On September 26, 2011 the federal bankruptcy court approved the sale of Borders’ brand trademarks, domain names, and customer lists to Barnes & Noble for approximately $14 million, sold through an action involving 50 rounds of bidding.
Where was Amazon?
Should Amazon have bought Borders’ assets, including its trademarks, domain names (including Waldenbooks), and its customer information, including mailing addresses and emails? What do you think?
On September 26, 2011 the federal bankruptcy court approved the sale of Borders’ brand trademarks, domain names, and customer lists to Barnes & Noble for approximately $14 million. The true value of the sale was just shy of $16 million but a bookseller — in Malaysia! — bought the remaining assets totaling approximately $2 million. As a result, Barnes & Noble received customer information, mailing lists, and all the traffic resulting from www.borders.com – it now forwards directly to barnesandnoble.com.
These assets were offered in an auction. So one has to ask, why didn’t Amazon buy them? Here are some thoughts: Amazon probably already has all the customer information Borders.com was offering. But wouldn’t the domain names redirecting to Amazon.com be something Jeff Bezos & Co. would value? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Here’s a comparison of the website traffic for borders.com, barnesandnoble.com, and amazon.com, courtesy of our friends at Alexa:
Perhaps Amazon felt the Borders.com domain name was not very valuable. And this chart below can demonstrate perhaps why Barnes & Noble did … their traffic is at least in the same ball park, once you remove Amazon from the scale:
What do you think? Should Amazon have bought Borders’ assests rather than allowing Barnes & Noble to take ownership of them? I’ll open up a public poll tomorrow…
So have you tried to buy anything from Borders.com lately? As you probably know, Borders declared bankruptcy over the summer and began liquidating their stores shortly thereafter, but their website presence remained unchanged, at least at the time.
No longer. Type in www.borders.com and you’re taken to a landing page on the Barnes & Noble website.
This isn’t a page on borders.com referring to a redirect. The redirect is happening at the domain level, taking the user to barnesandnoble.com. Wow.
As a part of their bankruptcy, Borders opened their customer information and domain names to bidders in an auction. ( Hmm, I wonder why they didn’t use e-bay…) The auction involved 50 rounds of bidding and included both booksellers and online retailers. Apparently Barnes & Noble paid $13.9 million.
Which makes you wonder whether or not Amazon was a part of the bidding. And I’ll look into why Amazon perhaps didn’t care too much about the borders.com domain name next time…
Borders Books filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on February 16th, and plans to close approximately 200 of its stores.
How does this affect those who are holding Borders coupons and gift cards? The company says it will continue to honor those at stores that remain open, but recommends shoppers use their coupons and gift cards as fast as possible.
Clearance sales at Borders superstores (which are among the 200 locations to close) already began this past weekend. Here is a list of the stores planned to close, according to Borders Group. The stores on this list are expected to close by April:
http://www.bordersreorganization.com/Reorganization_Closure_List.pdf
Borders.com will remain operational as Borders attempts to refocus on ebooks and non-book related items. Outskirts Press books with a 50-55+ Price Plan (trade discount) and the retail returns option will continue to be distributed and sold through Borders.com. Our distribution to Ingram, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the rest, are not affected by the Borders bankruptcy.
President of Outskirts Press 