The Beloved and I had our weekly Date Night on Friday, and we went for noodles at a nearby mall. The mall is undergoing extensive renovations right now and, in addition to the expansion, it has added some high-end retail to its existing floor space. This is a mall with one of Canada’s only nine Microsoft stores!
Anyway, as we passed by the Indigo, we came across this sign:
"Renovations aren’t always easy. We’ll be closing our book section on the second floor from May 28 to June 4. American Girl, IndigoKids and Starbucks are still open."
Um, excuse me? Anyone who thinks that the stand-alone ‘bookstore’ is still a viable business model should take note at what Indigo—Canada’s only book chain—is telling us here. The ‘book’ store is closing the entire book section for its renovation?
At least they took some pains to keep the actually profitable sections of the store open during the renovations, right? Clearly, they are banking their future on the toys, and the coffee for the adults who will be buying them.
Correction: Whoops—some stores were AWOL from this post originally. Actually, rather than just one Microsoft store in Canada, there are nine. Thanks, freejiva!
You mean aside from the 7 other Microsoft stores in Canada? http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/store/locations/
Some research and accurate reporting would be nice.
Amazon is never closed.
This is one of the reasons why I don’t think that ‘Showrooming books is shoplifting’.
When I go to a bricks and mortar “bookstore” to look at books that I will then buy online, I am giving the store owner the chance to sell me any number of home decor items, tchotchkes, games, electronic devices, and other non-book stuff. Actual “books” are now a small part of the store’s business.
If the owner is being honest, he/she would admit that having me enter the store at all is worth it to them, even if I do buy ebooks online instead of buying paper books from their store.
@freejiva: Big thanks for the catch. Keep the feedback coming—we all err at times, but accuracy counts! I’ve changed Joanna’s copy after discovering via the supplied Web address that there are nine Microsoft stores in Canada.
David The Hardly Infallible