Melville House Books

More bad news from the nation’s second largest bricks-and-mortar retailer: Late last week the beleaguered Borders Group Inc. “marked another painful milestone in its quest to downsize and cut costs Thursday when it laid off 136 people, including 94 in Ann Arbor,” as the hometown Ann Arbor News reported in this story by Stefanie Murray. The firings — which amounted to 12% of the company’s corporate workforce — is the latest in a series of moves that has seen the company fire its chief executive and, as the News reports, lowered its workforce at headquarters alone from 1300 people down to 770. “While reducing payroll is never easy and we respect the impact it has on employees and their families, it is one of the necessary steps we must take along with other non-payroll expense reductions to help get this company back on track financially,” said CEO Ron Marshall in a written statement. Ken Ahern, an assistant business professor at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, explained “It seems like they are trying to avoid bankruptcy and trying to avoid taking the company private. It’s not unusual to do all these kinds of changes if things aren’t going well.”

A Publishers Weekly report by Judith Rosen, meanwhile, notes that in addition to the staffing cuts the company is changing its inventory methods in hopes of responding to sales trends faster.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.