When Borders announced back in November that it would be closing 200 Waldenbooks, Borders Outlet, and Borders Express bookstores nationwide, only 3 Houston stores were on that list: the Waldenbooks in Willowbrook Mall, Houston Center, and the Northwest Mall. Not included: the Borders Books & Music in the former Houston Jewelry building at 9633 Westheimer, at the corner of Gessner. But employees have apparently been telling customers for months that that store would be closing in January. And now a reader reports that “Store Closing” sale signs are up in the windows. The shopping center, says an employee, is being redeveloped. Last day of business: January 16th.
- Borders To Close 200 Bookstores [Consumerist]
Photo: Hennie Schaper
No surprise here. They have been loosing money hand over fist while B&N and Amazon tore them apart.
The link below is to an interesting article regarding the 10 brands that may disappear in 2010. Borders is one of them.
http://tinyurl.com/yfbyd4f
Harassment in the parking lot by people who “ran out of gas” stopped me from going there a long time ago.
Over the last year, they’ve only had a fraction of the merchandise that they carried in the past. It was obvious that they were trying to spread it out to look like more. Late this summer I noticed that they had pulled their magazines. Since magazine distributors give you credit for unsold copies there is no way to lose, except by not paying your bills.
Didn’t this store used to take up more of the building? I seem to remember this store, when it first opened, being vast. I believe the Meyerland store was much bigger, when it first opened, too.
your list is small
http://retailindustry.about.com/od/statisticsresearch/a/storeclosings09.htm
Sad. I remember when this store opened and it was a big deal. I worked at the Meyerland store and we were jealous. I went into both store recenelt and was shocked at the lack of merchandise. The stores shelves were so empty which was a surprise as we always prided ourselves on having a wider selection and more obscure titles than B&N. At the Westheimer store I was literally the only customer.
An employee at the Westheimer/Gessner Borders recently told me that they were relocating further down Westheimer outside Beltway 8.
Employees are saying that HEB bought the property. Not too far-fetched considering it’s equidistant from the Fountainview and Kirkwood HEBs, and across the street from a Randall’s. As a Tanglewilde resident and fan of HEB, I really hope this is true.
I used to work at this location. For 5 years. I still have the initial fax from our CEO at the time, Greg Jascifowitz(?), who notified us of “planes hitting our World Trade Center location…”. Weird. Places are like people, when they die you start to remember so many things…. I will miss this place and the people I worked with.
I am going back to real retail shopping due to fake products coming from so called trusted internet stores. Recently I received a fake copy of The Hunger Games book with so many mistakes in the story that it was insanely stupid that anyone would try to pass it off as the book….. When I caught mistakes in books at Barnes and Noble they were happy to replace the items because their book mistakes were price issues, not entire chapters missing?