Customers at the company's flagship location on East Liberty Street last week celebrated that Borders Group Inc. spared the store from a long list of closings planned nationwide as it restructures in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Jack Heidenreich of Plymouth bought 16 books — a sign of support for the hometown retailer, the nation's No. 2 bookseller, behind Barnes & Noble Inc. The 60-year-old has been a customer since the first Borders opened on nearby State Street in 1971.
"I'd be shocked if they got rid of this one," Heidenreich said. "I probably hit Borders a few times a week."
But the future of the store, not far from the University of Michigan campus, remains uncertain because there is no guarantee that Borders can successfully reorganize and emerge from bankruptcy as a viable business. If the chain is forced to liquidate, the East Liberty store would have to be sold.
"If Borders were to close here, the center of town wouldn't have a bookstore, and that's just preposterous," said Phil Pochoda, director of the University of Michigan Press, which has been selling fewer books to Borders in recent years.
The bookseller has been invaluable in putting Ann Arbor on the cultural map, said Susan Pollay, executive director of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.
High-profile names from politics, music and literature, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and humor writer and Grammy nominee David Sedaris, regularly appear at the downtown Borders.
The store held its 40th birthday party this month, commemorating the 1971 birth of Borders Book Shop as an independent bookseller started by brothers Tom and Louis Borders, both U-M graduates.
Store is hangout haven
Today, the two-level, 30,000-square-foot store remains a destination that offers music and movies, wrapping paper, greeting cards and stationery from Paperchase, plus a Seattle's Best Coffee bar with ample seating.
"It would just really be a shame if this store closed down," said Alex Trajkovski, 22, a student at Eastern Michigan University who lives in Ann Arbor, as he browsed the literature section last week, before Borders filed for bankruptcy. Trajkovski is in the store a few times a week to browse and buy during breaks from his job at Starbucks across the street. "You couldn't ask for anything better," he said.
Visitors say the store is an ideal hangout on a leisurely day.
"I feel like I could spend hours here without buying anything and it would be no big deal," said Eric Levin, a 23-year-old student at Toledo College of Medicine, as he sat recently in a leather armchair reading "The Next Decade" by George Friedman.
Levin and his friends make the 40-minute drive from Toledo a few times a month, but if the store closes, that could be the end of his reading sessions.
In an independent bookstore, Levin said, "there's no seating and the owner doesn't want you hanging around."
Borders filled a retail hole in downtown Ann Arbor when Jacobson's department store left in the early 1990s by taking over the space on Liberty Street and helping revive the State Street area, Pollay said.
"They have been seminal to the creation of this culture of book reading, book loving and book buying," she said.
Business boosted
Jacobson's and then Borders helped anchor the downtown and supported local, independent merchants by using their national advertising budgets to draw traffic, Pollay said. Other businesses, even booksellers and coffee shops, have benefited because Borders helped turn the area into a shopping destination.
Daniel Raff, associate professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, called Borders "the crown jewel" in a college town "where people basically thought of themselves as reading for a living."
The Borders brothers' innovative inventory management system helped cement the retailer's reputation as a book lover's bookstore, offering a broader array of merchandise than competitors and a knowledgeable staff of bookworms.
"That was the motor that drove the company," Raff said.
But some customers say the downtown store's performance has slipped in recent years.
Rick Hand, a 52-year-old Ann Arborite, said customer service has declined and bankruptcy might scare the chain enough to improve.
"If you go in there, half of the time they don't want to help you," Hand said. "So I think it's no wonder that they have trouble selling books."
Customer service isn't the only problem the firm faces. Competitors such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Amazon.com sell books more cheaply than Borders.
Cathy Sherwood, a nurse who lives in Ann Arbor, said she likes to spend her days off looking through the store's magazines and business books and for her 2-year-old son, children's bargain books. But does she buy?
"Do I buy?" Sherwood said. "I tend to buy online. Ever since Borders announced it's been having troubles, I've been trying to support them."
Though Borders has been an important corporate neighbor in downtown Ann Arbor and a source of hometown pride, Pollay said losing the flagship store would not hurt the area permanently.
"I am a true believer in downtown and its ability to keep evolving."
No comments:
Post a Comment