In the Detroit News, Mike Edwards, the former CEO of Borders Group, offered a post-mortem on the collapse of the country's second-largest bookseller. He called the period from last Christmas, when holiday sales had dropped yet again and the company stopped paying vendors, through the summer, when the company decided to shut down, "like the Cuban missile crisis." He was focused, he said, on "any and all possible options to save the company." He worked seven days a week for six months without a break.
"It was like finding out your best friend has cancer and there's nothing you can do," Edwards said. "If only we had three or four years to restructure, and a patient investor, and the publishers were willing to cooperate, it could have been done."
Edwards said that when he joined Borders in 2009, "it was really presented to me as a classic turnaround." The company, he added, expected to be acquired, and Edwards himself wanted some kind of merger with Barnes & Noble, which consistently showed no interest in a hookup with Borders.
Edwards told the paper that he thought Borders could have thrived as "a smaller chain of about 200 stores that could generate $1 billion annually" with stores that were between 10,000 and 15,000 square feet. (Two years ago Borders had nearly 700 stores, most of which were in the 25,000-30,000-sq.-ft. range.)
Edwards said that the Kindle and iPad "turned the world upside down. No one foresaw what e-books would do to physical book sales," he said. "You can be the best ice salesman in America until the refrigerator comes." Still, Edwards said that bricks-and-mortar bookstores have a future. "At the end of the day, you need physical bookstores to sell books."
Edwards said he harbored no ill will toward publishers, who doubted he and his team could stage a turnaround, or the Najafi Companies, the private equity firm that backed out of buying Borders at the last minute.
Edwards described his announcement at Borders headquarters to staff that the company was closing "the hardest, most humiliating moment of my career. I felt sick." When he and CFO Scott Henry took the stage, he said, "All 400 stood up and applauded. I lost it. I couldn't speak." He added that he tried to make the final week at headquarters festive, "with job fairs, résumé writing workshops and champagne parties."
Edwards said he has received job offers from companies impressed by his handling of the Borders bankruptcy.
