!!!
I just thought maybe he was mixing Valley’s “Disney” with something else.
Nice! Been a long time
Remaining 101 Brookstone mall stores dead.
The mall and airport seller, best known for massage chairs, quirky gadgets, and travel luggage, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court on Thursday. It was Brookstone’s second bankruptcy round in four years. The company will keep its 35 airport stores and website open and running while it attempts to find a buyer.
It has secured a $30 million loan to finance operations during the sale. In a bankruptcy filing, Brookstone said it had liabilities totaling up to $500 million and assets between $50 to $100 million.
Brookstone’s CEO said in a statement that its airport and online businesses were successful, but an “extremely challenging retail environment at malls” forced the company to close its stores there.
Piece by piece, the world I grew up in is dying.
By criminy, soon there won’t be any blacksmiths left at all.
A dark day indeed…
How will I get my claymore sharpened when it gets dull?
No idea. I’m still trying to find a wheelwright with a decent spokeshave on retainer in this stupid town.
Now I’m envisioning a hipster in 50 years with a hobbyist Brookstone recreation in his garage.
With Barnes & Noble currently having 627 store locations, this deal works out to a little more than a million dollars each. And perhaps their online store and Nook divisions were tossed in free.
Yeah, this is a fire sale. They must have been in imminent danger of collapse. But Waterstones is doing badly too, and if Singer isn’t personally invested in the survival of these companies, the natural thing for the management firm will be to vulture and destroy them, blaming Brexit and Amazon respectively.
Yes, I expect he purchased B&N for its retail locations, which will be sold off for a profit.
I mean listen, I’m a HUGE reader. I used to buy maybe 40-50 books per year, as a child at mall bookstores, then in the early 2000s at Amazon, and then once the Kindle came out I switched 100% to ebooks. I live in NYC and walk within a block of the flagship Barnes & Noble on Union Square every day in my commute to work.
I haven’t been inside it in 10 years.
If we have a recession in the next two years a lot of these marginal retailers will go belly up (JC Pennys, GameStop, B&N). I think Best Buy survives by the skin of its teeth just because a lot of people really don’t want to shop for electronics at Walmart.
I am reading claims now that the acquisition was honestly good for Waterstones, so it’s possible the new ownership will try to fix B&N instead of simply wrecking it as expected.
There’s nothing to fix. They’re selling buggy whips.
Print sales continue to dominate ebooks for the major publishers, for what it’s worth.
I’m the same way. There is a B&N I pass regularly I loved to go in. Once the iPad came out I went 100% digital. There is a small independent bookstore I love kinda near me. I go every now and then and buy a tchotchke or something.
It pains me that I don’t go there anymore. I really wish there was some mechanism I could buy a paper book at a seller and get an ebook copy as well.
Yeah I agree. I’m kind of surprised publishers didn’t bundle these things for a set price. You know, buy the physical book, get a copy of the ebook and an audiobook with it. Amazon sort of does it, often offering the audiobook at a discount when you buy the ebook.