Friday, October 29, 2004
Waldenbooks: Independent Bookstore?
The Waldenbooks on the west side of Madison has changed their store signage recently. It must have happened in the last three months since it's been about that long since I was at this mall.
Why am I writing about signs in a mall-chain? Because the Waldenbooks logo is now in a royal blue obviously matching the color Book Sense uses. Coincidence? Not when you further notice all of the book section signs are in Book Sense Orange.
I was outraged when I first saw it. Oh I shouted and stormed around the mall.
“They’re trying to pawn themselves off as Independent!” I yelled. “They’re trying to ride the coattails!”
“Rat bastards!!!”
Then I got clarity.
I should have more sympathy for Waldenbooks. Waldenbooks once was part of the first wave of chains taking on independents. They expanded rapidly during the late seventies mall-ification of America, until the rise of Borders/BN superstores in the late eighties and early nineties. Now they’re a declining blip in the Borders universe. I wish the head of their division would just come out and say, “We don’t understand why more customers aren’t responding to our cramped space, unimaginative atmosphere, and vast selection of schlocky movie tie-ins. Frankly, it’s a mystery to me…a mystery very similar to this obscenely large stack of James Patterson backlist over here in our front window.”
And now they’ve concocted this cheap ploy to imitate the great bookstores in the country. It’s sad, really. Perhaps it’s a call for help. Message to Waldenbooks: We understand. We're very sorry your bookstores are such crap. Please stop associating the Book Sense colors with your stores. You're bringing us down.
With any luck, maybe the ABA trademarked the colors and we’ll all get to watch another big lawsuit. We haven’t had a good ABA lawsuit yet this decade. Perhaps the chains were missing the legal action as well and that’s why they’ve made such a boneheaded move.
On the plus side, it means Book Sense is working so well that the chains are trying to steal it from us. It's up to us to spread the word about what they're doing and let the public know that Waldenbooks aren't Book Sense stores.
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Why am I writing about signs in a mall-chain? Because the Waldenbooks logo is now in a royal blue obviously matching the color Book Sense uses. Coincidence? Not when you further notice all of the book section signs are in Book Sense Orange.
I was outraged when I first saw it. Oh I shouted and stormed around the mall.
“They’re trying to pawn themselves off as Independent!” I yelled. “They’re trying to ride the coattails!”
“Rat bastards!!!”
Then I got clarity.
I should have more sympathy for Waldenbooks. Waldenbooks once was part of the first wave of chains taking on independents. They expanded rapidly during the late seventies mall-ification of America, until the rise of Borders/BN superstores in the late eighties and early nineties. Now they’re a declining blip in the Borders universe. I wish the head of their division would just come out and say, “We don’t understand why more customers aren’t responding to our cramped space, unimaginative atmosphere, and vast selection of schlocky movie tie-ins. Frankly, it’s a mystery to me…a mystery very similar to this obscenely large stack of James Patterson backlist over here in our front window.”
And now they’ve concocted this cheap ploy to imitate the great bookstores in the country. It’s sad, really. Perhaps it’s a call for help. Message to Waldenbooks: We understand. We're very sorry your bookstores are such crap. Please stop associating the Book Sense colors with your stores. You're bringing us down.
With any luck, maybe the ABA trademarked the colors and we’ll all get to watch another big lawsuit. We haven’t had a good ABA lawsuit yet this decade. Perhaps the chains were missing the legal action as well and that’s why they’ve made such a boneheaded move.
On the plus side, it means Book Sense is working so well that the chains are trying to steal it from us. It's up to us to spread the word about what they're doing and let the public know that Waldenbooks aren't Book Sense stores.
