Here’s What to Expect at the Liquidation Sale at Border’s in Falls Church

Here we go again.  Another big fire sale on books and other merchandise is underway at Borders---this time in , Fairfax, Springfield, Manassas, Pentagon City in Arlington and other northern Virginia locations, instead of Friendship Heights in Chevy Chase in Northwest DC.

We’ve already been through this fire drill over here in our precincts when Borders’ popular store on Wisconsin Ave NW frequented by Washington Post columnist George Will, the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman and other media celebs closed down for good and sold all their books and merchandise.  Some of the stuff was unloaded at nickels and dimes on the dollar.

So here’s the game plan of what to expect as Borders as the Columbia superstore over the next few weeks or so.

At the outset, discounts being offered will range from 20 percent to 40 percent with popular items such as children’s books, cookbooks and the like marked down only 20 percent.  Other slower-moving items, for example legal books or more academic-oriented material will likely get the 40 percent discounts right out of the starting gate this weekend. 

As the clock ticks down toward final shutdown of the store, probably in September, the discounts will get much steeper.  But here’s the catch: a lot of the best stuff will be gone.

When the Friendship Heights store was shuttered in April, I first scouted the place to see what they had, then returned two or three times in subsequent weeks and picked up a few books and other items as the discounts moved into the 70 percent to 80 percent off range on many items.

One thing that sticks with me from that shutdown: Last December I purchased two copies of ‘The Last Boy,’ Jane Leavy’s fine book on the New York Yankees’ legendary Mickey Mantle, to send as Christmas presents, probably at $30 to $35 apiece.

During the liquidation sale only three months later, I noted Borders offered dozens of copies of the same book at $5 or less.   I’m betting that Borders being closed will have lots of copies of that book and many other top-notch. recently-published books at bargain-basement prices in the weeks ahead.

Keep in mind that Borders offers many items other than books:  videos, games for kids, puzzles, maps and the like.  It’s all good stuff too.  At the end of the liquidation sale, they’ll be peddling it literally for pennies on the dollar.

Remember too: if you happen to have a Borders’ gift card, this will be your last chance to use it.  Better hurry on this one.  It’ll only be good until July 31.

Another point:  At the end, everything in the store will go…book shelves, chairs, tables, furnishings and so forth.  There are opportunities there if you run a small business yourself or need some of this stuff for your home.

This pattern has been well established by Borders with the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based firm already forced into closing hundreds of its remaining 642 stores nationwide earlier this year. Those stores, for the most part, were money losers due to either slow sales or, in many cases, rental agreements or leases that were too high

The remaining 399, including Falls Church, Fairfax and several others in the Virginia suburbs, reportedly were profitable but Borders failed in last-minute attempts to sell them in a package deal.  To read how Borders got into this mess in the first place, click (link to my story on SS Patch: ‘Can Borders in Silver Spring Survive’)

In a nutshell, Borders, the second-largest bookstore chain in the country after Barnes & Noble, was too slow off the mark in moving into digital books (e-readers and the like) in the face of stiff competition from Amazon.com and others.

Like many other businesses from travel agents to newspapers, you can count them as casualties of the Internet era.

Gordon Brothers Retail Partners and Hilco Retail Resources are running the liquidation sale itself.

The process itself is a fascinating one: the liquidators are playing a risky game to some extent.  Through well-established formulas, they try to figure how much merchandise they can push out the door before resorting to the very steep discounting near the end of the sale.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the liquidators keep a weekly account on how much they’re bringing in from the sales.  It’s a tricky---and somewhat risky task---making sure they keep prices high enough so that they are bringing in more than they’re paying out to the bankrupt Borders entity throughout the entire process.