my local borders has been closed for over a year now so so this came to no saprise to me when The Wall Street Journal reports that Borders is preparing to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The filing could be processed as early as Monday, which will lead to 200 to 250 store closures, This sounds terrible, and it really is. However, it’s definitely not as bad as it could be.
First, I’d like to get the concrete facts out of the way. Borders will close 200 stores, or roughly 1/3 of its entire retail presence. The company has been fearing a liquidity crisis for some time now, and showed roughy $500 million in debt at the end of fiscal 2008. Borders hired AlixPartners to help the ailing corporation turn itself around, and has been consulting with bankruptcy advisors in an attempt to weather this storm.
Now… how does this apply to anime fandom?
Frankly, this is 200 to 250 locations that stocked deeply on manga, completely gone. Eliminated from the market. Or, to put a relative spin on things, this is a quarter of the total closings in the Musicland incident, and two and a half times the number of stores lost when Tower Records closed up. This will absolutely hurt in the short term. Publishers across the spectrum will be impacted (well, maybe not Digital Manga, but that’s another story entirely). At the same time, we will no doubt hear a few stories going forward about falling profits, layoffs, or worse.
now there is a silver lining to all this and that is that over 200 stores will be having liquidation sails be for they close there doors for good and this will allow just just anime fans but fans of reading in general to stock up on a ton of books so if you have a borders in your town and it looks like its going to be one of the ones that will be closing do not miss thos sails
