Business & Tech

Borders Refugees Opening New Bookstore in Capitola Mall

The employees of the Borders that closed are in the process of putting together a brand new store at the same location in the mall.

When Borders first announced the closure of 200 stores in February, including the downtown Santa Cruz location, the Capitola Mall Borders Express was spared. It took just five months for the company to pull the though, effectively shutting down Capitola's plan B for book shoppers behind the .

Along with the closure came the unemployment of seven book lovers, all of whom had worked at the Borders Express for at least a year. But just three months since the liquidation was announced, the septet of bibliophiles has a plan to replace what the community has lost with a product even better suited to the local reader: a brand new local bookstore called Inklings Books & Things, set to open Nov. 1 in the same mall location.

"When Borders announced that we were going to have to shut down, it was this soul-crushing thing, since we loved what we were doing so much," Store Manager Dorothy Monroe said. Monroe, who worked at Borders for five years, will also manage Inklings. 

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Initially, the employees looked into buying the store as it was, to continue its operation, Monroe said. When that quickly proved unrealistic, they opted for a different route.

"One of my colleagues had a friend whose father is one of the co-owners of Thinker Toys," Monroe said. "She went and talked to him about it and he said they wanted to open a bookstore. So he contacted me and they feel the same way about small businesses that we do. We really want to make a place for the people that come here regularly and just keep doing what we love doing."

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Thinker Toys is co-owned by John Horner and Mark Phillips, who both agreed to take on Inklings with the same team that operated Borders. 

"They saw how we ran this store, how passionate we were about what we were doing and how much we wanted to keep doing it," Monroe said. "They weren't really buying the store. They were buying us."

With the new model (which for now will not include e-books) the owners and operators of Inklings have the opportunity to cater to their audience in a way that wasn't allowed under the rigidity of the Borders name. 

"We didn't have a lot of control over what was on the shelves as Borders," Monroe said. "This way we can listen to the customers and actually be able to do something about it. We can also make the space more personal and comfortable."

Among the content that patrons can expect to see at Inklings will be romance, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and graphic novels, all of which are in demand and fit the interests of the employees.

"It's going to have a cool geek feel to it because that's who we are," Monroe said. 

The name inklings comes from a book and writing club that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien belonged to at Oxford, Monroe said.

"An inkling is also an idea. It's about discovery," she said. "Bookstores are about discovering new things you wouldn't have seen. You don't discover new authors and new books online as easily as you would if you came in and said 'Hey, I love this book. Tell me more about it.'"

The current target date for opening is Nov. 1. Before that can happen, though, the rest of the inventory must arrive, shelves must be stocked and everything has to be organized. Fortunately, the owners of Inklings were able to buy shelving and fixtures from the closing Borders locations in Capitola and Monterey as needed. 

Should everything come together quickly, Monroe said they will even shoot for an opening date of Saturday, Oct. 30 to get the weekend crowd coming through the store. 

Will you be checking out Inklings? Are you excited that Capitola is gaining a book store? What kind of books do you want to see stocked there? Tell us in the comments!


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