Waldenbooks
 |
|
| Waldenbooks | |
| subsidiary | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Fate | Liquidation as a result of bankruptcy of the Borders Group |
| Founded | March 4, 1933 |
| Founder | Lawrence Hoyt |
| Defunct | July 18, 2011 |
| Headquarters | Ann Arbor, Michigan |
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Area served
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United States |
| Products | Books, magazines, comic books, maps, calendars, gift cards |
| Parent | Borders Group |
| Website | waldenbooks.com at the Wayback Machine (archived September 28, 2002) |
Waldenbooks, operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain and 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), a former sales manager for Simon & Schuster, opened a rental library within leased space inside a Bridgeport, Connecticut department store under the name Walden Book Company. Within fifteen years, it 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.
In 1962, he opened his first stand-alone bookstore in Pittsburgh; by 1981, it had become the first bookstore chain to have stores in every state. In 1969, it was purchased by the Broadway Hale Stores, a California-based department stores holding company that was later renamed Carter Hawley Hale in 1974. For the stand-alone bookstores, the company initially traded under the name Walden Books. During the 1970s, the company gradually changed their trade name to Waldenbooks.
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, However, Waldenbooks discovered that when they continued to operate the newly acquired stores as Brentano's that the new stores were generating more sales than equivalent Waldenbooks so Waldenbooks decided to continue and expand the Brentano's brand in selected upscale neighborhoods.
Later in 1984, Waldenbooks itself was acquired by Kmart after Carter Hawley Hales needed to get cash to defend itself from a hostile takeover attempt. At that time, Waldenbooks was the largest retail bookstore chain.
Under Kmart's ownership, Walden tried many things 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. A year later, Walden discontinued the discount bookstores after determining that sales figures were not as great as first projected. In its place, Walden decided to try this concept within selected Kmart stores.
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Wikipedia