Speaker 1: Business of the Brink is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and How Stuff Works. It's like something out of
Speaker 1: a book of fairy tales. What began as a used
Speaker 1: bookstore flourished into a nationwide chain of huge bookshops. They
Speaker 1: were places where you could grab a coffee and a
Speaker 1: good book at the same time. But when things went wrong,
Speaker 1: they went really wrong, and we became a nation without borders.
Speaker 1: The book start not you know, real borders. We still
Speaker 1: have those. Hi. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Ariel Casting,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Business on the Brain. Hey, Ariel,
Speaker 1: Hey Jonathan. So for once I wrote the intro we did.
Speaker 1: It was very funny. I didn't do as many puns.
Speaker 1: I just did a really dumb joke. I like it.
Speaker 1: I'm glad. I'm glad. So, yeah, we're gonna talk about borders.
Speaker 1: But there's a reason we're specifically talking about this topic
Speaker 1: because it was a request yes from Ashley. Hi, Ashley,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening. Yes, Ashley asks why did borders
Speaker 1: fail when Barnes and Noble did not? As an excellent question,
Speaker 1: it is, And well we'll summarize that at the end.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna talk about the journey Borders takes
Speaker 1: to get there, to get there, because it's I mean,
Speaker 1: Borders was, it was a company that defined the modern
Speaker 1: bookstore in many ways. They were the trend setter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To the point, where have you ever seen the series
Speaker 1: Black Books? That's that's a BBC series. I haven't, but
Speaker 1: I have heard of it. Yeah. Dylan Moran plays a
Speaker 1: very grouchy bookstore owner in England and at one point
Speaker 1: one of those mega bookstore conglomerates moves in right next
Speaker 1: door and it's it's essentially a Border's type of place,
Speaker 1: and uh, and it really irritates him. Although everything irritates him.
Speaker 1: It irritates him when customers come into a shop, it
Speaker 1: irritates him when customers go into the next door shops. So,
Speaker 1: but that's beside the point. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Borders and not Black Books. Um. I do want to say, though,
Speaker 1: I think it is horribly fitting that today our notes
Speaker 1: on the topic are on paper. Yeah. Yeah, Also a
Speaker 1: fun peek behind the curtain. We record this in the
Speaker 1: evenings and at my studio at my office, And by mine,
Speaker 1: I mean Hellsta works. It's not really mine. I just
Speaker 1: worked there and the day we're recording this is the
Speaker 1: same day that they're rebooting our network, so we had
Speaker 1: to go with the paper. But it fits. It fits
Speaker 1: for a bookstore, specifically for Borders. So you're gonna hear
Speaker 1: some ambient sound effects that are just us turning pages.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yes, we'll have to do an s MR
Speaker 1: Brink episode at some point. So one of you a
Speaker 1: SMR artists, really needs to, like seriously bring gett of
Speaker 1: the pack. We can do a whole episode on you.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing this episode. It turns out that
Speaker 1: we learned it's not as simple an answer as you
Speaker 1: might imagine. I think most people would say that the
Speaker 1: Internet was the reason why Borders went out of business,
Speaker 1: and it was really just a small part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was one factor that was definitely important.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it wasn't small, but it wasn't the
Speaker 1: only thing. Yeah, So we're going to look at the
Speaker 1: entire journey of Borders. Also, this is an interesting story
Speaker 1: because we typically talk about companies that have a brink
Speaker 1: moment where they either get launched into the stratosphere and
Speaker 1: it goes from being a small operation into an enormous
Speaker 1: one or the reverse, where a big company has a
Speaker 1: series of misfortunes Lemony Snicket style and it plunges this
Speaker 1: This bat Dealer's story has both. It does it does.
Speaker 1: We're going to start with a h A little side
Speaker 1: note here. Um, I love bookstores. I love going into
Speaker 1: bookstores and perusing the books and looking at the book
Speaker 1: covers and maybe looking at the back blurbs. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: like the physical experience of having actual books to hold. Yes,
Speaker 1: that being said, almost all the books I own now
Speaker 1: are electronic. I I don't own any reader. I do
Speaker 1: have a tablet and obviously my phone, but I I
Speaker 1: much prefer I get much better retention of the content
Speaker 1: I'm reading when I read it on paper. So most
Speaker 1: of my books are hard copy. Yeah, dead Tree edition,
Speaker 1: dead Tree Edition. I'll say a lot of those are
Speaker 1: currently in the basement as we reorganize our house. But
Speaker 1: I do still really enjoy just crack and open a
Speaker 1: paper book. I'm about to go get another library card
Speaker 1: just for that reason. Oh nice. Now, were you ever
Speaker 1: the type of person who would go until I a
Speaker 1: Borders or maybe a Barnes and Noble and just park
Speaker 1: it on a wingback chair and read a book for
Speaker 1: like six hours. No, No, neither was I. UM. I
Speaker 1: would sit on a chair and like peruce the content
Speaker 1: if it was something like an art book or novel
Speaker 1: or a recipe book, just so I knew the contents
Speaker 1: because it can vary so widely. Do you know if
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to buy it, But no, I won't.
Speaker 1: Even like I won't read magazines in the grocery line
Speaker 1: check out, I won't. I won't read books. If I
Speaker 1: want to sit down and read a book that I
Speaker 1: don't want to buy again, I'll go to the library.
Speaker 1: Same here, same here. Yeah. I remember going through very
Speaker 1: important books just to make sure I wanted to buy them,
Speaker 1: mostly dungeons and dragon source books. That is important. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the history of the Borders Store. It
Speaker 1: was founded way back in nineteen seventy one by the
Speaker 1: Borders brothers. The name comes from the brothers who founded
Speaker 1: the store, Tom and Lewis Borders. Yes, and they we
Speaker 1: l O U I s. So some of them are Lewis's,
Speaker 1: some of them are Louise Luis Laois Borders Borders from
Speaker 1: ann Arbor, Michigan. Yeah, and originally it was a used bookstore.
Speaker 1: They didn't they didn't come out the gate with a
Speaker 1: mega ya mega bookstore. These were two guys who were
Speaker 1: still attending the university over at Ann Arbor and they,
Speaker 1: you know, the University of Michigan. So they didn't have
Speaker 1: a huge amount of money to just drop on a
Speaker 1: on a bookstore. And it's funny because it kind of
Speaker 1: came out of necessity because so Louis Borders comes to
Speaker 1: do some postgraduate work at the University of Michigan. He's
Speaker 1: studying mathematics, by the way, and he gets an apartment
Speaker 1: and the previous inhabitant of that apartment who had left
Speaker 1: left behind up apparently a bunch of books. So Louis
Speaker 1: and Tom De said, well, I don't want to hold
Speaker 1: on to these. I mean, but they could have poor
Speaker 1: college students need things like furniture and just come together
Speaker 1: and you get a two by four and you gotta
Speaker 1: put it on top of that, and you got yourself
Speaker 1: get yourself a dining room table. Yeah, but they decided
Speaker 1: they would sell the books. But they had apparently so
Speaker 1: much fun doing that that they thought, why not make
Speaker 1: a business of this and actually make a used bookstore,
Speaker 1: because being so close to the University of Michigan. They
Speaker 1: knew that they could have a pretty healthy business just
Speaker 1: catering to students, so they made that decision, and then
Speaker 1: they opened up their first location. What their first location
Speaker 1: was specifically is something that I actually had trouble tracking down.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of conflicting information about which location was
Speaker 1: in fact the very first location. I guess bookstore owners
Speaker 1: are better at reading information than recording it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the nineteen and he's no one bothered to, you know,
Speaker 1: to keep track of that. But the various addresses I've
Speaker 1: seen are two eleven South State Street and three eleven
Speaker 1: Maynard Street, which are two different addresses I looked in
Speaker 1: Google Maps and everything, um, and so there's some disagreements
Speaker 1: about which of those stores was first, but the Maynard
Speaker 1: Street location was frequently cited as the company's flagship store,
Speaker 1: so whichever one was their first one. They ended up
Speaker 1: settling at another location at three oh three South State Street,
Speaker 1: and all of these were an easy walking distance of
Speaker 1: the campus of the University of Michigan. But this is
Speaker 1: when they started selling new books. Yes, they decided to
Speaker 1: switch from used to new, and I also decided to
Speaker 1: go from a modest bookstore to a larger storefront, not
Speaker 1: as big as what they would ultimately go with, but
Speaker 1: you're talking about ten thousand square feet. That's pretty big
Speaker 1: for a bookstore. It is it is a good, healthy bookstore. Yes,
Speaker 1: they kind of got addicted to big books stores too, though,
Speaker 1: didn't they, because they bought also bought a like an
Speaker 1: old department store, Yeah, Jacobson's, which was a really old
Speaker 1: chain up in the Michigan area, not something that we
Speaker 1: would see down here in Atlanta, and another fairly big space,
Speaker 1: so yeah, they got that one too, also still not
Speaker 1: far from the campus. And that was one of the
Speaker 1: ways that they were able to really differentiate themselves from
Speaker 1: a lot of the other bookstores, which tended to be
Speaker 1: those small storefront like shops you go in and you know,
Speaker 1: they fact that they had so much spaceman that they
Speaker 1: could end up having a larger inventory, like a greater
Speaker 1: variety of books than what their competitors could have. So
Speaker 1: you might walk into a little bookstore and have to
Speaker 1: put a book on order, but at their bookstore, because
Speaker 1: they had much more space, they could order a greater
Speaker 1: variety of titles and have more there was a more
Speaker 1: likely chance that the book you wanted was already installed,
Speaker 1: and then this was a less calm and occurrence, so
Speaker 1: it gave them a leg up. Now, later on people
Speaker 1: would gravitate back to the as we get to the
Speaker 1: millennial age, back to the smaller, more um niche feeling
Speaker 1: bookstores for for big bookstores. But at this time, you know,
Speaker 1: bigger was better. Yeah, yeah, And it was something that
Speaker 1: again was really appealing to the population of ann Arbor
Speaker 1: in particular, they were known as sort of a literary crowd.
Speaker 1: And then Louis Borders put his degrees in mathematics and
Speaker 1: his knowledge of computer science to work because he designed
Speaker 1: a inventory management system and it was away a book
Speaker 1: inventory system or b i S is what it ended
Speaker 1: up being called, and it was a way for them
Speaker 1: to track not just what was in stock, but what
Speaker 1: was selling. And it got to a point where they
Speaker 1: realized something that would later become a big deal for
Speaker 1: big data, which is, if you look at information and
Speaker 1: you look at it carefully, you can start to identify trends.
Speaker 1: So they could look at book sales and start to
Speaker 1: predict which books were going to become popular before it
Speaker 1: actually became a trend, which meant that they could be
Speaker 1: proactive and order more of those titles so that they
Speaker 1: could meet the demand as it rose up, so they
Speaker 1: could actually start to predict trends as they were developing.
Speaker 1: And that's amazing, it is. I wouldn't I wouldn't initially think, hey,
Speaker 1: guy with a degree in mathematics would be the best
Speaker 1: person to run a bookstore. I would think his brother,
Speaker 1: who's who is a teacher, would be. But apparently it
Speaker 1: was a match made in heaven. They also did something
Speaker 1: really smart, and they took this b I S and
Speaker 1: they sold it to other bookstores as well. Right, So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they had no, this is our secret
Speaker 1: saace and you can't have our secret solace. They said, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is a very useful system. It will come in
Speaker 1: handy and they that was another business. In fact, they
Speaker 1: operated it as a spinoff business this for a while.
Speaker 1: They sold it off I think in the nineties, but
Speaker 1: they were still you know, and this is still in
Speaker 1: the seventies too. That's that's an era where there's still babies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they're giant giant babies. Yeah. Personal computers are not
Speaker 1: really even a thing yet. If you're buying a computer,
Speaker 1: you're buying a very expensive large machine, right, because this
Speaker 1: is not this is not yet the era of the
Speaker 1: Apple two or the IBM PC. This is just before that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they were using these larger systems in this
Speaker 1: this custom made inventory system, and it was really going well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they could have probably just moved
Speaker 1: over to this b I S system, selling it to
Speaker 1: other places, updating it to keep up with the times,
Speaker 1: and been successful, but they didn't do that. They also
Speaker 1: expanded their bookstores as well. They opened in other locations.
Speaker 1: So they opened some in Michigan, but they also expanded
Speaker 1: beyond Michigan. Uh. They opened up one in Indianapolis and
Speaker 1: another one in an odd location considering that their home
Speaker 1: base was in Michigan. Do you know where that is? Atlanta? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's right in our hometown, I mean in the Atlanta's
Speaker 1: big So it's a good hub. And and believe it
Speaker 1: or not, we know how to read. We do. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're doing it right now. Yeah. So they opened up
Speaker 1: a store in Atlanta. And the nice thing was that
Speaker 1: this b I S system proved to be incredibly useful
Speaker 1: in each of those locations, and it proved that if
Speaker 1: you knew how to use the system, you could customize
Speaker 1: that stores inventory for that particular population. It showed that
Speaker 1: different populations wanted different books. So the books that were
Speaker 1: being sold that we're doing really well in Atlanta might
Speaker 1: not be the same ones that are doing well in Michigan.
Speaker 1: But the system lets you predict which ones you need
Speaker 1: to order, so they were always on top of things.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. The next really cool thing in in
Speaker 1: Borders history is when they did in their first superstore.
Speaker 1: This is the one that you probably associate with Borders
Speaker 1: when you think of Borders or Barnes and Nobles that
Speaker 1: had the coffee shop in it. It was Giant Um
Speaker 1: and they hired a professional to help them expand this business,
Speaker 1: Robert d Romualdo. Robert d ra Mualdo. That's a heck
Speaker 1: of a name, it is. I had to keep going
Speaker 1: back and looking at it to remember how to spell it,
Speaker 1: you know, I I when I look at de Romoaldo,
Speaker 1: I'm convinced I'm not saying it correctly, but I will
Speaker 1: keep trying. I probably won't say the same way twice.
Speaker 1: And he helped them grow this superstore model and it
Speaker 1: was very successful, and by nine he was the CEO
Speaker 1: of the company, and he incorporated new things into their superstores.
Speaker 1: Now they didn't just have all of the books ever,
Speaker 1: and some coffee shops. They also had music and movies
Speaker 1: and things like that. Yeah. I remember walking into these
Speaker 1: big bookstores and seeing like the entire section set aside
Speaker 1: for music and film and thinking that's odd for a
Speaker 1: for a bookstore. I loved it. Well, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we will talk a little bit more about the music
Speaker 1: and movies stuff a little later, because it's another one
Speaker 1: of those factors. Yes, yes, but you know I loved
Speaker 1: it at the time because I could go find the
Speaker 1: book and then I could go find the VHS of
Speaker 1: the movie version, yeah, of the bus, right, so you
Speaker 1: can you can read The Princess Bride while you watch
Speaker 1: The Princess Bride. That would be a sobering experience. They
Speaker 1: don't exactly match up. Is pretty close though, I mean
Speaker 1: Golding also wrote the screenplay. But in the early nine nineties,
Speaker 1: at this point, Borders is doing well and starts to
Speaker 1: head toward an initial public offering to go from being
Speaker 1: a private company to a publicly traded company. So under
Speaker 1: the proposed I P O, the company they had not
Speaker 1: yet launched an I P O. But they were in
Speaker 1: the preparation for it, and that that involves a lot
Speaker 1: of work, a lot of very technical legal work, to
Speaker 1: to set what the stock price should be, what you
Speaker 1: think the opening price is going to be, how many
Speaker 1: shares you plan to offer? That in turn tells you
Speaker 1: how much you think your company is worth. Right, because
Speaker 1: if you say we're going to open at twenty dollars
Speaker 1: a share and it's going to be X number of shares,
Speaker 1: then you multiply those two numbers together and say, oh,
Speaker 1: so you think your company is worth blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: It's like you're going on shark take, except for you're
Speaker 1: already established. Yeah. So they had estimated that they were
Speaker 1: going to have three point six million shares of stock,
Speaker 1: and at the stock price they were looking at, uh,
Speaker 1: that would have given the company of value of one
Speaker 1: hundred ninety million dollars. Not too shabby. But they didn't
Speaker 1: end up doing the I p Oh. Something else happened.
Speaker 1: Another company swooped in. Yeah, of all things, Kmart swooped
Speaker 1: in and they said, hey, we're going to buy borders.
Speaker 1: They had already bought Walden Books, and they had bought
Speaker 1: that back in the eighties. Yes, yes, and now they
Speaker 1: wanted to buy Borders as well. They were hoping that uh,
Speaker 1: merging these large bookstores would bring them a lot of
Speaker 1: extra revenue. Yeah, they were looking at Walden Books, which
Speaker 1: had a lot of like mall locations. That's where I
Speaker 1: always remember Walden Books, not as a standalone but as
Speaker 1: a mall bookstore, more of an express experience. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you had Borders the larger bookstores. And then they
Speaker 1: also owned a few bookstores that were connected to Walden
Speaker 1: Books but were called Bassett Books. That was largely in
Speaker 1: the Northeast. There are all books about dogs, yes, the
Speaker 1: Bassett Hound Books. No, it was it was another chain
Speaker 1: of a small chain, like a regional chain of large bookstores.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was kind of there. There um their
Speaker 1: strategy moving forward. And and at that point Borders consisted
Speaker 1: of twenty one bookstores. Yes, and in after Kmart bought them,
Speaker 1: they became the Borders Walden Group. And things look pretty good.
Speaker 1: But things we're about to change. Musical sting. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we'll explain how they're about to change in just a moment,
Speaker 1: But first we're going to take a quick break. All right, now, Ariel,
Speaker 1: you were saying things were about to change. What did
Speaker 1: you mean by that? Well, I meant that things were
Speaker 1: actually going to get a little bit worse than a
Speaker 1: little bit better, and then pretty better and then a
Speaker 1: lot worse. Okay, could you perhaps elaborate? Yes. So Kmart,
Speaker 1: like we said, bought borders they expected to bring an
Speaker 1: extra revenue, and it did. Under their their first year
Speaker 1: under Kmart, they brought in about two d foot eight
Speaker 1: million dollars profit. Nice. Yeah, And in ninety four they
Speaker 1: reached one point five billion dollars in sales. That's also
Speaker 1: pretty nice, but surprisingly not enough. So Kmar was struggling.
Speaker 1: They were having some financial troubles and borders Walden was
Speaker 1: not helping as much as they had hoped. So there's
Speaker 1: there's some slight variation in reports. Some people say that
Speaker 1: kmars like, uh, we're gonna we're gonna ditch these bookstores
Speaker 1: and let them become their own thing, and some some
Speaker 1: reports say that these bookstores are like, hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: become our own thing later. Yeah. Whether or not it
Speaker 1: was a decision made internally from the book side of
Speaker 1: things or internally from the Kmart side of things, the
Speaker 1: result was the same. Kmart did spin off the Border's
Speaker 1: Walden Group, although at that point it had become the
Speaker 1: Borders Group. So Borders Group gets spun off into its
Speaker 1: own company and gets put back on track for that
Speaker 1: I p O that was so hoping for. They finally
Speaker 1: get their public offering UM. Now right afterwards they bought
Speaker 1: share that came it still had in them, so Kmart
Speaker 1: had retained at ownership and then decided that or at
Speaker 1: least the Borders Group folks decided to purchase that back
Speaker 1: from their former parent company. Yes, and in seven they
Speaker 1: had really good luck with their public offering. They ended
Speaker 1: up closing at forty four eight cents of share. That's
Speaker 1: that's a pretty healthy per share price. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: healthy enough that they did a two for one stock split. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about those in the past. It's where you
Speaker 1: double the number of shares, but you have the value
Speaker 1: per share and it helps it helps inspire liquidity, it
Speaker 1: helps inspire smaller investors getting involved. Yes, and and all
Speaker 1: of the success UM encourages them to expand into Europe
Speaker 1: and Asia, So now they're starting to open international locations there.
Speaker 1: Their first store was opened in Singapore and they opened
Speaker 1: up forty more stores, so rapid expansion of this point,
Speaker 1: and their plans were for an international superstore chain with
Speaker 1: a thousand locations. Yeah, and at that point they had
Speaker 1: just a little more than two hundred locations. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people also point to this era as being
Speaker 1: in retrospect a dangerous one for Borders in the fear
Speaker 1: that they were trying to expand too quickly and too aggressively.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of stories that talk about Borders
Speaker 1: the company that was opening up stores like crazy in
Speaker 1: the nineties, Like, there are a lot of stories about that. Yeah. However,
Speaker 1: in two thousand's now at this time, Amazon's also become
Speaker 1: becoming big. Yeah. This is a right around the time
Speaker 1: where Amazon was. They hadn't yet become profitable, but they
Speaker 1: were becoming more of a player in especially in the
Speaker 1: I mean Amazon started in the book business. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were just a bookstore, and to be fair, they weren't profitable,
Speaker 1: but they were bustling. Like from the get go, Amazon
Speaker 1: had high, high traffic. Yes. Yeah, so while while it
Speaker 1: wasn't yet the goliath of goliaths that Amazon is today,
Speaker 1: it was, it was doing well enough where it could
Speaker 1: survive the dot com crash that was on the horizon
Speaker 1: and make it through the other side and actually start
Speaker 1: to turn a profit. And de rom Nualdo knew he
Speaker 1: could see that this was this could be a big threat,
Speaker 1: and he decided that Borders needed to adapt to meet
Speaker 1: this threat, and so they created Borders Online. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: important step that he recognizes that the internet is going
Speaker 1: to be a really pivotal thing for commerce in the future. However,
Speaker 1: launching an online presence is sometimes more difficult than it sounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes a while to get notice, it takes a
Speaker 1: while to get traffic, it takes a while to become
Speaker 1: muscle memory for your consumers, and it takes a while
Speaker 1: just to work out the kinks so that you've created
Speaker 1: an experience that people enjoy. Yeah, and so when they
Speaker 1: launched this site, they had some initial losses and the
Speaker 1: investors freaked out and they said, nope, we're shutting it down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna remove this. It's a drain on
Speaker 1: our attention and our money and our time, so we're
Speaker 1: going to close it off. And I would say this
Speaker 1: was their first really big mistake. Yeah, they gave up
Speaker 1: too quickly. Yeah, because a lot of and we have
Speaker 1: more into it later, but a lot of analysts say
Speaker 1: that them committing to the market late was what really
Speaker 1: contributed to Yeah, and it's interesting because they didn't really
Speaker 1: commit to it late. They well, I guess you could
Speaker 1: say they committed to it late, but they carefully they
Speaker 1: attempted it earlier. Yeah, I was. I feel a lot
Speaker 1: of sympathy for for Borders at this time because you're
Speaker 1: talking about again. In hindsight, it's so easy to say, right,
Speaker 1: because the Internet has become such an enormous powerhouse in commerce,
Speaker 1: But in the late nineties, everyone was pretty sure the
Speaker 1: Internet was going to be really important for commerce, but
Speaker 1: no one knew how. Yeah, and so it's kind of
Speaker 1: callous to dismiss a company for saying, all right, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't working for us, because it wasn't working for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Only a few companies had really
Speaker 1: started to hit on that that method that would make
Speaker 1: online business work, and Amazon was one of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it also it also did another thing. So not
Speaker 1: only did this the initial losses freak out the investors
Speaker 1: and get Borders Online shut down, it also meant that
Speaker 1: they were looking to replace de Romoaldo thank you. Yeah, yes, Um,
Speaker 1: so they did. Yep. So he gets he gets the
Speaker 1: boot and gets replaced, and is replaced by Philip Feffer,
Speaker 1: who ends up transforming the company and leading it for
Speaker 1: the next decade, right, just for a few months. But
Speaker 1: he just leads it for a few months. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he transformed the company at all. Reign he resigned.
Speaker 1: Usually if you transfer, if you leave, if you resigned
Speaker 1: after a few months, if you've done any transforming, it
Speaker 1: is not the good guys. I mean, maybe he won
Speaker 1: the lottery and like piece gays them out. So who
Speaker 1: do they turn to when Feffer leaves? You know why
Speaker 1: I'm asking you that, right, because it's a horrible name
Speaker 1: to say, Jonathan, You're very mean. De Romoaldo he comes
Speaker 1: back first. Yes, then you get the other names. See
Speaker 1: now I said the hard one, Now you get the
Speaker 1: easy one. Greg Joseph Owitz, thank you. Yeah, Joseph Owitz
Speaker 1: comes in, So Di Romaldo steps back in temporarily. But
Speaker 1: then Greg Joseph A. Witz comes in and becomes the
Speaker 1: new CEO. And this is the transition from the nineties
Speaker 1: into the two thousand. Yes, there there is one side
Speaker 1: note before we get fully into the two thousands. Which
Speaker 1: is border Spot a toy company called All Wound Up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had never heard about this. I hadn't either. It's
Speaker 1: another bad decision, I feel, because they didn't even look
Speaker 1: at adding toys to their superstores until the later later
Speaker 1: in the two thousands till two thousand ten. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so they sat on a company for a decade without
Speaker 1: incorporating it into their their major brand. Yeah. And maybe
Speaker 1: All Wound Up was doing fine on its own. I mean,
Speaker 1: we did a whole episode about toys r US. We
Speaker 1: know how toy companies weren't doing so great in the Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a missed opportunity. Yeah, I agree. So
Speaker 1: this is another one of those moments where people point
Speaker 1: to and say this, this might be Yeah, okay, it
Speaker 1: was bad that they didn't commit to e commerce early enough,
Speaker 1: But then they point to this decision coming up that
Speaker 1: they say, no, no, that was really what killed him.
Speaker 1: And that was when they decided to make a deal
Speaker 1: with Amazon to sell their books. Yeah, so all right, again,
Speaker 1: I feel sympathy again in hindsight, saying, handing the keys
Speaker 1: to your car to a to a person who's dressed
Speaker 1: in a shirt that's got black and white stripes and
Speaker 1: they're wearing a mask and they have a ball and
Speaker 1: chain hooked up to one ft. Maybe that wasn't the
Speaker 1: best idea, Like, hey, that guy just stole my car,
Speaker 1: that's what That's the way a lot of people paint
Speaker 1: this is. Like, so Amazon's and online bookseller borders ends
Speaker 1: up handing over their online business to their their online competitor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they decided to outsource their online sales. Yeah, But on
Speaker 1: the flip side, like we were saying earlier, establishing a
Speaker 1: web presence is tricky, even today when people think that
Speaker 1: they have a real good handle on how online works, right,
Speaker 1: I've seen it. I've been in companies that have been
Speaker 1: a part of that where a big company comes in
Speaker 1: and rather than developing their own platform, which is hard
Speaker 1: to do, like for the same reasons we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, they'll go and they'll look for another company
Speaker 1: to either purchase that company and just have them handle
Speaker 1: that part of it. Like it might be a smaller
Speaker 1: company that already does online stuff and say, well just
Speaker 1: buy them and they'll be our online presence, or they'll
Speaker 1: contract it out. Like I get it, because if your
Speaker 1: business isn't already natively the Internet. You have to learn
Speaker 1: all of that in order to operate in that space,
Speaker 1: and that's a lot to learn, and it could be
Speaker 1: very different from the business that you typically handle. And
Speaker 1: also you look at some businesses when they try to
Speaker 1: diversify what they do too much, it causes fairly or
Speaker 1: they stretched themselves too thin. So maybe keeping those resources
Speaker 1: to what is really your your core competencies as we
Speaker 1: would say in the old consulting days that I I
Speaker 1: don't talk about very much. But yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 1: feel sympathy for this, but I also admit, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: ended up being a pretty big miss. Borders had a
Speaker 1: lot of pride in their name, in their brand, and
Speaker 1: this really deluded it. Yeah, I think there was still
Speaker 1: a belief at this point that the real world experience
Speaker 1: of walking into a bookstore could have enough of a
Speaker 1: draw on its own that they weren't going to cannibalize
Speaker 1: they're in store sales by partnering with Amazon. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, that was a hope based on dreams. Also,
Speaker 1: around this time, they their investors were not very happy
Speaker 1: with how management was working. Obviously, they had a CEO
Speaker 1: resigned after just a few months. Yeah, that that doesn't
Speaker 1: look good. They hired those investors, hired Merrill Lynch to
Speaker 1: look at how to move the company forward, how to
Speaker 1: make sure it was profitable and being managed correctly. They
Speaker 1: looked at recapitalization, They looked at a leverage buy out.
Speaker 1: They looked at having a company acquire them, or acquiring
Speaker 1: another company and doing a merger um and they decided
Speaker 1: to stay independent. At the time, so Borders wasn't it
Speaker 1: was coming and going. They weren't always meeting their projections,
Speaker 1: but they were still they were they were money, Yeah
Speaker 1: they weren't. It wasn't like hitting that long decline yet. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then two thousand four they hire a new chief
Speaker 1: marketing officer named Michael tam in order to rebrand and
Speaker 1: too really to position the stores as being like the
Speaker 1: center of a community experience, like that idea that it's
Speaker 1: separate from something you would get online. You can go
Speaker 1: and separate from something you could get in a small bookstore.
Speaker 1: So you could go, you could eat your lunch, you
Speaker 1: could have a feet, you could read a book. You
Speaker 1: need a muffin the size of a child's head, Yes,
Speaker 1: those are the best muffins. Childhead sized muffins. Yeah, marketing
Speaker 1: them is a little tricky, but they are tasty, yes, So,
Speaker 1: so they focus on the community. They do some brand repositioning,
Speaker 1: They acquire a company here too, They make some Walden books,
Speaker 1: some Borders expresses. Uh. They make a deal with Starbucks
Speaker 1: so they can sell Seattle's Best Ye in their bookstore.
Speaker 1: This triage looked like it was successful. Um. In two
Speaker 1: thou five, they posted profits of a hundred and one
Speaker 1: million dollars and they launched their Borders rewards program. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: which I was a part of back in the day. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand six, Josepha Witz announces that he's
Speaker 1: going to retire, and well, they've already chosen his successor,
Speaker 1: a guy named George Jones. And they do something that
Speaker 1: we have always stressed as being a very important thing
Speaker 1: in any kind of corporate structure, which is having a
Speaker 1: solid transition plan so you can have that transition not
Speaker 1: just of power, but of knowledge. Yeah. When JOSEPHO Witz
Speaker 1: said that he was retiring, he said, I'm planning to
Speaker 1: retire in about two years. So they didn't wait for
Speaker 1: the end of those two years to bring Jones on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which a good idea. Yeah. Also at this time, Pershing
Speaker 1: Square invests in the company for an eleven percent stake.
Speaker 1: But not all good news, because while this year would
Speaker 1: be a good one for them, it would also be
Speaker 1: their last good year. Yeah, it's the last time that
Speaker 1: they would turn a profit. Jones comes on border stock plummets, yes,
Speaker 1: to twelve dollars and twenty eight cents of share. Oh
Speaker 1: that's a big drop. Yeah, that was a serious fall
Speaker 1: from grace. So they quickly react by selling off some
Speaker 1: of their subsidiaries. And I like in your notes here
Speaker 1: because I couldn't help but make a snarky joke based
Speaker 1: on it, so aerial. Don't they get rid of England
Speaker 1: and Ireland and the rest of the UK? So I
Speaker 1: wanted to reassure my listeners out there, England, Ireland and
Speaker 1: the UK are still their borders. Just got rid of
Speaker 1: their subsidiaries in these countries. Yes, they lost around a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty seven point four million dollars, but this
Speaker 1: isn't about about like, here's as bad as it ever got.
Speaker 1: We're now at the brink of true disaster, which we
Speaker 1: will get into in greater detail in just a moment.
Speaker 1: After this break. We left off with the shares dropping
Speaker 1: down to twelve dollars and twenty eight cents. And we
Speaker 1: wish we could tell you that's as bad as it got,
Speaker 1: but it just got worse. Yeah. In two thousand eight
Speaker 1: they went down another to just five dollars and seven
Speaker 1: cents of share. Yeah, and it's still not as bad
Speaker 1: as it would get, but I can't bring myself to
Speaker 1: get there that quickly. So at this point they take
Speaker 1: a loan from Pershing Square, who's already an investor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had taken that eleven percent steak earlier. Yes, And
Speaker 1: they take four two point five million dollars, and then
Speaker 1: they put themselves up for sale. Yeah, they might have
Speaker 1: even entertained. In fact, I'm sure they would have entertained
Speaker 1: and offer from their arch nemesis, Barnes and Noble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble was looking at if they wanted to
Speaker 1: put in a bit, and they declined. Then they did
Speaker 1: some more restructuring. They cut ties with Amazon, and they
Speaker 1: made borders dot com. Yeah a little too little, too
Speaker 1: late as an and then they cut a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty six jobs, which saved them a hundred million dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they also sell off all their stores that are
Speaker 1: over in the South Asia area, like in the Australia area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they lost more money. So by the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand and eight, they had lost a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty seven million dollars and that was not great news,
Speaker 1: great news. Great news for George Jones was terrible, terrible smell.
Speaker 1: And George Jones got the boot. So he had come
Speaker 1: into a pretty tough situation. It had gotten tougher, but
Speaker 1: the Border Directors was not going to try and wait
Speaker 1: and see if George Jones could turn things around, so
Speaker 1: instead they replace him with a guy named Ron Marshall.
Speaker 1: Ron Marshall, I feel bad for him. He didn't come
Speaker 1: into at a bad time. He came in at a
Speaker 1: worst time, the worst time because was the company doing badly.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon, all of North America and by extension, the
Speaker 1: rest of the world was going to have a real
Speaker 1: tough time. Yes, we were hitting the global financial crisis
Speaker 1: and a great recession, and so Border starts closing their
Speaker 1: wild and books. I get it, because you know that's
Speaker 1: not their flesh and blood. That's just yeah, this is
Speaker 1: too anecdotal. I don't go to malls anymore. The few
Speaker 1: times when I go to malls, I definitely don't see
Speaker 1: the type of stores that were around when I was.
Speaker 1: When I did go to malls, I mean I do
Speaker 1: shoe stores, shoe stores, Claire's. If I want to get
Speaker 1: if I want to get stuff pierced by a gun,
Speaker 1: game stop Malls. Yes, just stands listen. I I do
Speaker 1: go to malls, and and there's a lot of clothing
Speaker 1: stores and some food stores, and a couple of electronic
Speaker 1: stores as usually either an Apple or Microsoft. I'm getting
Speaker 1: off topic. I really just want to go shopping at
Speaker 1: this moment. Well, let's get back onto onto the track here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a few there's a few little book stores,
Speaker 1: but they're more like calendars and games. Yeah. So they
Speaker 1: continue trying to to cut huge amounts of costs. They
Speaker 1: end up closing two hundred stores. They lay off another
Speaker 1: fire people. They had gone from having more than a
Speaker 1: thousand stores at their peak to fewer than two hundred.
Speaker 1: So you know that the arrow we talked about where
Speaker 1: they were really focusing on expansion, they're back now below
Speaker 1: where they were at that point. Yeah, and now they're
Speaker 1: also fighting e books. The rising popularity of e books,
Speaker 1: which means that their two thousand nine holiday sales were
Speaker 1: not great. They dropped thirteen from their norm. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: would have been also the era where all the bookstores
Speaker 1: were trying to come out with their own branded, proprietary
Speaker 1: e readers. That was that was rough times too. It
Speaker 1: was just after a year Marshall gets kicked out. Didn't
Speaker 1: last very long at all. Yeah, Mike Edwards comes in
Speaker 1: as interim CEO. More layoffs occurred, They pay back some
Speaker 1: of their loan and they restructure the rest. So that's
Speaker 1: that's a good step. Maybe things are looking up. Then
Speaker 1: they get their more permanent CEO been at Le Beau
Speaker 1: or Labao, and Edwards moves to being CEO of their
Speaker 1: subsidiary branches. And that was after Bennett had invested about
Speaker 1: twenty five million dollars in the company. And so then
Speaker 1: they say, all right, what can we do to address this?
Speaker 1: Beyond closing locations, they decided to try and update their yes.
Speaker 1: So they do things like start selling e readers, but
Speaker 1: instead of having their own one brand of e reader
Speaker 1: like the Barnes and Noble Nook, they still six different kinds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was where we started getting into that brand confusion stuff.
Speaker 1: And by then, but then the Nook in the like
Speaker 1: the Kindle, the Kindle was really the ruler of the
Speaker 1: roots because Amazon had really positioned the Kindle for success
Speaker 1: and would continue to do so. As Amazon would unveil
Speaker 1: new programs like the Prime Membership, they would throw in
Speaker 1: incentives like, you know, a discount on a Kindle reader.
Speaker 1: And so Amazon was absolutely determined to dominate that space
Speaker 1: and they that's what they did. And Barnes and Nobles
Speaker 1: did all right, because Barnes and Nobles jumped on it immediately.
Speaker 1: Borders was a little late to the game once again.
Speaker 1: They launched an e library, which Barnes and Nobles also did,
Speaker 1: but Barnes and Nobles did it eight months earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so their Borders is running a year late on all
Speaker 1: of this technology. Um, they sell off their paper Chase acquisition.
Speaker 1: They had bought paper Chase a while ago, and they
Speaker 1: lay off more workers. Yep. They end up losing more
Speaker 1: than forty six million dollars by that second quarter. So
Speaker 1: they say, all right, well, let's keep on trying to
Speaker 1: fix this. Uh. They start trying to put those toys
Speaker 1: and games in their stores. Like we had mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: they launch a new website. They make another attempt at saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, how about maybe now pretty please, like
Speaker 1: we look real, real cute. Yeah, And and Pershing Square,
Speaker 1: who was owned by Bill Ackman, who was kind of
Speaker 1: helping trying to help Borders really succeed, offers to help
Speaker 1: finance the merger between Barnes and Nobles and Borders. But
Speaker 1: still no dice. So yeah, by the end of it's
Speaker 1: getting to the point where it's impossible to deny inevitability.
Speaker 1: They are looking at the very real possibility of going
Speaker 1: out of business. They had lost another seventy four million
Speaker 1: dollars in the first quarter of ten. They delayed vendor payments.
Speaker 1: They started to try and figure out if they could
Speaker 1: maybe make a deal where they wouldn't have to pay
Speaker 1: cash upfront for the book stock. They would only have
Speaker 1: to you know. It's it's kind of like when Nintendo
Speaker 1: offered to the same thing. Yeah, they said, we'll provide
Speaker 1: all the stock, you don't have to pay us, just
Speaker 1: pay us if you sell the console. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what Borders was doing, except on the other side of
Speaker 1: publish just publish. Just don't like that very much. No,
Speaker 1: No publishers like it when you buy their books. They're
Speaker 1: so great about like, no, I'll give you a whole
Speaker 1: bunch for free, and then you just pay me if
Speaker 1: you happen to move them. They're like, look, you guys,
Speaker 1: it looks like you might be looking at bankruptcy. We
Speaker 1: don't want your debt. Yeah. They kept on trying, but
Speaker 1: it just wasn't really moving anywhere, and by February, the
Speaker 1: New York Stock Exchange pretty much put the nail in
Speaker 1: the coffin because the stock exchange there there are rules
Speaker 1: were being listed on the New York Stock Exchange. You
Speaker 1: have to meet certain criteria, including a certain share price,
Speaker 1: or else the stock market will delist you. And I
Speaker 1: think it's like a dollar. I think a dollar is
Speaker 1: that minimum. And they were in ninety cents to share. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they got for a while. It wasn't like they
Speaker 1: hit ninety cents in New York Stock Exchange said you're out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they tried to go into chapter eleven. They said
Speaker 1: that they had one point to seven billion dollars in
Speaker 1: assets and one point to nine billion dollars in debt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had some investors lined up and they eventually backed out.
Speaker 1: So they were Originally when they went into when they
Speaker 1: went into file for Chapter eleven, they were hoping to
Speaker 1: be out of bankruptcy by September. They had some bids,
Speaker 1: a bunch of like I said, they all kind of
Speaker 1: backed out. It all fell through. They had a buyer,
Speaker 1: Najafi was looking to buy them, but the Borders creditors
Speaker 1: didn't like that. Yeah, they were afraid that Najaffee was
Speaker 1: just going to come in liquidate all the assets and
Speaker 1: then sell them off and then the debt would be
Speaker 1: left with whomever the you know, was still around, And
Speaker 1: they said, no, we don't want to do that. The
Speaker 1: creditors are like, well, we feel like he's kind of
Speaker 1: a shark. We'll kind of we'll do this, but we
Speaker 1: have to pick who the liquidators are if they liquidate.
Speaker 1: And and it was just this big ordeal between the
Speaker 1: Jaffee and the creditors and the publishers and they couldn't
Speaker 1: come to an agreement, and so the Jaffee pulled out
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, so then it ends up having to
Speaker 1: go to liquidation anyway, It ends up going up for
Speaker 1: auction and goes into the company goes into Chapter seven bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: So Borders liquidates their stores. Most of them are liquidated
Speaker 1: by July, includes all the Walden books as well, and
Speaker 1: the books you know, the book Kiosks when it went
Speaker 1: into chapter seven. At that point had been the second
Speaker 1: largest bookstore chain, just behind Barnes and Noble. It's so
Speaker 1: sad because I don't think Barnes and Noble would be
Speaker 1: what it is if it hadn't been for Borders. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then now Barnes and Noble actually owns intellectual property
Speaker 1: of Borders. They spent thirteen point nine million dollars for
Speaker 1: it to have the intellectual property, So let's answer that question. Though.
Speaker 1: Why did Barnes and Noble survive but Borders didn't. I
Speaker 1: think it was late adoption to the trends. I mean
Speaker 1: that that's really what it is. Are there are some
Speaker 1: other things, so they were late to commit to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were late to jump on the on the e
Speaker 1: book train. They they invested in CDs and DVDs at
Speaker 1: a time when people were looking at digital media the books,
Speaker 1: just as the population was starting to migrate from physical
Speaker 1: media to digital media where they were downloading stuff instead
Speaker 1: of just buying the hard copy stuff. And then my
Speaker 1: assumption is they also weren't bringing things into their store
Speaker 1: that people couldn't download, like the toys, like the games,
Speaker 1: things like that. Also, some analysts say that expanding internationally
Speaker 1: pulled them too thin as well, but I think that's
Speaker 1: probably a smaller piece of the puzzle because one of
Speaker 1: the fun facts I have later on a combination of things, again,
Speaker 1: like the super aggressive stance on opening more locations probably
Speaker 1: was over extending their reach a little bit. And then
Speaker 1: as you say, these late adoptions of these very critical
Speaker 1: technologies would end up haunting them so well, and CEO
Speaker 1: turnover didn't Oh sure, Yeah, that was another thing, right
Speaker 1: where you you put someone new in charge and if
Speaker 1: things don't immediately get better, saying let's change it out again.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes that's necessary. Sometimes you put someone in charge
Speaker 1: and it becomes very clear, like we made a terrible decision.
Speaker 1: But in other cases factors that have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the leadership. It could be external factors that the
Speaker 1: leadership is dealing with and maybe maybe things would have
Speaker 1: been worse without that leader in place. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: mean so when you see one CEO go out quickly
Speaker 1: one or two, that's understandable. Once once you get a
Speaker 1: rash of the CEO cycling in and out then just
Speaker 1: freaking out. Yeah, exactly. The board directors doesn't have any
Speaker 1: confidence in the company, and that in turn trickles down,
Speaker 1: like the morale problem goes throughout the entire organization at
Speaker 1: that point. So yeah, this was this was a case
Speaker 1: of like a lot of bad factors all hitting at
Speaker 1: the same time. That being said, while we have these
Speaker 1: terrible stories to tell, we also have fun facts. Yes,
Speaker 1: we arial likes to put these at the end of
Speaker 1: every episode. I did a couple of them for this one.
Speaker 1: One of the fun facts I have is that one
Speaker 1: of the first Borders locations is now a restaurant and
Speaker 1: craft beer pub called hop Cat. Don't know if the
Speaker 1: original store not, but you can apparently get one of
Speaker 1: up to a hundred different beers on tap there. I'm
Speaker 1: going to imagine that the bar is built up on
Speaker 1: old Borders books. Yeah, and then Louis Borders was also
Speaker 1: responsible for founding another famous company that lasted only a
Speaker 1: short while. In fact, is a company that is largely
Speaker 1: associated with the dot com crash, and that would be
Speaker 1: web Van. Web Van is one of the most notable
Speaker 1: failures during the dot com days. It lost nearly a
Speaker 1: billion dollars of investment when the company failed. I think
Speaker 1: that investors had put in eight hundred fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: into that company, and it was one of the ones
Speaker 1: that went belly up shortly after the market crashed in
Speaker 1: the dot com bubble burst. Yeah. He also founded another
Speaker 1: company called people Media dot com. That was a company
Speaker 1: that would archive magazine articles and it would allow people
Speaker 1: to access them on a subscription basis. So it was
Speaker 1: behind a paywall. Right. You would the idea being, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to get access to this old article that
Speaker 1: was published in say, Popular Mechanics back in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: and so you would pay a subscription. Uh. The name
Speaker 1: of the company changed to my wire dot com. But
Speaker 1: it didn't result in a successful business model. So I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly when it went out of business. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find any information on that, but I will tell
Speaker 1: you that if you try to navigate to my wire
Speaker 1: dot com now you'll get like kind of just a
Speaker 1: bunch of generic links. It's not even it's clearly not
Speaker 1: the same thing. I guess, Uh, I guess for Louis,
Speaker 1: it was really one and done. Yeah, at least as
Speaker 1: of two thousand fifteen, there were still international Borders. Not
Speaker 1: again not. There's a lot of international Borders that way,
Speaker 1: like Borders bookstores, including in Malaysia. Um so some of
Speaker 1: those sold off forgot bought by other companies prior to
Speaker 1: Borders going under and they still exist. Yeah, the first
Speaker 1: Borders location stayed open all the way to the end,
Speaker 1: all the way to the end, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: good benchmark. Yeah, I'm sure there was a sad ceremony
Speaker 1: held at the University of Michigan campus and the last
Speaker 1: one closed. And I love your your final fun fact here. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's in all of my research. I came across an
Speaker 1: article on the Washington Post from May, if you want
Speaker 1: to look it up, on what you can still do
Speaker 1: with old Borders gift cards. I mean, because you might
Speaker 1: come across like you might find one stuffed in a
Speaker 1: soft shore one day. Among the suggestions suggestions were ninja
Speaker 1: stars and gifting them to people you don't like. I
Speaker 1: like that second one a lot, figured you might well.
Speaker 1: That wraps up this episode. We want to thank Ashley
Speaker 1: again for writing in and suggesting these. The next few
Speaker 1: episodes will be recording are going to all be from
Speaker 1: Listener requests. So maybe some of you out there are
Speaker 1: thinking about a company you would love to have us cover.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a story about an amazing ascension or a
Speaker 1: terrible fall, and you want us to give our take
Speaker 1: on it. If you want us to do that, writing
Speaker 1: us is the best way to do it. Send us
Speaker 1: an email. They can send us that email at feedback
Speaker 1: at the Brink podcast dot show yep, and you can
Speaker 1: visit our website that's the brank Podcast dot Show. You'll
Speaker 1: find the archive of the elder episodes there and some
Speaker 1: information about your beloved hosts. And speaking of those two
Speaker 1: beloved hosts, I have been Jonathan Strickline and I have
Speaker 1: been aerial casting, I'm going to go read a book.
Speaker 1: Business on the Brink is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
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