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rfmcdonaldThis blogTO post about the soon-to-be-closed World's Biggest Bookstore by former employee Sarah Khan has gotten wide circulation. This linking is not endorsement.
All I'll say is that successful bookstores--or at least surviving bookstores--are ones that have diversified beyond selling only books. For a generation, the World's Biggest Bookstore filled a niche until that niche disappeared, something not aided by the very large floorspace of the bookstore in the Yonge and Dundas area where rents have been rising. Blaming the company for not supporting a store that wasn't likely to make money no matter what was done when--in fact--the company did support the store for quite some time is nonsensical to me.
All I'll say is that successful bookstores--or at least surviving bookstores--are ones that have diversified beyond selling only books. For a generation, the World's Biggest Bookstore filled a niche until that niche disappeared, something not aided by the very large floorspace of the bookstore in the Yonge and Dundas area where rents have been rising. Blaming the company for not supporting a store that wasn't likely to make money no matter what was done when--in fact--the company did support the store for quite some time is nonsensical to me.
Rumours circulated the entire time I worked there about the future of the store. Rumour always had it that Indigo's CEO, Heather Reisman, wouldn't agree to renew the lease for the store. The former Coles flagship store, the property was owned by the Cole family who make a tidy sum charging rent for the massive downtown location. However, running a bookstore (especially one of that size) is a losing venture in today's world of eBooks and digital magazines and the Cole family was wise to sell off the property.
I'm guessing the trouble really started when eBooks starting becoming a big thing. People were enamoured with the new technology and the ease of carrying around a library of books without the weight, but that meant that brick and mortar stores were becoming obsolete. While the United States saw the closing of Borders bookstores across the country, Canada fared better with many of the large format Chapters and Indigo stores remaining open. Reisman's attempts at diversification of products sold have thus far kept most of the stores in the chain from succumbing to the same fate. However, in the process, she has partially abandoned books.
While we had an impressive selection of books, magazines and DVDs, we couldn't say the same for our gift merchandise. In fact, when I started there we had no gift merchandise, but rather a clearance section where all the unsellable gift items from other Indigo stores came to die. This clearance section was the bane of everyone's existence because it was hell to keep tidy and there would always been customers who were dissatisfied with the heavy discount they were already getting and demand more.
When Reisman brought in more gift items to keep brick and mortar stores going, we started getting first hand merchandise as well as an attempt to prove to everyone that we could survive as a book and gift store. But the truth was, we couldn't.
[. . .]
To be honest, I never actually suspected that the company would decide to close the store down, regardless of the trouble we had keeping up. I always, naively, suspected that the company would finally realize that we were unlike their other cookie-cutter stores and would hold us to different, fairer standards. At the same time, having been under their regime for five years, I knew in my heart of hearts that the store would never be given the same love and attention as the other stores. We were the black sheep of the Indigo family, the odd man out. We were an embarrassment and it seemed like the company was going out of its way to make us fail just so they'd have a reason to shut us down.
