Borders and Retailing Troubles

The Bookseller is reporting that insurers have backed away from Borders. It is hard to determine how significant this is since most suppliers to Borders will have their own insurance. Terms on which suppliers are selling to Borders are very, very tight at the moment. Should Borders get into cash flow difficulties, this could have a cascading effect across the industry. The balance of on-line retailing, physical retailing and wholesale/distribution could change radically. As many have noted, the expectation is for the Christmas retailing season to be soft (or 'terrible') which will cause a number of January bankruptcy filings across all retailing. Whether book retailing is one of those remains to be seen, and we all hope not as the market changes may not be in our long term interest.