Wednesday, August 18

Waldenbooks

Waldenbooks, (often referred as Waldens), operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., is an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain. The Walden Book Company is a subsidiary of Borders Group. Currently, there are around 150 Waldenbooks stores in malls across the United States. They also ran a video game and software chain under the name Walden Software as well as a children's edutainment chain under Walden Kids.

History

On March 4, 1933, Lawrence Hoyt decided to open a rental library in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Within fifteen years it had grown to over 250 locations. In 1962 he decided to open a bookstore, and in 1981 it became the first bookstore to have stores in every state. For a time it was owned by the retail conglomerate Carter Hawley Hale. Over the past several decades Waldenbooks has earned itself a rather specialized niche in retail book selling by locating almost exclusively inside shopping malls, and are known for being a mall bookseller today.
In 1984, Waldenbooks was acquired by Kmart. That year it acquired the Brentano's chain. In 1994, Kmart sold its Waldenbooks and Borders which formed the Borders-Walden Group. In 1995 the renamed Borders Group was able to buy back its stock and it was listed independently on the New York Stock Exchange.

(source:wikipedia)

No comments:

Post a Comment