What caused Borders Singapore to close?
Once a star performer, Borders Singapore suffered from poor book selection and image
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In its heyday, the Borders bookstore at Wheelock Place was the top-earning outlet of all the Borders chain stores. It pipped the other 1,200 stores worldwide and emerged tops in terms of sales dollars per sq ft.
That was in 2006. Last week, it closed shop, following the fate of the American and Australian stores, and went under judicial management.
What went wrong for this once-thriving bookstore that had changed book-selling in Singapore when it opened its 32,000 sq ft store in 1997?
Background story
'Why pay for a full-price book when you can wait for the 40 per cent discount, especially when it happens with such frequency?'
Mr Christopher Tong, a senior operations manager at Harris and a former manager at Borders
Consumers say they have been turned off by Borders' poor book selection and proliferation of non-book products - including toys and cookware - in the past few years.
