Borders is dead, but the corps isn’t quite picked clean just yet.
Borders’ bankruptcy lawyers have filed new paperwork this week, and now we know that Borders is about to part with its last significant asset: its share in Kobo.
Last month Kobo was sold to Rakuten. The total deal was worth $315 million, with Kobo’s parent company Indigo getting somewhere around half. The rest is due to be split among the lesser shareholders, including the company formerly known as Borders.
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The Borders bankruptcy saga is winding to a close, and it’s about to go into its final weeks.
One of the last parts of Borders was sold off earlier this week: the IP. The liquidator specialists Hilco Streambank supervised the sale of the Borders name, URL, as well as other brand names that Borders own (B. Daltons,Waldenbooks, etc). The total raised was around $15 million. There’s no word yet on who bought the Borders name, just that Barnes & Noble were one of the bidders. Update: And that B&N bought most of the IP.
We won’t find out who bought what until Tuesday, and that raises an interesting question. What if someone bought the Borders website and name just to bring it back from the grave? It’s certainly possible. That’s not such a stretch because it’s happened before.
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And the staff are working nearly 60 hour weeks to get the stock cleared out.
I’ve just read a comment left in the LiveJournal community iWorkAtBorders. One distribution center worker dropped by let us know that as bad as the retail employees have it, other have it worse.
DCdummy reported that the staff at his DC were working 10 hour shifts 5 days a week with an extra 8 hours tacked on Saturday. What’s worse is that they’re working in metal and concrete box with 100 degree temperatures outside and no air conditioning.
Borders’ 399 retail stores are scheduled to close by the end of August, so it’s a little puzzling that the warehouse would need to get all the stock cleared out first. I would have thought that the warehouse would close last; I would have thought that that’s where the last unsold dregs of stock would be collected and sold off to discounters.
Does anyone know why the warehouses are closing first?
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Apparently the post I wrote early today had jumped the gun, because it wasn’t until this afternoon that the liquidation became official. Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan signed off on the plan around 3 this afternoon.
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They’re not wasting any time. A member of IworkAtBorders, a support group for Borders employees, posted late last night that:
So we got the answers we have been waiting for today…. Liquidation starts Friday, we should see the liquidator Thursday or Friday. That’s it. Thanks again AA for the chewed up bone you have thrown us yet once again before you kick us to the curb.
“AA” is a reference to Borders corporate HQ, and it refers to Ann Arbor, MI. Elsewhere on that forum a member has noted that all of Borders 399 remaining are already listed on DJM Realty’s Borders property list, including Waldenbooks, Borders Express, and the airport stores.
So I guess that’s it. You can check your local Borders on Friday, but I’m not sure you’ll see any signs put up. Finding the signage for 400 stores might be a little difficult. Sales will likely start at 10% off retail, so Amazon will actually be the better price at the time.
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They’ve also reduced the number of e-readers they sell.
Borders launched their Area-e, the store department where they promote eBooks and e-readers, last year with the stated goal of having the broadest selection of e-readers anywhere in the US. There was talk of having 10 or more models on display for customers to try.
Sidenote: this grandiose plan would not have been possible in some stores, particularly the ones where the Area-e was a little kiosk.
I’ve just come across another list of store closures which Borders released just yesterday. Once again, I have made a map, and it’s embedded after the break. The stores on this map will be closing in late May.
It looks like 4 clusters, doesn’t it? I don’t think the ones in the midwest are close enough to qualify as clusters – just the 7 in the Northeast and the 7 in CA.
Out of the 228 stores, California is losing the most, with a grand total of 42 (35 before plus 7 now). After that Illinois and Florida lost the most with 17 and 16 stores closing, respectively.
And the downward slide continues…
There was a conference call this afternoon that was led by Borders Group President Mike Edwards. One of the details he mentioned was that up to 75 more stores are on the chopping block next week. The additional closures come from a group of 140 stores that “have been identified as on the bubble stores.” All stores in this group are the superstores that everyone thought was a good idea back in the ’90s.
So by the end of next week Borders could be down from 633 stores to 360 odd, which would leave the chain with about 57% of the stores it had in January.
It’s a pity that Mike won’t be required to take a a similar cut in salary; It would be poetic justice for having run Borders into the ground.
Did you know that Borders’ former VP of E-Business used to run Tower Records?
Mike Cane left a comment yesterday on my post about how Borders screwed up e-readers. He wondered what happened to Kevin Ertell, who at the time was VP of E-Business at Borders. About 3 years ago Kevin had left a comment on Mike’s blog, but Mike never heard from him since. [Read more →]
I finally had a chance to go to the nearest closing Borders today. It’s down in Stafford VA, which is too far for me to drive most of the time.
I expected to see the usual chaos of a closing store: long lines, books dumped wherever, shelved books in disarray. But what I didn’t expect to see was this. [Read more →]
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