Forum - View topicAnswerman - Even More Quick Answers
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Adamanto
Posts: 152 |
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Easter is absolutely making its way into Japan now, and while I can't remember ever seeing it pop up in any episode of an anime show, anyone that watches live Japanese TV should remember that Aeon did a huge "easter party" campaign last year, with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu promoting it in commercials on TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqa7AI6CjLU |
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animalia555
Posts: 467 |
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I never understood why it was Borders who went out of business and not Barnes & Noble. As a customer I always Borders was always my preferred choice of the two. Can someone explain it me?
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5124 |
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animalia555--
I don't have time to look up the necessary sources (and links), but here's the -- very short -- explanation: The senior management of Borders decided to double down on the proposition that brick & mortar stores are more profitable than online transactions. So they outsourced their online operation to Amazon while they focused on expanding their B&M stores. Their bankruptcy informed everyone who was (and is!) an Amazon competitor that Amazon is now the 800-lb. gorilla on the block. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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As nobahn says, Barnes & Noble had the good sense to diversify their own interests early into the Nook (anyone still use that?), and had their own safety net as the industry followed Amazon to Kindle-style tablet e-book readers--As customers began to see the advantage in not buying $30 hardcovers for some new bestseller they were only curious about. They may not have taken on Amazon directly, but they didn't become a subsidiary of it either. Plus, B&N had somehow gotten a reputation among Blu-ray fans as "the" place to buy your Criterion Blu-rays, even over Amazon, despite being full-priced, so their video section and Starbucks coffee corners kept up with the bills. Borders was the better bookstore, but with the decline of bulky, very heavy, overpriced and increasingly non-mainstream print media, there wasn't room for two major national chains. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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You know, I always found it weird, too, how common characters named Alice would show up in anime. I also noticed that when you have a western female character, especially if she's blonde, there's a likely chance she will be named Alice. Do people in Japan really think Alice is a common western name, or is it just a name that comes to mind for the writer? (Certainly, I don't meet very many people named Alice.)
Something else to bear in mind is that when Borders went out of business, it was under the ownership of K-Mart/Sears Holdings, which has a terrible track record of running the companies it's bought (and the company itself may not survive to the end of this year...but it's been plodding along carrying its deathbed behind it for a few years now). K-Mart was already the owners of B. Dalton Booksellers, which was having trouble, though I'm not sure from what. For some reason, the K-Mart executives figured the solution was to buy the then-successful Borders, under the idea that the profits Borders was getting would help offset the losses B. Dalton was suffering. Instead, the people at the top of Borders left, forcing K-Mart to replace them with their own people, and, just like B. Dalton, Sports Chalet, and Office Max, they ran the company into the ground a few years later. There are conspiracy theories going around that the guy running K-Mart/Sears is not so much interested in running these businesses as much as he is owning the land to lease out to other businesses and is just letting K-Mart and Sears languish so he can get what he REALLY wants later. Certainly, my local K-Mart looks like it's been languished, with the floors and walls full of stains and dried-up stuff that it looks like they've never had any maintenance. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Before Barnes & Noble took over out on the highway complexes, the big book chain was Waldenbooks, which you might find in the middle of a mall or on a city storefront--They weren't big bookstores like B&N, they were basically the "paperback" chain that sold the popular books in easy to reach places. B. Dalton was the runner-up chain to Waldenbooks, and there was already no room for two big chains even before B&N or Amazon started becoming the big gorillas on the playground. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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They tried to diversify, but the Nook has ultimately been a costly failure that was spun off from their main business. The main reason that B&N survived is largely due to their finances. They had more profitable stores in better locations, a strong customer loyalty card, and much lower debt. Borders got hurt by its years of Kmart ownership, and had a higher debt load. It didn’t have the flexibility to open and remodel stores that B&N did. It also waited to long to launch a frequent shopper program, and hung onto its money losing mall based stores for too long. Also, B Dalton was owned by Barnes and Noble. Borders owned Waldenboks and Brentano’s, which were eventually merged and later renamed Borders Express. B&N eventually shut down Dalton, though it had relatively few stores towards the end. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Ah yes, you're right, it was Waldenbooks. I based it on the second, smaller bookstore inside a nearby mall I'd frequently visit which had both it and a Borders (still do, and it's the Northridge Fashion Center if anyone's familiar with it, but less often since the Borders vanished). I remembered it being B. Dalton, but thinking about it more, now I'm pretty sure it was Waldenbooks.
I valued Borders for the weekly coupons I would get through e-mail, and I'd use it to buy more manga every week, as well as a lot of non-manga books. Now I go to Barnes & Noble a bunch, though there aren't as many of these as there used to be Borders, and none of the other major bookstore chains in the United States have reached as far west as here. I prefer to read on paper over digitally, though unlike most other people who do so, it's not because of eyestrain, but because I have problems with my attention span when I'm looking at a close-up screen that doesn't happen when I'm looking at paper or a TV screen (hence why I do most of my streamed television through an actual television set). I also don't like to get books ordered online, for the reasons that packages frequently arrive damaged (like them being outside in the rain with no protection or with corners shredded up, and all of those cases have been print media) and because I can get them immediately (packages sit for at least a week at the local distribution center before they make it to my neighborhood). Hence, I'd rely on local bookstores for me to get books. |
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Southkaio
Posts: 350 |
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I don't think that Infini-T Force will have a sub-only release. Viz Media avoids such releases completely.
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