Store Review: Books-A-Million Opens at Former Borders Location

It has been a little more than 50 days from when Borders shut their doors locally and Books-A-Million (BAM) opened up. Sadly, the wait was NOT worth it. 

First, let me say that this is my first experience with this company.  Maybe I really was expecting a lot from this store, but instead got nothing but disappointment.  Certainly, this store is not elegant from the outside when compared to the ones on their website.  It looks just like the Borders it replaced.  The only difference between this store and the former Borders is the name on the building.  It did get a fresh paintjob to cover up where the lettering of Borders was, but remained the same color otherwise. I think the paintjob was probably the most work done to the entire building. 

The metal-rotting fencing still surrounds the café entrance and still looks as bad as ever did.  When you get to the main entrance, you are greeted by the store hours which ironically is the same hours sign that Borders had. 

When you step inside the store, I got the strange feeling I was in Borders with the only difference of the magazine racks shaken up.  Instead of being lined up vertical to the windows, the magazine racks are lined right up to the windows and for the first time ever, the racks were NEAT and STRAIGHT.  I wonder how long this will last…

As I continued to walk around the store, the children’s section is in the same place as the old store as well as the video and cd sections.  What’s worse is that the racks are exactly the same racks used by Borders. No wonder they stopped selling their fixtures when the store was closing.  To make matters worse, some of the racks still had the tags on them from Borders of the sales price of the racks.  I don’t know if this was an oversight or they intend to sell the racks, but either way it didn’t look good.

It took me a few minutes to finally find an employee working out on the sales floor, but I noticed that some of them were former Borders employees.  Naturally, like as with Borders, they were dressed in street clothes, but now they have to wear a stupid black apron.  Don’t this company know that you only wear aprons when cooking or dealing with tools?  A company misstep I believe.  Ironically, but happily, some of employees are Borders employees.  They should feel right at home.

A couple of other things disturbed me as I walked around the store.  First, the counters that used to hold the customer kiosks around the store were still in place, but empty which made them look like empty tables.  I wonder if they ever plan on using these tables or just leave them as is.  The other thing still left over from Borders was the e-reader download station.  The giant red signs atop of the table was still there with two computers sitting on the table, one for employees and the other possibly for customers. 

A small café with 3 tables was located where the old Borders café was located.  Certainly, they need more seating than what they have especially since Borders always was full. 

As I was walking around, I noticed that many of the prices of the cds and dvds were higher than anything I have ever seen anywhere before.  Apparently their supplier requires such ridiculous prices.  In a future post, I will discuss pricing to a great extent.

One thing that will anger former Borders customers is that they charge $20 a year to get a discount on their products.  Certainly, in these times asking for that amount is steep considering the payoff.  I will be discussing the topic of membership cards as well in length also in a future post.  I didn’t make a purchase in this store because I didn’t want to feel obligated to get one of their cards.

Before I left the store, I went into the bathroom to see if that had any improvements.  Sad to say, there were none.  The same broken soap dispenser on the wall, the same broken toilet paper roll, and the same broken paper towel dispensers greeted me all around.  Interestingly, Borders had the bathrooms shut down the last 3 weeks of being in business, which made me think they were going to remodel the bathrooms.  No luck on that one at all.  Probably the single biggest disappointment in my whole trip to this store.

Overall, after 50 days, it looks like only about 5 minutes of remodeling was done to the store.  It reminds me of when Office Depot moved in where the old Kids-R-Us store used to be located-just another temporary location.  They moved out just after a year..it was obvious they never had any intention lasting any longer than that.  BAM seems to look like this same tragic potential if they don’t improve.

Pluses:

• Finally a local bookstore to replace Borders
• Displays look nice

Minuses:

• Looks exactly like Borders inside
• Fixtures broken in bathroom
• Membership not free
• Prices way too high
• Empty tables and odd fixtures remaining from Borders

Summary:

This is certainly not a good impression for this company entering into the northern part of the country.  If they think that keeping the store to look a lot like Borders, they are mistaken.  Sadly, there is no “WOW” factor in this store, just a lot of “ho-hum, been there, seen that”.  If you loved Borders, you will be right at home here, just stay away from the expensive membership card.

Grade:

• Store layout: B
• Pricing: F
• Helpfulness of Employees: F
• Functionality: F

Final Grade:  F   -- NOT RECOMMENDED