Borders Planning Superstore on Lohr

[nofunk]

Borders has announced plans to open a new superstore in the old CompUSA space by early 2008:

http://www.mlive.com/annarbor/stories/inde....xml&coll=2

[mgman]

Are they going to close the one in Briarwood. Aren't there enough Border's around. I guess this is the first step in their restructuring plan. Hopefully this superstore will carry a larger inventory of books, they never have the books I want. They want me to order it but I can just do that from home. They also need to lower the price of the books, I think that is one reason all of the book stores are doing poorly and the publishing industry. $30 for a book is too much.

[wolverine]

This should be interesting. The CompUSA unit is pretty large.

[nofunk]

Are they going to close the one in Briarwood. Aren't there enough Border's around. I guess this is the first step in their restructuring plan. Hopefully this superstore will carry a larger inventory of books, they never have the books I want. They want me to order it but I can just do that from home. They also need to lower the price of the books, I think that is one reason all of the book stores are doing poorly and the publishing industry. $30 for a book is too much.

[mgman]

The store in Briarwood is a Borders Express, not a full Borders Superstore. It's actually about time Borders opened a store on the west side. The Borders Express naturally carries fewer titles, but Borders Superstores carry about 110,000 titles, while B&N only carries about 80,000, so I'm not sure about your gripe when it comes to not finding what you're looking for. Maybe you're just unlucky when you go into Borders.

Also, book retailers do not set the prices on the books they sell; prices are set by the publishers. So if you want to argue that Borders needs to lower its prices, then you need to argue that B&N does too. Actually, you really need to direct that towards publishers. The only reason why Amazon can offer books for lower prices is because they can discount everything, since they have significantly lower overhead.

Yeah, it's a bit large for a typical Borders store. Rumor has it they will be turning this into a concept store.

[detwaa84]

Is this in the downtown area?

[nofunk]

No. Southwest corner of town near I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Rd.

[mgman]

Went to Best Buy this weekend and saw the outside of the new borders. There were a bunch of cars out in front and all the lights were on, they must have been stocking or training. It looked as if it was close to opening but I did not see anything that announced a date. I must admit I was skeptical about this plan considering how poorly Borders is doing financially, but I was excited seeing how big the store was and seeing the warm glow emanating from the postered up windows.

(There is something wrong when I need spell checker to change 20 percent of the words on such a small post. I need to go to bed early or get some new hands that are better at typing.)

[nofunk]

The store will be opening on Feb. 14.

[Eridony]

So what does this new store look like? Did they take the original store and leave it looking pretty much the same, or did they give the facade a makeover? Also, from the title of the thread it makes me think this store is larger than a normal Borders. Is that true? If it is true, does anyone know what the extra space will be used for? Additional Titles? Larger Cafe?

[nofunk]

The store is a complete change from the old design. You can see pictures here:

http://www.bgimediacenter.com/ConceptMediaRoom.html#

The new store on Lohr is larger than a normal store, but not all will be.

[Eridony]

Thanks for that link nofunk. It's a good looking store, it looks like the store includes many digital elements.