Schulers opened a location in the mall a few months before I quit. The opening of a competitor didn't have a big impact on our sales. What had a huge--and disasterous--effect on our sales was the company's decision to "rework" the frequent shopper program, changing it from a user-friendly program which strongly encouraged repeat sales to a pricey mess with almost no benefit to the consumer.
I was at the mall for the first time in years just recently. The store is gone. So there's that. I'm not trying to draw any parallels; I left Waldenbooks in 1997, so I'm in no position to try to reason why that one particular (once successful) store failed. For all I know, the chain no longer exists.
I'll say this, though: I am a voracious reader, as are all five members of my family, and we frequently shop at the B&N near our house. Good prices, good selection, excellent customer service. Several times a year I will special order movies and cds from the store. I've never made use of their little cafe because, as a former waitress, I don't do frou frou java. But I have noticed that all the tables in the cafe are generally full, so a need appears to be filled.
Once every couple of years (say five or six) I will stop in at the used bookstores on the MSU campus, just to remind myself why I don't offer them my patronage on a regular basis. Prices as high as B&N, hit or miss selection, and some of the snottiest sales staff I have ever encountered...what's not to love? No, thanks.
I don't think these particular shops are true "mom and pops"--they are more along the lines of campus fixtures, surviving because each fall a new crop of blossoming scholastic intelligentsia arrive on campus, armed with Mommy's plastic, itching to prove how deep they are by spending a stupid amount of money on a tattered copy of The Naked and the Dead. I mean, really. They'll never open the book (one hopes). It'll look ubercool on their bookshelf, though. In secret they'll continue to reread the Harry Potter series and those vampire books that are so popular now.
Books they probably got at B&N!
The Waldens around here vanished a while ago. Around ten years ago, the North Kent Mall was torn down (replaced by a Lowes), which took care of the Bargain Books and Walden inside; the indie bookstore that had been out by Plainfield disappeared a few years earlier.
The Walden in Woodland Mall had survived for decades, moving once within the mall, that was about 20 years ago. At one point there were three bookstores in Woodland, I’m drawing a blank as to their names; Walden was in the middle for size, and on the SW wing; the Doubleday (aha) was smaller, and on the NE wing; the, hmm, can’t recall the name of it, bigger than Walden, was on the NW wing. Those others weren’t around for very many years.
The Woodland Walden made its move sometime during or shortly after the first Bush administration, so, circa 1990. The space it moved to was much larger and right on the corner by one of the entrances. I generally went there around Christmas (historically the only time I actually go to malls anymore) and occasionally during the year when I had points to spend (must have been that program you mentioned).
I have a warm spot for Walden because it was literally the first bookstore I ever visited, and I started spending my small amount of hard-earned childhood cash there when I was able to even go there.