Back around 1995 and through about 2001 I used to love Borders Books.  The thing that made Borders unique to me was their broad selection of IT books.  I mean there were literally like 6 aisles of books and it covered everything.  If I needed a book, Borders was where to get it.  The part I didn’t like was that Borders price matched the publishers suggested price, no discount.  But this was okay, it was the premium I paid to find what I wanted in one place.  Then Amazon showed up and rained on their parade.

Now it wasn’t like Amazon came in with some sort of sneak attack.  They came in and telegraphed their punch.  The telegraphed it so well that my two year old son could have gotten out of the way.  But what did Borders do?  They did a lot things but most of it was half hearted or halfway thought out.  The following are the main reasons why Amazon sank Borders:

1. Larger catalog – if the books is published then you can get it on Amazon
2. Price – most every book has a discount to it.
3. Free shipping – we are Prime members and get our stuff within 1 to 2 days.
4. Website – easy to navigate, consistent feel.
5. Reviews – you can search for a book on a topic and see how others viewed it
6. Tax Free – enough said
7. Used Books – even a better discount
8. Seller Accounts – extremely easy to get rid of those unused/unwanted books

Now Borders did try and compete with them but seriously, they had NO chance.  There is no way that Borders was going to pull this together with all of their existing store investments, they would have gone broke trying.  There was one thing that Borders has that Amazon can’t compete with; a physical presence.  Borders should have looked at Taco Bell’s strategy of Zero-K and re-invented themselves.

For those of you who are not familiar with Zero-K, it goes like this.  Taco Bell in the 70’s-80’s was a fast food restaurant.  By that I mean that 50-70 percent of each store was Kitchen and they made their own food.  They cooked their ground beef, they prepared their toppings.  Burritos had Black Olives.  Cinnamon Twists were Crispas, cooked tortilla pieces.  Taco Bell had great food.  But as other fast food restaurants were killing them on price and margins (sound familiar).  So in what has always been talked about as a great example of re-engineering they changed what they did.

Zero-K means Zero Kitchen.  What they decided to do was eliminate all of the food prep part of their kitchen and go to pre-prepared food.  Delivery trucks sent the bags of shredded lettuce, pre-cooked ground beef, bags of Cinnamon Twists.  This meant all they needed was the assembly stations and the rest of the store was for the customers.  This also meant they lowered their product costs and created the now famous $1.00 menu.  Mind you the food quality is no where near what it used to be but good enough and cheap enough that they have experienced 20-30 more years of being successful.

I’m hungry now, but back to Borders.  Borders should have looked at taking all that space they had in each store and coming up with successful ways to use and sell it to customers.  Meeting spaces?  Readings?  Childrens events?  Borders should have seen that the eventually technology was going to get to the point of personal readers and been leading the charge.  But no, they sat on the laurels too long and for the past 5 years have been on death row and labeled dead men walking.  Today, the warden called them up, served their last meals, and on Friday will sent to the big chair.

Borders is now a statistic along with Blockbuster Video, and Circuit City.  I will say this here and now, Best Buy is sitting on death row as well and soon will be off to the big chair.  Maybe they will learn something from this.