Waldenbooks in Northwoods Mall is closing for good this month.
Waldenbooks’ parent company Borders Group, Inc., released a statement in November 2009 that it would be closing 200 Waldenbooks stores this month in order to improve the chain’s profitability. Borders Group, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, lost $39 million the third quarter of 2009. Border Group CEO Ron Marshall explained, “Through this right-sizing, we will reduce the number of stores with operating losses, reduce our overall rent expense and lease-adjusted leverage and generate cash flow through sales and working capital reductions.”
Also closing this month are Waldenbooks stores in Aurora, Calumet City, Danville, Gurnee, Joliet, Lincolnwood, Marion, and Sterling. The Waldenbooks in Galesburg closed a year ago this month. The Borders superstore in the Shoppes at Grand Prairie is unaffected.
The history of Waldenbooks in a nutshell: In 1933, Lawrence W. Holt and Melvin T. Kafka founded a company “they believed would help people cope with the effects of the Depression. Specifically, Holt and Kafka’s new company lent popular books for three cents a day, saving people the cost of purchasing.” This sounds similar to the way we rent movies and video games today. Once cheap paperback books started being published in the 1950s, Kafka retired and Hoyt took over the company. In 1962, the company started opening retail stores — selling books instead of renting them. It was named after the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. The company was acquired by a retail conglomerate called Carter Hawley Hale in 1969. It was acquired by many other companies over the years, including K-Mart, which also acquired Borders. In 1995, Borders and Waldenbooks initiated a public offering, eventually buying out K-Mart’s ownership interest.
I’m not sure when Waldenbooks opened in Northwoods Mall, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were an original tenant. It’s been there as long as I can remember. Its departure will leave Northwoods without any bookstore. The mall’s other bookstore, B. Dalton Booksellers, closed several years ago after its parent company, Barnes & Noble, built a superstore in the Glen Hollow shopping center.
Its to bad because this is where I go when my wife wants to spend an hour or more at the gap. I now have no idea what I am going to do when at Northwoods mall. As far as a bookstore I never bought anything there so it really just served as a free library. I do most of my book buying at B&N or The Book Nook.
Waldenbooks was not the original bookstore at that location. I think it was called Book Market and I am not sure who owned it, perhaps Borders? I also seem to remember that another store was originally at that spot in Northwoods.
There are some awesome deals to be found there right now!
The mall hasn’t been the same ever since the Orange Bowl left.
Wasn’t it called the Orange Julius??
Second Chance Books on Prospect also closed this month.
Somehow the closing of bookstores seems a sad commentary on society. Maybe e-books and audio books are part of the reason, but I suspect that bookselling in general is a shrinking maket.
The issue is not e-books. The issue today in book selling is how little the average person reads. Over half of college graduates will never read an additional book in their lifetime. Something like 2% of the adult population will read 1 book or more this year. There are several large cities that no longer have a single bookstore. I would have to say that I doubt if Borders survives the year. Others may survive longer but currents trends would lead me to doubt if any survive the next 10 years.
However, Barnes and Noble seems to be busy whenever I’m there–but its clientele is still a very small percentage of the population. I do believe, however, that people who go to the mall don’t go to bookstores. Before Barnes and Noble, however, I stopped at Dalton’s whenever I was at the mall.
I have an app on my I-Phone that gives me 150 titles for just just 2 dollars. My daughter has a Kindle that can load up to 1500 titles. It might seem that book stores will have to contend with this type of sales competition
Sharon take a quick look at the financial health of Barnes and Noble and you will see that being “busy” and selling books are not the same thing. If you think Barnes is “busy” feel free to buy their stock, you can get a great deal on it.