Borders are down.

[MrMark]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8376394.stm

[Tingles]

Mrs T got an email lastnight saying they were about to go under within 24hours.

[Jeebo72]

Mrs Jeebo bought £50 worth of book tokens from them yesterday!

[alreadypacked]

They have already closed some of their stores, can't be long for the rest.

[DimPrawn]

Borders are down.

Have been since 1997.

[TimberWolf]

Shame, I used to like going in there to read their books. Still Waterstone's may be just as good. Hope they keep the comfy chairs.

[MrMark]

Shame, I used to like going in there to read their books. Still Waterstone's may be just as good. Hope they keep the comfy chairs.

I quite liked Borders but you can see why they're in the sticky brown stuff. Can't earn much from the trendy student/grad set who'd spend an hour reading a book (which they didn't buy) before heading off for a flappycruppocino in the coffee shop. Most folk would tend to buy books/CDs via Amazon or even Tesco.

This country is getting worse day after day. I may simply stop leaving home at all.

[threaded]

Shop rents and business rates in the UK are scandalous. This means only the stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap brigade and charity shops (who don't have to pay) get a chance on the high street.

If someone could structure a company like Borders as a charity, they'd stand in line to make an awful lot of money.

[snaw]

This country is getting worse day after day. I may simply stop leaving home at all.

world

It's the same everywhere, internet is killing the high street of most advanced economies. I miss it from an aesthetic viewpoint, and there's something nice about browsing through bookshelves looking for books to buy. But I can save shedloads off amazon, and by 90% of my books from it these days.

[swamp]

Shop rents and business rates in the UK are scandalous. This means only the stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap brigade and charity shops (who don't have to pay) get a chance on the high street.

If landlords gave cheap rents to some interesting, independent shops to act as anchor tenants for the whole street, they would get more punters and better rents overall. Councils don't help either with punitive parking charges.