Borders misses the point

I was at an innovation conference last week in Boston. Borders books had set up a booth to sell innovation related books. OK. That makes sense.

But they really missed a chance to shine.

They had a table of mostly hardcover books. Many looked quite interesting. But I’m thinking: who wants to carry back a bunch of books. OK, they offered to ship. That’s good customer service. And to be fair, they were quite nice about the whole thing. It was a good experience.

But they sold about $5000 worth of books at the conference. With two people manning the booth. That cannot seriously be the point of attending a conference. They had an opportunity to position themselves as true innovators. In product or service. Heck, anything. They could have offered to send me an email on the spot with a link to a PDF file that I could use to download the book when I got back (with cost savings since it’s cheaper for them). Or they could have offered to put it on a flash drive. Or they could have offered to have it delivered to the Borders closest to my home or office while telling me about the book signings or events they were hosting in store.

And all these ideas are not super innovative. I didn’t invent them. Imagine what they could do if they sat down and brainstormed for a few hours. They had a bunch of innovators at this conference from some high-powered companies. I’m pretty sure that the reputational benefits they could have gotten would have far exceeded $5000.