Waldenbooks was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., and from 1995 was a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as a children's educational toy chain under Walden Kids. In 2011, the chain was liquidated in bankruptcy.
On March 4, 1933, Lawrence Hoyt (1902–1982),[1][2] a former sales manager for Simon & Schuster,[3] and Melvin T. Kafka (1905–1992)[4][5] opened a rental library within leased space inside a Bridgeport, Connecticut, department store under the name Walden Book Company (named for Henry David Thoreau's Walden, a meditation on simple living in natural surroundings).[6] The pair believed that their business would help people cope with the effects of the Great Depression. Books were lent out for three cents per day to save customers the cost of purchasing the books while providing affordable entertainment.[4][7] By 1948, Hoyt and Kafka had opened 250 book rental locations.[4]
Waldenbooks logo c.1960s
Hoyt opened the first Walden bookstore in Pittsburgh in 1962.[2] Within 15 years, the company had grown to over 250 locations in leased locations within various department stores. With the increased availability of low-cost paperbacks after the Second World War, rental library services were eventually replaced with retail book selling.[8]
Acquisitions
By the 1970s, the company had sales of just under $200 million.[2] In 1969, it was purchased by the Broadway Hale Stores,[9] a California-based department-stores holding company that was later renamed Carter Hawley Hale in 1974.[10] For the stand-alone bookstores, the company initially traded under the name Walden Books, written as two words. During the 1970s, the company gradually changed its trade name to Waldenbooks, written as a single word.[11]
In 1984, Waldenbooks acquired three stores that were located in upscale neighborhoods from the bankrupted Brentano's chain with the original intent of converting the stores to the Waldenbooks brand,[12] However, Waldenbooks discovered that when they continued to operate the newly acquired stores as Brentano's, the new stores were generating more sales than equivalent Waldenbooks, so Waldenbooks decided to continue and expand the Brentano's brand in select upscale neighborhoods.
In 1984, Waldenbooks itself was acquired by Kmart after Carter Hawley Hale needed to get cash to defend itself from a hostile takeover attempt.[13] At that time, Waldenbooks was the largest retail bookstore chain.[14] Under Kmart's ownership, Walden attempted to expand and diversify its business. In 1985, it opened a discount book outlet chain called Reader's Market by converting five existing stand-alone Waldenbooks stores.[15][16][17] A year later, Walden discontinued the discount bookstores after disappointing sales figures. Walden later tried this concept within selected Kmart stores.[18]
WaldenSoftware logo (c. 1997)Waldenkids logo (c. 1987)
After terminating the discount book strategy, Walden began experimenting with larger stores by opening Waldenbooks & More stores that included merchandise beyond books,[18] WaldenSoftware computer software stores,[19] and WaldenKids educational toys stores.[19] In 1987, Waldenbooks acquired the U.S. stores of the Canadian bookstore chain Coles Book Stores Ltd.[20] and gradually converted the stores to Waldenbooks. By 1990, Waldenbooks began to convert Waldenbooks & More into even larger Waldenbooks & More Books stores with a greatly expanded book selection.[21]
In 1992, Walden opened nine book superstores under the Basset Book Shop name;[22][23] ultimately these stores were converted to Borders locations after the merger.[24][25]
Kmart expanded its bookstore holdings by acquiring Borders in 1992.[26] At that time, Kmart kept Borders and Waldenbooks separate, but converted Waldenbooks' Bassett stores to the Borders brand.
When Kmart decided to spin off its noncore subsidiaries in 1994, Kmart merged Waldenbooks, Brentano's, and Borders to form the Borders-Walden Group.[27] At that time, Waldenbooks had 1,216 stores in all 50 states.[28] In 1995, the renamed Borders Group was able to buy back its stock[29] and it was listed independently on the New York Stock Exchange.[30][31]
Beginning in 2004, many Waldenbooks locations were rebranded as Borders Express stores.[32] Borders Group, in an attempt to increase profits and lower the overall expense of their Waldenbooks brand, also announced that it was downsizing the Waldenbooks chain to respond to the current "competitive environment". In January 2010, 200 stores, almost two-thirds of the total, were closed.[33][34]
On July 18, 2011, Borders Group filed for liquidation to close all of its remaining Waldenbooks and other stores.[35] Liquidation commenced on July 22, 2011.
In popular culture
In season 4, episode 9 (Nov. 25, 1977 air date) of The Rockford Files titled "The Mayor's Committee from Deer Lick Falls", Jim Rockford is looking for someone in a mall and stands outside a Waldenbooks.
In season 6, episode 13 (air date January 26, 1995) of Seinfeld titled “The Scoflaw”, several scenes take place in a Waldenbooks, where Jake Jarmel has book signings and interactions with the other characters.
On July 16, 2018, streaming service Netflix released a teaser for the upcoming third season of its hit series Stranger Things. The ad was made in the style of a 1985 mall advertisement, and includes an image of a "newly opened" Waldenbooks store among its offerings. In reality, the crew of Stranger Things did a cosmetic restoration of a portion of the Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth, Georgia, returning authentic signage and storefronts to the mall to represent many businesses that have since ceased to exist.[36][37][38]
Borders Group, Inc. was an American multinational book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. In its final year, the company employed about 19,500 people throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores.
Kmart Corporation, now operated by Transformco, is an online retailer in the United States and operates 6 remaining Kmart big-box department stores — 3 in the US Virgin Islands and one each in Miami, Florida; Bridgehampton, Long Island; and Tamuning, Guam.
Chapters Inc. is a Canadian big box bookstore banner owned by Indigo Books and Music. Formerly a separate company competing with Indigo, the combined company has continued to operate both banners since their merger in 2001. As of July 2017, it operated 89 superstores under the banners Chapters and Indigo, and 122 small format stores under the banners Coles, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company.
A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down costs.
Broadway Stores, Inc., was an American retailer based in Southern California. Known through its history as Carter Hawley Hale Stores and Broadway Hale Stores over time, it acquired other retail store chains in regions outside its California home base and became in certain retail sectors a regional and national retailer in the 1970s and 1980s. The company was able to survive takeover attempts in 1984 and 1986, and also a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 1991 by selling off most of its assets until August 1995 when its banks refused to advance enough additional credit in order for the company to be able to pay off suppliers. At that point, the company sold itself to Federated Department Stores for $1.6 billion with the acquisition being completed on October 12, 1995.
Coles is a Canadian bookstore chain owned by Indigo Books and Music. Coles is Indigo's brand for small-scale bookstores in locations such as shopping malls. Some locations are operated as SmithBooks, and the company has recently begun to open selected small-format locations as "IndigoSpirit".
OfficeMax is an American office supplies retailer founded in 1988. As an independent chain, it was the third-largest office supply retailer in the United States. Following a 2013 merger, it is currently a brand and subsidiary of Office Depot.
A big-box store is a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain of stores. The term sometimes also refers, by extension, to the company that operates the store. The term "big-box" references the typical appearance of buildings occupied by such stores.
An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned. Usually, independent stores consist of only a single actual store. They may be structured as sole proprietorships, closely held corporations or partnerships, cooperatives, or nonprofits. Independent stores can be contrasted with chain bookstores, which have many locations and are owned by large corporations, which often have other divisions besides bookselling.
Brentano's was an American bookstore chain with numerous locations in the United States.
B. Dalton Bookseller was an American retail bookstore chain founded in 1966 by Bruce Dayton, a member of the same family that operated the Dayton's department store chain. B. Dalton expanded to become the largest retailer of hardcover books in the United States, with 779 stores at the peak of the chain's success. Located mainly at indoor shopping malls, B. Dalton competed primarily with Waldenbooks. Barnes & Noble acquired the chain from Dayton's in 1987 and continued to operate it until a late 2009 announcement that the last 50 stores would be liquidated by January 2010. B. Dalton was later revived by rebranding a Barnes & Noble location in 2022.
White Front was a chain of discount department stores in California and the western United States from 1959 through the mid-1970s. The stores were noted for the architecture of their store fronts which was an enormous, sweeping archway with the store name spelled in individual letters fanned across the top.
FedMart was a chain of discount department stores started by Sol Price, who later founded Price Club. Originally a discount department store open to government employees paying a $2 per family membership fee, FedMart earned four times more than its investors had projected in its first year. Over the next 20 years, FedMart grew to include 45 stores, mostly in California, and the Southwest in a chain that generated over $300 million in annual sales. The business expanded to several states in the Southwest United States. Many stores were previous White Front or Two Guys locations. Price later sold two-thirds of the chain to Hugo Mann, a German retail chain, in 1975 and was forced out of his leadership position the following year. FedMart went out of business in 1982.
Kroch's and Brentano's was the largest bookstore in Chicago, and at one time it was the largest privately owned bookstore chain in the United States. The store and the chain were formed in 1954 through the merger of the separate Kroch's bookstore with the former Chicago branch of the New York-based Brentano's bookstore. The chain was closed in 1995 after suffering financial losses from increased competition.
Interstate Department Stores, Inc., was an American holding company for a chain of small department stores, founded in Delaware in 1928. After a very rapid expansion as the result of acquisition and expansion of two discount store chains acquired in 1959 and 1960 and also two toy store chains acquired in 1967 and 1969, the firm was renamed in 1970 as Interstate Stores, Inc., to better reflect its business. Increased competition and the changes in consumer buying habits eventually led to decreased sales in the late 1960s and early 1970s which forced the firm to file for bankruptcy in 1974. After shedding all of its non-performing units, the firm was able to exit bankruptcy with the entire toy division intact along with a small remnant of the department store division in 1978. The firm was renamed Toys "R" Us upon emergence from bankruptcy.
↑ Eichelbaum, Fred (May 16, 1958). "On the Main Floor...: 'How To' Session Reveals There's Money in Books: $184 Per Square Foot Of Main Floor Space". Women's Wear Daily. Vol.96, no.97. p.8. Our Firm", he [Hoyt] says, "was founded the day in 1933 when all the banks in the country closed. It was an auspicious start. I walked in on the head of Filene's in Boston and made my pitch, namely to run a leased book department. 'By the way', he asked after listening to me, 'what is your company's name?' Well, my company didn't have a name yet. But being a lover of nature and especially of Thoreau, the naturalist, and his "Walden", I had little trouble naming my company right then and there. It was the Walden Book Co. and has retained the name ever since.Link via ProQuest.
↑ "Broadway's Parent to Take New Name". Los Angeles Times. February 12, 1974. p.c9. Archived from the original on January 31, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2017. But when Broadway-Hale Stores Inc. directors decided it was time for a change they just looked around the table. The Los Angeles firm, parent of the Broadway Stores, Neiman-Marcus, Capwell's and other retail operations, will be known as Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc., if the shareholders approve. THe name is taken from its principal executives: Edward W. Carter, board chairman; Philip M. Hawley, president; and Prentis C. Hale, chairman of the executive committee. Operating divisions will retain their present names. The company said "Broadway-Hale" was too often confused with the Broadway Stores reatiling unit.Alternate Link via ProQuest.
↑ Cox, Meg (November 15, 1989). "Mass Marketers of Books Aim to Be Class Marketers: Comparing Best Sellers". Wall Street Journal. p.B1. The chief executive officer of Waldenbooks, Harry Hoffman, says he initially planned to convert the three Brentano's stores he bought in 1984 to Waldenbooks shops. But the childhood memory of his mother praising the extra service there gave him pause. So he revamped one old Brentano's store in St. Louis; when it reopened, annual sales exceeded $1 million, well above the sales for a new Waldenbooks.Alternate Link via ProQuest.
↑ Bekken, Jon (Winter 1997–1998). "Feeding the dinosaurs: Economic concentration in the retail book industry". Publishing Research Quarterly. Vol.13, no.4. pp.3–26. In 1984 K-Mart purchased Waldenbooks, then the country's largest bookstore chain (since relegated to second place by the merger of B. Dalton and Barnes & Noble), from the Carter-Hawley-Hale department store chain. Founded in 1933, by the 1980s, Waldenbooks operated more stores-located in shopping malls and similar high-traffic locations - than any other bookstore chain, and accounted for 15% of all bookstore sales. In 1987, the chain operated 1,179 Waldenbooks outlets (including 50 U.S. Coles stores bought that year from the Canadian chain); seven Waldenbooks & More, eight Waldensoftware, 28 Waldenkids, and 18 Brentano's outlets; and serviced book departments in Kmart stores. (Waldenbooks converted most Brentano's outlets into Waldenbooks after buying the chain in 1984, but later began opening new Brentano's as an upscale mall store brand enabling it to operate two bookstores in selected malls.) In 1992, Kmart added Borders Books' small but rapidly growing superstore operator to its portfolio. Under Kmart ownership, Borders grew from 19 to 75 stores while Waldenbooks shrank from a peak of nearly 1,300 stores to 1,127 in early 1995.Link via ProQuest.
1 2 Reilly, Patrick (March 10, 1986). "At Waldenbooks, More Gets Nod Over Discounting". Crain's New York Business. Vol.2, no.10. p.1. Waldenbooks tried its own hand at discounting. Last year it closed five conventional, money-making Waldenbook stores in the New York area, and reopened them as Reader's Market stores, offering discounts of 10% to 35% on all books. But the stores had produced average annual sales of only $600,000, equal to an average Waldenbooks' outlet's sales, but far below the $750,000 level needed to make a discount outlet profitable. Instead of converting more individual Waldenbooks stores to discount outlets, as of June 1, Reader's Market outlets will be opened as stores within stores at six K mart outlets in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Reader's Markets will retain their name in the K marts, taking up about 1,500 square feet, half the size of a typical Waldenbooks store. If successful, Reader's Markets will be expanded to other K mart outlets. Waldenbooks is revamping its response to discounters by scaling back its own discount chain in favor of units in K mart stores. And it is turning to an ambitious super bookstore -- called Waldenbooks & More -- to propel growth by selling everything from computer software to stuffed animals. The first Waldenbooks & More opened in November on Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown, L.I. At 10,000 square feet, it's more than triple the space of an average Waldenbooks store, and stocks about 35,000 book titles, more than twice the number in average stores.Link via ProQuest.
1 2 "Kmart Unit Will Market Computer Software, Toys: Waldenbooks Moves to Diversify". Los Angeles Times. April 5, 1987. p.D8. Archived from the original on January 31, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2017. Waldenbooks will be opening stores in its two newest fields shortly, both outside its traditional bailiwick: software and children's educational toys. Waldensoftware, which will sell about 7,500 different software titles for the personal computer market, will open its first store in June in Darien, Conn. Waldenkids, which will sell educational toys and games for children under 12 years old, will open in four locations in April (Los Angeles; Columbia, Mo.; Atlanta, and Pittsburgh), and two more in Connecticut in June.Alternate Link via ProQuest.
↑ "Business Brief: Southam Inc". Wall Street Journal (Easterned.). July 22, 1987. p.1. Archived from the original on October 2, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2017. Southam Inc., Toronto, said its Coles Book Stores Ltd. unit agreed to sell its 52 U.S. book stores and related assets to Waldenbooks Inc., a large Stamford, Conn.-based book retailer.Alternate Link via ProQuest.
↑ Goerne, Carrie (July 6, 1992). "Now Book Browsers Can Munch Brownies as They Shop for Browning". Marketing News. Vol.26, no.14. p.1. Waldenbooks, one of the largest mall-dwellers, has followed several other chains' lead and opened its first superstore last month in Stamford, Conn. The chain plans to open 50 more superstores, dubbed Bassett Bookshops, by the end of 1993. The store is not being marketed under the Waldenbooks name because consumers associate the name too strongly with the mall stores. Not to mention that the name Bassett Bookshop evokes more of that warm, fuzzy feeling the store is aiming for.Link via ProQuest.
↑ Knauer, Orren F. (March 5, 1993). "Kmart Corporation announces borders 1992 results". PR Newswire. p.1. Results included operations of the nine Basset Book stores which were transferred to Borders from Waldenbooks at the end of the year.Link via ProQuest.
↑ "Marketing Brief -- Borders Inc.: Chain Soon Will Manage All Of Kmart's Book Superstores". Wall Street Journal (Easterned.). December 9, 1992. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved July 7, 2017. Kmart Corp., which agreed to acquire bookstore chain Borders Inc. in October, said Borders will run all of Kmart's extra-large book superstores. As of Feb. 1, Borders will manage its own 22 book superstores, which operate under the name Borders Book Shops, plus four Basset Book Shop superstores now run by Kmart's Waldenbooks division. Kmart, based in Troy, Mich., said that all Bassets will change their name to Borders, and in the future, all of the company's new book superstores will use the Borders name.Alternate Link via ProQuest.
↑ Knauer, Orren F. (February 28, 1994). "Kmart Corporation announces Borders-Walden Group 1993 results". PR Newswire. p.1. Kmart Corporation today announced 1993 sales and operating results for the Borders-Walden Group, representing Kmart's retail book subsidiaries, Borders and Walden Book Company, which have been combined to form the new retail bookstore group. The Borders-Walden Group operates 44 Borders stores in 21 states and 1,216 Waldenbooks stores in 50 states.Link via ProQuest.
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