The recent collapse into administration of Redgroup, which runs the Borders and Angus & Robertson chains in Australia, pretty much sucked for book lovers of all stripes. But here’s a tiny glimmer of hope: 25 franchise A&R stores say that they want to dump the brand and act as independents.
We’d already noted that ebook enthusiasts who had purchased a Kobo device should be able to continue to access those titles no matter what happened, since Kobo acts as an independent entity to both Redgroup here and Borders in the US (the latter has also collapsed). And while there’s plenty of legal wrangling still to be sorted — Redgroup’s administrators are still arguing that A&R will survive as a brand — it seems pretty clear that any independent bookseller worth their salt would still want some kind of ebook platform on offer to ensure their future survival. So here’s hoping that it all gets sorted out without too much stuffing around. Picture by Bentley Smith
johnd
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 8:15 AMSo the administrators are intending to hold franchise holders fully liable to their franchise agreements?
Pity the administrators don’t hold the same view of their treatment of gift card holders. Even franchise holders have to tell gift card customers that they have to spend the value of the card in cash before they redeem it, since the cards are now controlled by the administrators.
This makes they franchise holder look bad and damages their business due to decisions out of their control.