The death and life of a great American bookstore. STORY HIGHLIGHTSForty years after chains founding, first Borders bookstore set to close Monday. Bookstore was a haven for college town of Ann Arbor, model for other stores. Goal of manager was to make it best bookstore in AmericaChain done in by challenges from technology, management issues. Ann Arbor, Michigan CNN The End. It seems wrong to begin a story like that, doesnt it Particularly a story about a bookstore. It should begin In the beginning, or Once upon a time, or It was love at first sight. Especially It was love at first sight. After 4. Borders No. 1, the companys original Ann Arbor store, is scheduled to close on Monday. By late August, posters on the windows declared, NOTHING HELD BACK and that meant the fixtures and furniture as well. Ogle Center brings nationally recognized space science program to area students. About the Program The Supply Chain Management Global program prepares students for careers in the fields of logistics, procurement, supply chain and operations. Blockbuster LLC formerly Blockbuster Entertainment, Inc., also known as Blockbuster Video or just Blockbuster was an Americanbased provider of home movie and video. Chain definition, a series of objects connected one after the other, usually in the form of a series of metal rings passing through one another, used either for. Read more information about HSCA Member Organizations including Capstone Health Alliance, Childrens Hospital Association, GNYHA Services and others. Seed To Sale How Will San Diego Treat The Cannabis Supply Chain. The goods books, but also games and puzzles and teddy bears and throw rugs gave off the sour tang of a picked over flea market. A lonely security guard stood watch he was added just recently, an employee said, after a shoplifting incident. Borders Rewards customers have been receiving e mails for some time now, ever since the chain declared bankruptcy and announced it was closing its 3. A month ago it was 3. Now its 6. 0 to 8. There was recently a sign taped to No. It said, Now Hiring Apply Online at Borders. It was serious the liquidators needed to hire part time help but it seemed like a sick joke. What happened to the loveBorders used to be chockablock with books, said Jonathan Marwil, a University of Michigan history professor and author of a history of Ann Arbor. It has increasingly looked less like a bookstore than a bowling alley, with its wide open spaces. Now theyre selling childrens dolls on the front counter. Its really pretty grim. It was a place where employees were devoted to their jobs. They prided themselves on their knowledge of their assigned sections and everybody elses. It was a gathering place and community center, just up the street from the universitys main campus. We worked when we didnt have to work because we didnt know we were working. We would go into the store when it was closed to do more work, said Sharon Gambin, who arrived for the 1. Thats how much we loved what we did. Its an odd thing to mourn for a store. Mourn for the employees who have lost their jobs, yes, but the store Just another box on the roadside. Hundreds more like it. Move it along, capitalism. Woolworth is long gone few were saddened at its passing. Circuit City went belly up silence. Great downtown department stores have vanished, changed names, disappeared to that Great Retailer in the Sky. Jacobsons, the upscale department store that once occupied Borders East Liberty Street storefront, is but one example. With rare exceptions the late Atlanta newspaper columnist Celestine Sibley once wrote a valentine, Dear Store, to the citys now defunct retailer, Richs the public yawns. Theyll probably soon forget about Borders as well. To most of the country, its just another big box chain, another in a series of disappearing strip mall storefronts. Indeed, theres an irony in its demise, for as Borders is blamed for killing off some local independents, now it has been done in by Amazon and the Internet. The circle may go round again Former customers may turn to independents, if their towns have them. Or, if they rule out their local chain, maybe theyll just go back to browsing on Amazon. A shame, because when done right, theres something about a bookstore. Its a library, a gathering spot, a refuge, a journey. Often its small, maybe an 8. Or its idiosyncratic an old house or converted barn, a rambling lobby or strip mall space. It may not even be in your neighborhood, but thats where you go. At its best, its crowded sometimes with people, always with books books stacked to the ceiling. Books lined up in bookcases. Books spread out on tables, highlighted on platforms, displayed in twirling, 5 foot high wire racks. Dont know what youre looking for Thats part of the adventure. A bookstore is governed by serendipity. You walk in and the world falls away. Theres no rush. Its just you and the books, these pockets of words and paper that somehow transport you to a different place. The best bookstores have a certain feel, a certain comfort to them. Theyre stately but not forbidding. The employees are a mix of the young and the eccentric, college students and lifers. The front of the store features their recommendations, a little offbeat, a little intriguing. If youre looking for something specific, they know where to find it if you dont know what youre looking for, they can be your Virgil and Beatrice, guiding you through the world. It is a place with a soul. For much of its 4. Borders. Though it was a chain, with hundreds of locations around the world, during its best years it maintained the feel of a great, expansive local bookstore, the 8. The choices were manifold, the employees passionate, the adventure always beginning. In some towns and cities, Borders was it. I find in books a comfort and a companionship, a refuge from an urgently insistent world, wrote Ann Miller in the Longmont Colorado Weekly about the closing of that towns Borders, its only new book bookstore. I am worried about the folding of bookstores like Borders and the lost opportunity for browsing. There was no better place for grazing the written word and for meeting the best of friends. Joe Gable, who managed Store No. My goal, he said, had always been to make the Ann Arbor Borders the best bookstore in America. Google y questions Joe Gable came for love, too. Joe Gable, right, set the tone for Borders. Robert Teicher, left, was the chains longtime fiction buyer. He was a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin trying to finish his dissertation on European history. He had a girlfriend. She was attending Michigan. Gable moved to Ann Arbor. I figured Id work in the bookstore while I did the research. So I got a job at Borders clerking for 2. His suffer no fools demeanor gets edgy when discussing Borders later problems, but it softens when talking about the early days. I had worked for a used bookstore in Madison while I was a graduate student, and Id always loved books and the book business. And it just happened that the book business got really interesting and Borders evolved. By the time Gable arrived, Borders had been in business three years. Tom and Louis Borders, the brothers behind the name, both had U of M connections Tom had done graduate work there, Louis undergraduate studies. They opened a bookstore, the story goes, after spending 5. Tom is now an investor based on Austin, Texas Louis, who founded the dot com firm Webvan, is based in northern California. Tom declined a request for an interview Louis didnt return phone messages. Ann Arbor, the kind of college town that describes itself as six square miles surrounded by reality, was a scruffier place then, but in the 1. America. After short stays in other downtown locations and a change in focus from used books to new books, the brothers moved to a two story, 1. S. State Street. Ten thousand square feet. To sell books. It was an astonishing amount of space. Were talking about 1. Benita Be Kaimowitz, who began work at Borders in 1. There were no big bookstores. Kaimowitz, who moved to Ann Arbor in 1. Business Administration Supply Chain and Operations Management Co opOverview. Welcome to the frontline of business and commerce, where services are delivered and goods are made. This program will prepare you for operations management in todays highly competitive marketplace. Nipissing University Transfer Agreement. 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