the rix mix

Wall Street Journal published a list of the Ten Brands That Will Disappear 2010. The list includes Newsweek magazine, Borders bookstores, Blockbuster Video, & Kodak. The Kodak name will stick around, it has too strong an identity. No big surprises.

I read Newsweek at the library if I have to wait for a computer. It now takes about 10 minutes cover to cover.

Of the ten, I think Blockbuster blew it the worst & the fastest. Blockbuster was positioned to become what Netflix is now, & it has to be impossible that nobody in was company was pushing the idea long ago. An arrogant company in the video tape rental era, huge stores, excellent selection, over-priced. I remember rushing due tapes back to the one in Linden NJ just before closing only to discover I hadn't rewound them.

Borders & Barnes & Noble book stores looked alike, but Borders initially had a more casual ambience. B&N felt regimented & top down corporate, staff wearing standardized uniforms. Borders had better remaindered book tables. Borders bought Waldenbooks from K-Mart in 1994, with no improvement. The Waldenbooks mall stores were awful. The one in Woodbridge Mall never failed to disappoint me. I guess because I habitually enter a bookstore with expectations, & hundreds of visits to Waldenbooks couldn't knock them out of me, which is I suppose a good thing.

I applied for a job at B&N while I was running the large book dept at Pearl Arts, which I had changed & expanded to take advantage of the poor art book departments at B&N & Borders. I wanted a B&N to open up near Pearl because I was confident it would increase our business. I was interviewed at B&N by a "Human Resources Dept" type, not the store manager. Despite my awesome knowledge of the catalogues of five major publishers & many smaller ones, as well as several popular poster/greeting card lines, not to mention what I called the "doo dads" - the bookmarks, folding reading lights, fancy blank notebooks & stuff you find near the register, plus what I know about literature & history books & authors, I didn't get the job. I wasn't overqualified. Pearl paid me a crap hourly & B&N paid a little more & trained everyone on the register. I must have come across as someone who would resist treating the computerized inventory printouts as sacred documents, & might try to create end cap displays of graphic novels & lesbian love poems. They already had someone scheduling the local poet readings. That wasn't a duty I wanted; I'd read at B&N & they didn't even give featured poets a free latte. My model for a reading organizer was Edie Eustice at Poetwednesday in Woodbridge. Edie not only made sure her featured poets were paid something, they received a home-cooked supper at her place if they were traveling any distance.

Labels: in the news, Pearl Arts