MBA with retail experience, and would go on to be very successful in his leadership of the company over the next three years until the company was bought out by Kmart and merged with Waldenbooks. This buyout can be seen as a major turning point in the company’s history, and quite possibly the beginning of the end, even though the store would continue to expand and make a profit for more than another decade. While the company was still run out of Ann Arbor, it was no longer the independent, homegrown entity that proudly traced all twenty-one of its stores to the humble beginnings of a second-hand shop. As brought up in my previous post regarding Ann Arbor as it is today and the impact Borders left on the city, Tim Cresswell is a human geographer who has worked to define “place” and everything it implies. One of the key parts of his definition is the idea of ownership, and when Kmart bought out and merged Borders this founding sense of ownership was lost (Cresswell, 1). While the Borders name eventually beat out Waldenbooks upon the creation of Borders Group, Inc. many of the chairmen for Borders left the company following the merger.

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First international Borders in Singapore

Kmart bought the chain in hopes of solving its own dilemmas in the book market and even opened a new flagship in Ann Arbor in 1994, but when that goal was unsuccessful the Borders Group (BGP) was formed in 1995 with an initial public offering, further removing the chain from its history and identity as a family owned company. While greater distance was created between the current form of the chain and its conception, the Border Group actually went through a few years of marked success. The first international store was opened in 1997 in Singapore and the international presence of the company explodes from there with the first Borders Group subsidiary created the following year in the United Kingdom. The Borders (UK) Ltd. grows to become one of the leading booksellers in the country as Borders continues to expand into other territories, launching its first website in May of 1998.

Unlike many of the company’s expansions, its foray into the web is criticized as being behind the times, and is often pointed to as the major cause of the company’s eventual liquidation. With the continued growth of physical locations and the lack of success on the online platform, the website began to become a distraction from the brick and mortar stores, which lead to the Borders Group outsourcing their web presence to the now flourishing Amazon company in 2001. The company continues to try and grow beyond its means by branding with Seattle’s Best Coffee in all of the superstores in 2004 and then starting to franchise internationally in April of 2005, starting with the Berjaya Books Sdn. Bhd. in Malaysia.

Kobo-eReader-1
The Kobo eReader Borders sold

With stocks dropping and profits refusing the rise, the Borders Group tried to refocus on their customer base by implementing a Borders Rewards system in February of 2006. Unlike Barnes & Noble’s membership program, Borders Rewards was offered free of charge to all customers and aimed at rewarding loyalty through a point system, which could then be exchanged for store credit or discounts. The move turned out to be too little to late, since by the end of 2006 the company profits dropped to zero. The Borders Group continued to try and regain its footing in 2008 by opening digital centers in fourteen concept stores nationwide in 2008 and finally moved into the eBook market in 2010 as a partnership with Kobo, Inc. but the efforts continued to be futile. The company had exerted so much effort in expansion it was unable to keep its competitive edge, eventually leading to the final closings of Borders stores in the United States on September 18th, 2011. While some franchises continue to operate today in the Middle East, the Borders Group was liquidated and sold its trademarks and costumer lists to Barnes & Noble. While the website continued to function as a directory for a month following the closure of the physical stores, the url was redirected to the Barnes & Noble page on October 14th, 2011.

Over the span of forty years Borders went from a small idea shared by brother during their undergraduate careers, a local landmark, to an international company that at its peak was grossing $3.27 billion in sales. In its attempt to compete with the Barnes & Noble megastore it lost what had lead to its early success, the innovation of two men who had a passion for bookselling. I’m not going to deny it’s a very, perhaps even overly, romantic view of a world of commerce and number-crunching, but when wandering D.J. Ernst or any other second-hand store it’s impossible to deny the immediate sense of dedication to the art. It has a personality, not only a physical presence but also the “spiritual genealogy” Christopher Morley discusses in his essay, “Escaped Into Print”. He discusses the interconnectedness of books and the people who not only write them but also consume them, the connections built within a community that cannot be limited to a single geographical area (64). When Borders made that shift from a corner piece of life in Ann Arbor, a space for students and residents alike to come and experience literature, to the Border Group it cuts the majority of its ties to the people living in literary community.

Of course many of those living in Ann Arbor continued to feel bonded to the storefront and still feel its absence today, it stopped being the community member they saw it as back in 1992 when Kmart first bought the name. Morley continues to discuss the romantic ideals of literature through his novel, Parnassus on Wheels, by introducing the characters of Roger the bookseller and his travelling store, Parnassus. As seen over the course of this novel, no matter how marvelous Parnassus looks as a physical object, it is Roger and his passion that gives the wagon its sense of “place”. When Roger leaves and our narrator, Helen, is on her own the adventure does not seem as grand (108). He was the life-force of the store, much as the Borders brothers were for their early stores. Once the company was packaged and shipped out across the nation it lost all hope of staying successful or even relevant to the literary community, each step further into the world taking it twice as far from its identity and its true place.

 

SOURCES

Maps embedded from Google

Timeline embedded from Dipity

TEXT

Borders’s Group History

Borders’ rise and fall

Creswell, Tim. “Defining Place.” Place: A Short Introduction. New York City: John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Print.

Gale Directory of Company Histories

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels. New York: Avon Books, 1983.

______. “Escaped Into Print,” in Ex Libris Carissimis. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1961.

 

IMAGES

DJ Ernst

Original Borders

Borders Singapore

Kobo eReader

Loss of a Bookstore: Aftermath

Borders has been closed for two years now, but that is still hard for some former employees of the bookstore chain to accept.  Members of the Facebook group Borders class of 2011 and before are still exchanging memories, and experiences asking “where are my peeps store #514?”  and sharing in the sadness that in the last season finale of “The Simpsons” Homer joked “just like Borders I’ll always be there.” Some commenters admitted they cried and the sorrow caused by Borders liquidation is still palpable in the residents of Ann Arbor Michigan where the store was founded forty years before. The city has tried to move on by leasing the space to restaurants and a CVS to lessen the blow caused by the loss of Borders but the people are still grieving that something once so great had to die.

When the Borders brothers first opened their used bookshop at 211 South State Street in 1971 they had eight hundred square feet and five hundred dollars’ worth of inventory to work with. Thanks to the system devised by Louis Borders which allowed them to keep track of their stock in the days before bar codes, business flourished.  The protagonist of Christopher Morley’s novel Parnassus on Wheels expressed her excitement by saying that owning a mobile bookstore was “like going to college” (24) The experience for the Borders brothers was a lot to handle considering that both were trying to finish their studies at the University of Michigan.  By 1974 the store had changed its location three times and now occupied a two story building totaling 100,000 square feet.  That was an unheard of amount of space for a bookstore at that time.

Though the brothers owned the store, it was Joe Gable, whom they hired to manage the store, who really established the foundations of the Borders experience while he sought to “make it the best bookstore in America” (Leopold 2).  Before the inventory got too large to allow him to do so, Gable would personally unpack each shipment, stock the shelves and arrange the displays.  The format he employed influenced all future Borders stores. He insisted that all arrangements have numerous copies of each title but only one copy would be displayed face out.  The table at the front of the store featured as many bestsellers as little known titles especially university press publications.  The store was close to five state colleges in one of the best read cities in the country so Gable upheld that even if a title only sold one copy in a year, it was still important to carry it because it gave credibility to the store’s selection. He operated with the understanding that it was his responsibility to connect the customer to the right book and he was adamant that books be the merchandise handled.  You would not find instruments in a section of music books because in his words “he did not create museum displays” (Leopold 3).

Gable also took pains to make sure he had well informed staff. As Archibald MacLeish says in “Free Man’s Books”  “True books are sold by the enthusiasm of those who love them “because they persuade readers to talk” (13). Often the books recommended by staff members sold more than the national bestsellers. In order to work at borders applicants had to pass a qualifying test to show their literary knowledge (which I admit I failed with only one correct answer) and were assigned to specific sections.  Everyone was required to clean the store and help with customer service but according to one employee they loved to do it. ” The store didn’t have the luxery an elevator so all of the books had to be carried up from the basement that served as the receiving room but even then it didn’t feel like work.   This environment led to several marriages between co-workers and many satisfied customers.

The Borders brothers decided to expand to a second store in the 1980s after scoping out a location in metro Detroit for over a year. Looking in retrospect however, many employees of the original store believe that this was the first step in the store’s demise.  The second store lacked the intellectual atmosphere of the Ann Arbor location that had arisen from its close proximity to several universities and the anti-war protests of the previous decade. With each store that followed, the sense that the customer could call a Borders “their” store started to disappear.  Coffee and non-book items started to become regular items of inventory when the Borders brothers sold the chain to K-Mart which had built up to twenty one stores in 1992.

new ann arbor bookstore
Literati Bookstore opened in Ann Arbor on April 3, 2013 hoping to fill the role of a general bookstore that Borders left vacant.

For a time this helped Borders increase sales but at the cost of destroying unique features of the chain and making it a replica of its competitors.  Though the store boasted 100,000 titles, half of which were standard for each of the stores and half which were chosen to cater to the location of the place, that didn’t mean a customer would be able to find an employee that could locate what they wanted.  The stores no longer provided the sense of comfort they once did because according to Gable, they tried to “take the book business which is complex and boring and make it simple and sexy” (Leopold 5).  While back in Ann Arbor Borders patrons were expressing dissatisfaction with the switch from paper to plastic bags.

After another decade when store number one was infected by the idea that the superstore concept would save the chain that had not turned a profit the last few years, many loyal customers refused to enter the store again preferring to remember the good times prior to the financial struggles. It didn’t look like Borders at all anymore.  Though Borders is gone it has established an indelible impression on Ann Arbor residents fostering a love of reading that can sustain the operation of the nineteen independent bookstores that grew up in Borders shadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources

 

Texts

 

Bacon, John U. “Good-bye, Borders.” Michigan Today. University of Michigan, 8 Sept. 2011. Web. 26 Sept. 2013. <http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2011/09/story.php?id=8033>.

 

Bomey, Nathan. “Borders’ Rise and Fall: A Timeline of the Bookstore Chain’s 40-year History.” The Ann Arbor News. AnnArbor.com, 18 July 2011. Web. 27 Sept. 2013. <http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/borders-rise-and-fall-a-timeline-of-the-bookstore-chains-40-year-history/>.

 

Leopold, Todd. “The Death and Life of a Great American Bookstore.” CNN. Cable News Network, 12 Sept. 2011. Web. 24 Sept. 2013. <http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/12/first.borders.bookstore.closing/index.html>.

 

MacLeish, Archibald, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. A Free Man’s Books: An Address ; Delivered at the Annual Banquet of the American Booksellers Association. Mount Vernon [u.a.: Peter Pauper, 1942. Print.

 

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels;. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1955. Print.

 

Silberman, Eve. “Borders’ Last Days.” – Ann Arbor Observer. Ann Arbor Chronicle, 28 Sept. 201. Web. 26 Sept. 2013. <http://arborweb.com/articles/borders__last_days_full_article.html>.

 

“So You Think You Could Have Worked at Borders?” CNN. Cable News Network, 12 Sept. 2011. Web. 29 Sept. 2013. <http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/borders.quiz/index.html>.

 

 

Images

 

Bohn, John. 2013. Photograph. Ann Arbor. The Michigan Daily, 5 Sept. 2013. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://www.michigandaily.com/arts/09literati-secondary05>.

 

Bomey, Nathan R. N.d. Photograph. Ann Arbor. Borders’ Rise and Fall: A Timeline of the Bookstore Chain’s 40-year History. Ann Arbor News. Web. <http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/borders-rise-and-fall-a-timeline-of-the-bookstore-chains-40-year-history/>.

 

Bowen, Ross. 2012. Photograph. 14 Nov. 2012. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://www.ashvegas.com/russ-bowen-of-wlos-kmart-confirms-tunnel-road-location-closing>.

 

Hollister, Sean. N.d. Photograph. Borders’ Kobo EReader Available for Pre-order, Ships June 17th. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://www.easybib.com/cite/form/photo>.

 

Linder, Brad. Borders Launches New Amazon-free Web Store. 2008. Photograph. Huffpost Tech, 28 May 2008. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/05/28/borders-launches-new-amazon-free-web-store/>.

 

Steiner, Robert J. Popular Holdings Singapore. 2008. Photograph. Singapore. Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://www.streetdirectory.com/stock_images/travel/normal_show/12101451200320/119363/popular_holdings_signage/>.

 

 

Borders Bookstore Through Time

Borders Bookstore was founded in 1971 by Tom and Louis Borders while they were studying at the University of Michigan. They opened up a used bookstore in an 800 square-foot storefront in downtown Ann Arbor. It started out as a small bookshop; a place for the students of the university and the smaller community colleges to go buy whatever they wanted or needed cheaply. But it quickly became a place for all of Ann Arbor to hang out. The small store did so well they the Borders brothers decided to move their small used bookstore into a larger storefront on State Street– a 10,000 square foot space that could hold 10,000 books. Below is a Google “Street View” of the M Den which is the storefront that housed Borders Bookstore.

View Larger Map
In the 1980’s Louis and Tom Borders decided to open up more bookstores under the same name. By the early 1990’s Borders started adding movies and music to the inventories of many of their stores. This peaked the interest of the Kmart franchise and Borders sold their chain to them in 1992. A couple years later, in  1994, the Borders on State Street of Ann Arbor, Michigan moved once more to a bigger storefront on East Liberty Street. This storefront was a very large two-floor department store with a 40,000 square foot floor-space. By 1998 Borders Bookstore had an up-and-running website where people could shop in the comfort of their own home and six years later, Borders would make a deal with the Starbucks corporation to sell Seattle’s Best Coffee at their in-store cafés.

In 2009 Borders tried to do whatever they could to cut back on their spending during the financial crisis to avoid bankruptcy. Unfortunately, their efforts weren’t very successful. They tried to launch the Kobo e-reader and e-books to help gain some money back, but by February of 2011 they had to file for bankruptcy. In July of 2011, Borders had their liquidation sales at almost if-not-all of their stores.

When Borders closed down, the people of Ann Arbor, especially the business owners near the Borders were upset. It has been reported that foot-traffic in the area has decreased significantly since its closure. Borders seemed to function as a hub for the town to revolve around. “Thousands more people were on our sidewalks when Borders was open,” she said. “It also brought a greater diversity of foot traffic: young and old, campus related and not, townies and visitors” (Susan Pollay via Lizzy Alfs). People have also said that when Borders closed it felt like losing a family member. This bookstore was not just a bookstore.

In Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morely, the bookseller, a man by the name of Roger, loved books. But even more so he loved living among his books. Parnassus, a horse and buggie stocked full of books and bookshelves, served as a traveling bookstore. Driving the Parnassus was one of the things Roger had loved more than anything and when he sold it, he still couldn’t leave the bookselling life behind him. He showed the woman who purchased Parnassus how to sell books and went with her instead of going to Brooklyn like he originally planned. Even when he said he was getting on a train to go to Brooklyn, he never left Parnassus. Bookselling for him was not just about the money, it was about spreading literature and bringing the joy of reading into peoples’ lives. Borders did this, too.

Even though Borders sold things that weren’t just books, it was a place for people to buy things that make them happy. Movies, music, and books all provide entertainment, but  by selling entertainment they were selling happiness to many. Borders, despite being a big chain, did their best to make it a place for people to enjoy themselves and the company of others. They held book-signings, readings, concerts, and other events that made Borders more of a place to live than a place to consume. People had and still have a hard time letting go of Borders because of an emotional attachment. The way Roger felt about Parnassus is the way people feel about Borders- it may not be there anymore but there’s something about it they just can’t let go of.

In Reluctant Capitalists by Laura J. Miller, she states “Independent booksellers […] claim that the chains’ standardized look is of a piece with their […] homogenous selection. And, it is charged, the impersonal, bland experience of shopping at a chain is alienating for customers and demeaning for books” (88). But I think for the people of Ann Arbor this is incredibly untrue. People loved the Borders Bookstore. There were people who went there every day during their lunch break (youtube video from earlier). The citizens of Ann Arbor did not see this Borders store as a part of a chain– it was their bookstore. Borders had been a part of Ann Arbor for 40 years and the people who lived there (college students or otherwise) grew attached to it (Lizzy Alfs). This wasn’t a place where people felt unwelcome– in fact it was the opposite. Those who spent their time in this Borders store probably felt that this was a secondary home for them. Borders was a part of Ann Arbor just as a small independent bookstore would be part of its town.

Timeline/Text

http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/borders-rise-and-fall-a-timeline-of-the-bookstore-chains-40-year-history/

http://www.dipity.com/jordanhtepper/Borders-Through-Time/#timeline

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/12/first.borders.bookstore.closing/index.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/borders-group-inc

 http://publishing.about.com/od/BooksellersAndBookselling/a/The-History-Of-The-Borders-Group-About-The-Borders-Group-Chain-Of-Bookstores.htm

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-short-history-of-the-borders-bookstore-company

 http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/one-year-later-borders-closure-leaves-its-mark-on-downtown-ann-arbor-retail-environment/

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morely

Reluctant Capitalists by Laura J. Miller

 

Images Used In Timeline:

http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Kobo-eReader-Borders-540×302.jpg

http://medicalnoises.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/top-reason-for-bankruptcy-in-the-US.jpg

 http://www.annarbor.com/assets_c/2011/02/first_borders-thumb-400×483-69708.jpg

http://nvfinc.webs.com/ripped-one-hundred-dollar-bill.jpg

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_G2EgKE3otBQ/S-sYASy1tjI/AAAAAAAAEIg/dl1YlMeT0vU/%5BUNSET%5D.jpg?imgmax=800

http://adamcohen.typepad.com/images/borders3.JPG

http://ferretronix.com/march/computer_cards/3_cards.jpg

http://wp.patheos.com/blogs/markdroberts/files/2011/07/borders-ann-arbor-wic-5.jpg

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/12/22/1261502274910/Borders-final-day-Islingt-001.jpg

http://media.cleveland.com/business_impact/photo/borders-store-closing-in-beachwoodjpg-bc9918c1a45e004d.jpg

http://randomthinks.typepad.com/rtblog/images/borders_annarbor.jpg

http://www.icv2.com/images/16210WaldenBorderLogo_md.jpg

https://blog.soundcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/1280px-AnnArborLibertyStreet-1024×680.jpg