Admitting Defeat

While the order in which they are listed might be constantly shifting, the movies that make up my personal "Top 10" list remain pretty constant. One of the films on that list is "Gladiator". Among the many reasons I love this movie is because it grabs your right from the opening battle sequence. I can't stand movies that take forever to get to the plot. I've seen the trailer, I know this is about a guy attempting to break out of prison, so don't waste 45 minutes before he even gets to trial. Anyway, some of "Gladiator"'s best lines are in the first 20 minutes of the movie. One of my favorites is when the Roman general is looking over at the small army of Germanics up against the legion and says, "People should know when they're conquered." Because of how my brain works this line was stuck in my head the entire time I was walking around a Borders bookstore this afternoon. Allow me to clarify (or at least try to - attempting to explain how my brain makes the transitions it does is a huge undertaking):

Over the past few months Borders has been slowly closing store after store while trying to avoid complete bankruptcy. Unfortunately, their plan didn't work and they could not find a buyer for the company, so last week they announced they were going to close the remaining stores and go totally out of business. Therefore they needed to sell off their entire inventory. They said they were going to start selling everything off immediately and discounts could be as high as 40% off, so if you had your eye on something you had better get to a store soon. Now, as someone who fancies himself a writer I not only felt bad about another bookstore biting the dust, but buying books at a huge discount feels a little like stealing from other writers. Then again, I'm not an idiot; I don't personally know any of these writers and a huge sale is a huge sale, so I swung by my local Borders this afternoon looking for deals.

My first indication this was not going to go how I thought it would came when the sign out front read "Up To 40% Off" but once I went inside I found out most of the books and movies were only 10%-20% off. Alright, a little bait and switch to get people in the door, but a sale is a sale so I started looking around for books I might be interested in. I expected the pickings to be slim, but despite the announced sell-off the store still seemed to be very well stocked. It wasn't until I picked up the first book I was interested in that I not only realised why the store still had so much product left, but also remembered why I rarely went into a Borders before the announced they were closing stores: their prices are ridiculous.

Most of the books I looked at were still very expensive, to the point that even with the 20% off I would still find them cheaper online and that would included shipping and handling. Prime example: there was a DVD copy of "The Town". Now, this movie is on my "To Buy" list but I just hadn't gotten around to it yet and I figured now was a perfect time. I picked it up to discover at Borders a DVD costs $28. Even with 20% off it still cost around $22, which remains about $5 more than I would pay for the same thing at a Best Buy or Newbury Comics. Um, Borders, I don't think you understand how a "Going Out Of Business" sale works.

See, you lost. You have no leverage. You're the one who is not going to be around much longer, so you can't really drive a hard bargain here. At some point you just have to be rid of this stuff because you can't take it with you or ship it to another store and the consumers know it. When the sign on the door says "everything must go" people are less concerned about what they are buying and more about how much it costs. Maybe I want to read a specific book, but if it costs $10 more than some other book about the same subject, guess which one I'm buying? I can wait you out and swing back around in a couple weeks when the selection might be less but the discounts will be greater. If you're actually interested in selling this stuff off you should be a bit more realistic.

I guess, given that this chain is going out of business because they thought things like "Internet shopping" and "e-readers" were passing fads, I shouldn't expect a lot of sound business decisions from them. Still, jacking up prices and offering "discounts" that don't actual translate to savings while you're going out of business is a little like having a yard sale and then insisting everyone pay retail store prices for your stuff. What is going to end up happening is people will wait it out and suddenly you're begging them to take things away for less than they offered you earlier because you just don't have the energy to put it back in the garage. Borders, it's time to admit you've been conquered.