Borders’s Group History - The History of the Borders Group Chain of Bookstores

The Borders Group, Inc. (stock symbol BGP) was a publicly held bookstore chain that operated Borders superstores and Waldenbooks Specialty Retail segment stores, including Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders airport stores.

Where many booksellers--even other publicly-held bookstore chains--are closely identified with one owner, the Borders Group came together through corporate acquisitions.

Brentano's, Walden and Borders
The Borders Group owes its history to several separate chains--Borders, Waldenbooks and Brentano's. Brentano's was the longest-lived of the three bookstore chains that eventually made up the Borders Group. The original Brentano's store was founded in 1853 in New York City, by August Brentano, a newspaperman. The second oldest of the three, Waldenbooks, was founded by Lawrence Hoyt, a rental library entrepreneur. Hoyt opened the first Walden Book Store in 1962 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; he named the bookstore for Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

Over the years they were in business, Brentano's and Waldenbooks expanded their establishments into multiple-bookstore chains. In 1984, Kmart purchased Waldenbooks; Waldenbooks then purchased Brentano's.

Brothers Tom and Louis Borders opened their first bookstore in Ann Arbor in 1971, while they were students at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor continues to be Borders Group's headquarters). The Borders brothers opened additional stores in Michigan, Atlanta and Indianapolis, and developed a sophisticated system that enabled them to track bookstore sales and inventory. In addition to using it in their own bookstores, they sold their Book Inventory Systems (BIS) to other booksellers, as well. In 1985, they opened their first "superstore," a large-scale bookstore (with a coffee bar) that was to become the prototype of many that came afterward. In 1988, they hired Robert DiRomualdo, a Harvard MBA with retail experience, to help expand the business. Under his leadership, the Borders bookstore chain grew rapidly in the next four years.

Kmart, then IPO
In 1992, with the bookstore business booming, Kmart purchased Borders and created the Borders-Walden Group. But book profits proved not to be as robust as anticipated and Kmart was having its own retail troubles so, in 1995, they divested themselves of the chain of bookstores, spinning off the Borders Group with an initial public offering.

The Borders Group expanded internationally beginning with a store in Singapore 1997, then opening more than 40 stores in Europe, Asia and Australia/New Zealand and buying a 35-store chain called, appropriately, Books.