The end of the beginning of an era:
On December 31, Barnes & Noble is closing what was the first of its modern superstores, a 14,000-sq.-ft. store in the Rosedale Marketplace in Roseville, Minn. Nowadays most B&Ns are double that size.
"When this store came out, it was state-of-the-art, but that was 15 years ago," manager Scott Myers told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. As superstores evolved and grew in size, adding many non-book products and services, this one was left behind. "We don't have a café," Myers noted. "We don't have a music section or DVDs. We're just a little bookstore."
Less than two miles away, B&N's 44,000-sq.-ft. store at the HarMar Mall is expected to serve displaced customers of the little superstore that once caused people to wonder just what Len Riggio was thinking.
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Here's an item that serves as a reminder of how far, literally, superstores have come--or gone. Last week, Borders Group's Malaysian partner, Berjaya Corporation Berhad, opened a second franchised Borders in Malaysia, a 25,000-sq.-ft. store in the Curve, Mutiara Damansara, a new lifestyle shopping complex in a residential-commercial-hotel development in the city of Petaling Jaya.
The company's first Borders in Malaysia opened last year in Kuala Lumpur; at 60,000 square feet, it's Borders's largest store in the world.
The new store offers some 200,000 book, music, periodicals and movie titles. Borders sources book titles, which are available in English, Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese.
On December 31, Barnes & Noble is closing what was the first of its modern superstores, a 14,000-sq.-ft. store in the Rosedale Marketplace in Roseville, Minn. Nowadays most B&Ns are double that size.
"When this store came out, it was state-of-the-art, but that was 15 years ago," manager Scott Myers told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. As superstores evolved and grew in size, adding many non-book products and services, this one was left behind. "We don't have a café," Myers noted. "We don't have a music section or DVDs. We're just a little bookstore."
Less than two miles away, B&N's 44,000-sq.-ft. store at the HarMar Mall is expected to serve displaced customers of the little superstore that once caused people to wonder just what Len Riggio was thinking.
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Here's an item that serves as a reminder of how far, literally, superstores have come--or gone. Last week, Borders Group's Malaysian partner, Berjaya Corporation Berhad, opened a second franchised Borders in Malaysia, a 25,000-sq.-ft. store in the Curve, Mutiara Damansara, a new lifestyle shopping complex in a residential-commercial-hotel development in the city of Petaling Jaya.
The company's first Borders in Malaysia opened last year in Kuala Lumpur; at 60,000 square feet, it's Borders's largest store in the world.
The new store offers some 200,000 book, music, periodicals and movie titles. Borders sources book titles, which are available in English, Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese.