Berean Christian Stores, which was sold by Standex International
to a private equity firm and senior management this past summer (Shelf Awareness, August 2, 2006), has bought the last four Provident Bookstores from Mennonite Publishing Network, according to the Lancaster New Era.
Three of the stores are in Pennsylvania--Lancaster, New Holland and
Souderton--and the other is in Wooster, Ohio. Berean has 18 stores.
Just a year ago, Mennonite Publishing operated eight Provident
Bookstores. Of them, two in Goshen and Berne, Ind., were sold a year
ago. One in Newton, Mass., was sold last month, and another in Ephrata,
Pa., was closed.
Mennonite Publishing, which is owned by Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada, intends to focus on book publishing.
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Borders is opening a 22,367-sq.-ft. store in Parkersburg, W.Va., at the end of November next to the Grand Central Mall. The store will stock the usual nearly 200,000 book, movie and music titles. Last Saturday, in anticipation of the arrival of the new store, Borders closed its 4,100-sq.-ft. Waldenbooks store in the same mall.
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Need a short paperback to while away the time on the desert ski lift?
The 16,000-sq.-ft. Borders that is opening next week in Dubai (Shelf Awareness,
October 8, 2006) is in what Borders describes as "the largest mall
outside of North America." The Mall of the Emirates has more than 400
shops, including Harvey Nichols, Dolce and Gabana and Gucci, as well as
the famous Ski Dubai, the indoor ski site. Al Maya Group is opening the
store under a franchise agreement with Borders.
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More on the Savannah State University bookstore employee who stole money, as mentioned here yesterday.
The AP is reporting (via the Macon Telegraph)
that the U.S. attorney's office in Savannah, Ga., announced yesterday
that a grand jury has charged Charles Jackson III with four counts of
bank fraud for pocketing several checks he was given to deposit in the
store's bank account. Apparently the checks amounted to more than
$200,000.
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Barnes & Noble has changed its Member loyalty program so that Member members will now receive 40% discounts on hardcover fiction and nonfiction bestsellers--a slight increase--and 20% discounts on all other adult hardcovers--up from 10%. They continue to receive 10% discounts on all other products. The offer is good at all B&N stores and online. Member membership costs $25 a year; the program was launched six years ago.
Noting that Wal-Mart, Costco and Amazon.com and others are discounting hardcover bestsellers deeply, today's Wall Street Journal quoted Joseph J. Lombardi, B&N's CFO, this way: "You have to competitive. We've been talking about softness in the hardcover business, and this lets us support that format with our best customers."
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Late
yesterday Amazon.com reported third quarter results and pleased Wall
Street by saying that "it would slow its rate of investments in new
projects, a move that could increase profits," as today's Wall Street Journal put it. The company's share price rose 14% to $38.35 in after-hours trading.
The e-tailer's net sales increased 24% to $2.31 billion, although net income
was $19 million compared to net income of $30 million in the same period last year.
The company continues to emphasize a digital-downloading future; one of
its new businesses is Amazon Unbox, which allows customers to buy or
rent movie downloads. Still, Amazon has ventured even farther afield
from its initial emphasis
on books: it boasts that it stocks more than one million car products
for sale.
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Today's Wall Street Journal has a feature on Viking Range Corp., the Greenwood, Miss., gas range, refrigerator, wine cooler, grill and dishwasher manufacturing company that has spent a lot of money fixing up Greenwood. That effort has included the creation of a bookstore, Turnrow Book Co., which was profiled here last month (Shelf Awareness, September 28, 2006).