Bad Times at Borders

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com; it then brought in even more cash from web-crazed investors through an initial public offering. After the bubble popped, the parent company quietly reabsorbed the website. Today, its online selling arm, while tiny compared to amazon.com, is a success: barnesandnoble.com has sales of $500 million a year, equal to the sales of about eighty of its stores.

The two chains’ Ann Arbor stores feel very different. The Barnes & Noble store on Washtenaw Avenue seems serious and bookish, with its dark wood cases and library tables. It offers ample magazines, a wide array of religious and children’s books, and a bright, sunlit Starbucks. It sells journals and cards, as Borders does, but skips many of the gift items that are increasingly showing up at Borders stores.

Borders downtown on Liberty Street, by contrast, is more like a department store, filled with sale signs, accessories, and impulse buys. Yoga mats and small weights sit near exercise and health books. The children’s department stocks toys and puzzles, kids’ tea sets, and kits to make pot holders as well as Goodnight Moon and Curious George books. Displays of lip balm, action figures, and candy dot the aisles.

While the add-ons promise greater profits, a worker complains that they’ve also “dumbed down” the store and undermined its destination appeal. “They’re grasping at straws,” says another person who has worked at a number of stores and at headquarters, “looking for the next big thing, since book sales are flat.”