Towson Bookstores Ponder Borders' Closing

On Monday, Borders, the national bookstore chain,

Borders was one of the original anchors at Towson Commons until the store moved to Timonium in 2005. But its presence, as well as the presence of rival Barnes & Noble in the Towson Circle complex, still provide competition for local shops.

Edward Whitfill, manager of , said Borders' closing wasn't exactly a surprise.

“With everything happening with them in the last year, it was inevitable,” Whitfill said. “It looked like publishers didn’t want to cut deals anymore after they went into bankruptcy, and that’s the heart of the problem.”

Randy Williams, manager of , wasn’t aware of the Borders announcement. “I heard a little while ago that Borders had closed or filed for bankruptcy, but I didn’t realize it would take this long to go through the process,” he said.

In the era of e-readers and online discounters, both say it’s important for brick-and-mortar bookstores to diversify and differentiate themselves in order to succeed.

“To be in this business, you’ve got to have more than one side to your business,” said Whitfill. Ukazoo has a sister company that sells books online through retailers like Amazon. “You could say we started backwards,” he said. “Online was first and the store was second.”

Soon after Legends on East Joppa Road in March, Williams and his wife, Lawan Fuangphon, opened the Thai fusion restaurant Spice and Dice right next door. The two spaces are connected, but have separate entrances and completely different signage. Williams said the businesses complement each other.

“The comic book store has a very loyal customer base, and the restaurant is developing a very loyal customer base,” he said. “They help each other out.”

Why do customers keep coming back to Ukazoo? “Because we’re comfortable,” Whitfill said. “And what we’ve got in the store pretty much changes constantly. Plus, we have a lot of employees who really love books and they want to pass it on.” When members of the staff at Ukazoo make recommendations to customers and get it right, he added, those customers come back for more.

The American Booksellers Association doesn't believe independent stores are in trouble with Borders' closure.

"Rather, it is, in part, an unfortunate right-sizing of a bookstore landscape that has suffered from overexpansion in certain markets," said CEO Oren Telcher in a statement released after Borders' announcement. "Indie bookstores have cultivated strong ties to the local community, curated hand-picked selections of titles, and leveraged well-designed retail spaces to serve book lovers across the country."

Towson resident Matthew Parker said he occasionally visits independent bookstores when looking for hard-to-find books. “You know the chain bookstores are only going to have certain things,” he said. He stopped at Ukazoo on Tuesday evening—his first visit to the store—in search of some older titles. “I thought I’d look here before going online,” he said.  

Williams likened Borders to the Superfresh grocery chain, which recently closed nearly all its stores in Maryland, and called them both victims of online stores and bigger retailers.

“What’s really, really sad about that,” he said, “[is] I think that we are trading away some extremely valuable services provided by retailers in favor of the deepest discount you can get.”

For example, customers go to bookstores not only to shop, but also for the atmosphere, for something to do or to meet other book lovers.

“I don’t know what the future holds for this kind of business,” said Williams. “But if a business like Borders can’t survive, you wonder how other places are going to fare.”