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Borderlands' sponsorships came about as an alternative to closing the store

81 points by quickfox 9y ago

quickfox 9y ago
This was a way to save a much-loved bookstore. It's interesting that it's still holding up after 2 years.
- sparky_z 9y ago
  Not just hanging on, it appears to be stabilizing. At the end of March, they had actually sold a handful of more sponsorships in year 3 than they had by the same time in year 2. The goal now is to use the additional funds to purchase a building in SF to be a permanent home for the store once the current lease runs out.
  - milesvp 9y ago
    I love this. It's both the epitome of anti capitalism, while being so completely fundamental free trade, that it almost makes my head explode (as a university trained economist). I especially love that many who espouse capitalistic ideals will have a hard time wrapping their minds around this too. It's so easy to forget that any time money changes hands without extortion involved that's capitalism at it's finest. And the fact that the store is looking to the future, and using the patronage (in it's most classical sense) to increase it's capital to help stabilize itself in the long term just really makes me smile from all the dichotomous ideas at play.
    - dluan 9y ago
      I mean, it's not really capitalism. It's liberty. Capitalism works under a lot of assumptions, one of them is no friction with information. This particular story is just taking advantage of a small, imperceptible (to the rentors) risk capital gap, but some savvy and attached fans saw it and wanted to take advantage of it. It's just like a lot of microfinance in say a poor struggling neighborhood in Bangladesh. There's money to be made there, but most traditional bankers or participants would ignore it or be blind to it. When socialism steps in is not when it's able to cover that gap, but when it has the foresight or wisdom to know why that gap should be covered. That wisdom is something that doesn't always happen in less than ideal capitalist systems.
    - exolymph 9y ago
      It's not anti-capitalism — people are paying for the existence of something they want. How is that antithetical to a competitive market?
      - Trundle 9y ago
        And why would someone who espouses capitalistic ideals struggle to wrap their head around it? It's a pretty simple concept.
    - cstross 9y ago
      It's an interesting example of the value of customer goodwill. In addition to being a bookshop, Borderlands is a cultural hub for SF/F readers in the Bay Area. As such, it's not simply selling SKUs at the cheapest viable price, it's providing an intangible curatorial service. Amazon may crowdsource reader reviews but they're unlikely to be as insightful as suggestions by enthusiastic staff who know what they're selling, and the usual recommendations engines are less effective than one of those staff engaging in Q&A with a customer to find something new that they might like. (And this is before we get into things like the cafe side of the business, or the author readings/signings. Disclaimer: I am an author and I occasionally do events there.)
      - thln666 9y ago
        This is why I signed up.
    - djrogers 9y ago
      This is a perfectly rational response in a capitalistic society. Sponsors obtain value from sponsorship through perks, social signaling, continued existence of Borderlands, personal gratification, and so on. On the other side of the transaction, Borderlands monetizes it's social and goodwill capital. This exchange of value for money is done in a way that may be somewhat unique for a retail establishment, but isn't anywhere close to anti-capitalistic.
    - noonespecial 9y ago
      Just another reminder that the money (and the people behind it) just do whatever they want Honeybadger style, and we scramble along behind them trying to stick labels on what just happened.
    - WaxProlix 9y ago
      > It's so easy to forget that any time money changes hands without extortion involved that's capitalism at it's finest. I thought that the existence of an individual or group of individuals who hold material wealth and can invest it (those who hold capital, or capitalists) instead of selling labor was capitalism at its core, and maybe therefore at its finest - is that not your take on it?
    - phaus 9y ago
      How is selling a premium service to make more money by using a clever marketing campaign that labels it as a "sponsorship" anti-capitalist?
andrewguenther 9y ago
I know a lot of small business owners in SF, and Borderlands' story is one that I've heard before. The minimum wage hike is killing a lot of coffee shops who had previously been able to offer quality coffee at not much more cost that what you'd find at Starbucks. With the wage hike, Starbucks takes the hit, keeps prices the same, and the smaller shops are forced to hike prices and turn away customers. I'm guessing I'll see a lot of commentary about paying a living wage and how these businesses must be mismanaged and that this is just the way the market "works." I won't necessarily disagree, but what is happening in practice still feels wrong.
- stevejohnson 9y ago
  Well, assuming the small coffee shops are well-managed, then we still have to ask ourselves which is more important, the cheap good coffee or a living wage for the workers?
  - lj3 9y ago
    Losing your job because your employer couldn't afford to stay in business is better?
    - TillE 9y ago
      Low minimum wage = not enough to survive on, so you're typically working multiple jobs, which is insane. A high minimum wage is one key element of a strategy to ensure that nobody has to do that. Anyway, there's extremely little hard evidence of minimum wage raises leading to higher unemployment. Studies generally show no effect. There's no shortage of dubious anecdotes from people with a political ax to grind, though.
      - andrewguenther 9y ago
        I see this cited a lot, my problem is that these studies (from what I've seen, happy to accept more data) are done on a state or nation scale where most every business is then on a somewhat equal playing field. My problem with what SF and Seattle are doing is that it is easy for large companies to compensate in other markets. I'd be really interested to see a study done somewhere comparable to that dynamic. Also, how many people transitioned from a job at a small business to a larger one? Unemployment could remain unchanged, but competition could drop drastically. As I've said elsewhere, I'm in support of paying a living wage, but I don't think it can work on a city scale and these experiments only hurt the cause by producing bad data.
hsod 9y ago
A beloved cafe closed in Seattle recently for the same reason (no crowdfunding campaign was forthcoming). I still support raising the minimum wage, but we shouldn't expect to have our cake and eat it too. Making labor more expensive will make goods and services more expensive, and it will make some businesses non-viable. Now that I'm thinking about it, is the minimum wage a regressive tax in disguise? In low margin businesses, one would expect the additional labor costs to be passed along to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Therefore, the extent to which a minimum wage raises your "tax" burden is proportional to the % of your income spent on low-margin consumer goods and services.
- revicon 9y ago
  One of the issues Borderlands talked about when they first started the sponsorship program was that each book they sold had the price printed on the book cover (printed by the publisher), so they were unable to raise prices when wages increased. I suppose you could just put a new pricetag over the old one but it's so easy for someone to open up amazon's app and check prices online that it wouldn't make much difference.
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    Amazon already sells books for below the cover price (often, at least) so it's already the case that people buy from brick and mortar because of something other than price.
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    This is one of the major issues with selling books, I hear. There's very little profit margin on the books themselves, so most stores have to make up the difference with higher-margin items like a coffee shop, swag, etc. On the bright side, there's little risk involved, since you're generally allowed to ship back any unsold books (or just their covers) for a full refund.
- goobynight 9y ago
  "is the minimum wage a regressive tax in disguise" Anything that increases prices could be seen as that, but I don't think it is that bad if you cut down to the necessities and you end up having a job at the higher minimum. This is just my intuition though. Worst case: prices go up and you are unemployed.
hackunomatter 9y ago
I never bought this "minimum wage increase destroyed us" story when it came out. The minimum wage increased from $11.05/hr to $12.25/hr. That's an increase of $1.20/hr. They claim this will cost them an additional $30,000/year. Let's consider that. Assume that their employees are all current minimum wage employees (otherwise they would not be affected). Given that they're open for 8 hours/day (which works out to 56 hours/week), it would mean that their additional cost would be an additional $3500/employee; so an additional cost of $30000 means they have 9 employees working all the time. Anyone who has been to Borderlands (and I have been a few times) can see that they do not have 9 employees all the time. Max I've seen are about 4. It's a bookstore, not an oil change place! In any case: whatever floats their boat. If sponsorships help them stay afloat, so be it. But they shouldn't blame the minuscule wage increase for their woes.
- snarf21 9y ago
  Or they could just impose a 10% price hike on all of their products and services to cover the cost. The thing that becomes clear is that greatly raising the minimum wage mostly affects poor people and the lower middle class. It reduces their buying power. It also greatly devalues the $15/hr woman who went to trade school to be an EMT for several years. EITC is a much better way to redistribute this wealth and it puts money in the people's pockets who need it most.
  - caryhartline 9y ago
    So you're saying that employers should introduce a price hike that they don't need to make so that it can prove your theory that it devalues buying power?
    - snarf21 9y ago
      Not sure where you got that. There are two conflated issues. One, if they are not profitable and can't cut costs, then they need to raise prices or go out of business. This is essentially what they did. They offered "sponsorships" which are more like VIP memberships and people paid money for things that used to be free or not exist. Separately, there is a separate question of the (many) consequences or raising the minimum wage. A lot of smart people think that EITC and other programs are a better way to redistribute wealth. I happen to agree. If a small business has to raise prices, that doesn't generally affect the upper middle class and wealthy. They don't tend to shop at Walmart.
revicon 9y ago
Borderlands has always been a great place to go and discover new sci-fi authors and books, their staff is great and it sucks that the books business is so tough these days. I joined their sponsorship program as soon as they started it, it feels great to walk in and see your name printed on the printout on the wall by the coffeeshop door.
Oxitendwe 9y ago
Everyone is going on about a "living wage", but what about the illegal aliens who live in America who make substantially less than that, and come here illegally with great effort to get it? Why would they do that unless it was profitable? They seem to have no problem living on what most people would not consider a "living wage". It seems obvious then that the goal in mind with raising the minimum wage is to make it even more difficult to employ Americans, leaving those jobs to illegal aliens and punishing businesses who try to follow the law and only hire citizens. This gives those who hire illegal aliens more leverage by the fact that doing away with illegals would mean a substantially higher price hike for their products given that they would have to pay their employees that much more.
- kartan 9y ago
  > It seems obvious then that the goal in mind with raising the minimum wage is to make it even more difficult to employ Americans Do you realistically think that this is the goal? Do you think that someone thought, Let's look for ways that Americans can't get a job? > leaving those jobs to illegal aliens and punishing businesses who try to follow the law and only hire citizens If a business doesn't care about the law, why are they paying the minimum wage in the first place? Isn't hiring illegals, illegal? I see why you are worried. As the article says "We said that we thought the dramatic wage increase might likely be very good for San Francisco, but it wasn't sustainable for us.". So what is good for the majority is not always good for all individuals. But that doesn't mean that it is a bad idea.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    > If a business doesn't care about the law, why are they paying the minimum wage in the first place? Isn't hiring illegals, illegal? I suppose if it's easier to hide illegal employment altogether, rather than cook the books to hide underpaid employees, that would be a reason.
  - Oxitendwe 9y ago
    >Do you realistically think that this is the goal? Do you think that someone thought, Let's look for ways that Americans can't get a job? Yes, for the reasons I mentioned in my post, which is that it gives them more leverage as an industry to protect their profits. If someone is looking to start enforcing the law and deporting aliens (harming profits because labor is now more expensive), they can then make an argument that this will lead to increased prices of their product. How much the price is increased is dependent on how much more they will have to pay citizens to work instead of aliens, which is determined in part by what the minimum wage is. >If a business doesn't care about the law, why are they paying the minimum wage in the first place? Isn't hiring illegals, illegal? Citizens have recourse and legal power to fight unlawful activity that illegal aliens do not. If a citizen is being paid less than the minimum wage, they have no reason not to try and extract the money they are legally entitled to by using the legal process. Aliens cannot do this, they do not want to bring attention to themselves because it could get them deported. So, it is better to violate the law by hiring illegal aliens than it is to hire citizens and pay them less than the legally mandated minimum wage. The fact of the matter is that minimum wage doesn't magically make everyone get paid more, it just makes jobs that don't produce more money than the arbitrarily-decided minimum wage illegal, and now nobody gets them. This apparently includes small coffee shops, but not e.g. Starbucks. The small coffee shop employees by the way seemed to have no problem with the former status quo, because if they did they would probably have either unionized or found other jobs. Instead, they all lost their jobs when their wages were legally required to be increased beyond that which the owner could afford. Way to go, guys. Now nobody gets anything, except Starbucks, who gets less competition and more customers. In whose best interests was this decision made in, exactly?
IMTDb 9y ago
This bookstore is now basically selling an new additional "premium service" (Private Wi-Fi, preferred seatings etc) for a yearly fee. It's really cool that they found a new way to make money, and that it works. But lots of businesses offer premium membership services. My local club has been doing this for year with some success. What's so new about this besides changing the name from "Premium Membership" to "Sponsorship" ?
- tehwebguy 9y ago
  Looks like it's 50% premium service, 50% supporting something people see as a public good.
  - quickfox 9y ago
    That plus the fact that they went from being a regular bookstore to this and it worked.
- rtpg 9y ago
  I guess it's mainly that bookstores don't do it? It's like that restaurant that only allows up-front-paid reservations. It's kinda obvious once it's brought up, but goes against how that industry usually works
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  I'd definitely pay for a place to go and sit with a laptop or book for awhile...you know, I wonder if something like olde London's "social clubs" could work today, but cheaper. They were basically buildings or floors rented out to simply be a place to relax, kick back, do some quiet work, play pool, drink/smoke in what I can only imagine were velour jackets, etc. In practice though, they were very expensive and mostly an upper-class affair. I feel like we could do better these days with say, 4000 sqft. of mixed-use space on the border between an industrial and residential neighborhood where rent is reasonable.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Clubs in the classic sense absolutely still exist in cities like NYC. But they're definitely not oriented around sitting around and working on your laptop.
hxta98596 9y ago
Glad to see they came up a creative solution to stay open and it's working. If my local bookstore needed sponsorship to stay open I would be first in line to donate. With that said, something feels off-putting when I read these stories of requests for sponsors and donors to failing businesses. Seems increasingly common story too. I understand there's multiple sides to this debate, and what the trend may or may not lead to. I have no idea. Maybe it is market efficiency or maybe it's serious market failure. I see comments on both those sides. Either way I don't think relying on sponsors and donors for failing businesses is a good or long term way for an economic system and market to function. Two more examples of this trend toward needing donations to band-aid the bullshit we created: Noah Smith's recent tweet: "I swear to God, the sight of people with deadly diseases crowdfunding their health care is the most dystopian thing about America right now" [1] Walmart asking for donations of food for its own employees who do not earn enough in wages to support themselves: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2013/11/is_walmarts_request_of_associa.html http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2013/11/is_walma... Speaking of, an increase in the minimum wage was blamed by Borderlands and others for having to close down and/or ask for donations. (Side note, I was surprised to read of these book store employees they have who "cheerfully" worked for minimum wage. in San Francisco. for a ten-plus years! Amazing! but whatever). Wages are not the full story here...The cost of rent for good retail locations in these cities (SF, LA, NYC, etc.) is a major major issue. Nuts. I'm not suggesting we federalize major cities' downtown storefront real estate spaces. I think if someone bought or inherited real estate in a great city location and makes a fortune then congrats to them, smart move, happy for them. But fundamentally it is economics 202 that a local B&M business model and employee wages will never keep up with the monopoly that is big city real estate and their pricing power to rent seek. The numbers don't work long term. Period. A regular business can't beat a monopoly like real estate but it's especially difficult when there are flocks of new, overconfident fools for tenants waiting in the wings with a shark-tank-quality-biz idea and fresh capital they got from who knows and they are ready to sign a lease they can't afford. Look at NYC restaurant spaces, why do they cycle so often and so quickly? Or come visit Los Angeles (I'll buy you a beer) and then go to Rodeo drive in Beverly Hills. Rent is so expensive on Rodeo now (+$1000 psf I think these days) that landlords know their tenants are running at a loss and they still raise rents on them every year (or sooner)...Half the shops on Rodeo Dr. are major luxury brands renting at loss but there for marketing purposes, the other half of shops belong to these weird little overconfident new luxury brands no one has ever heard of but think they will hyper grow and cover Rodeo rent. They never do. These little American dream, Italian leather type stores last maybe 6 months before closing and the next overconfident fool with a pink faux emu skin handbag is ready to roll the dice and pay an even higher rent P.S. If your city or town still has a real bookstore, when was the last time you went in there and asked the staff for a book recommendation and then gave a new paper book chance? Good date idea too. Just good all around. Roll dice. [1] https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/844393961678655488?lang=en https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/844393961678655488?lan...
cyborgx7 9y ago
Do they really sell through all their stock? One of the prime arguments in support of a livable minimum wage, is that is also increases purchasing power of people, increasing the revenue. More people could have bought books and made up for the difference in wages they had to pay. They obviously wouldn't have ever seen that happen, had they shut down immediately before giving it a chance. And I have to assume that higher purchasing power in the book budget of people has been used up by the 300+ 100$ sponsorships a year.

81 points by quickfox 9y ago

quickfox 9y ago

This was a way to save a much-loved bookstore. It's interesting that it's still holding up after 2 years.

sparky_z 9y ago
Not just hanging on, it appears to be stabilizing. At the end of March, they had actually sold a handful of more sponsorships in year 3 than they had by the same time in year 2. The goal now is to use the additional funds to purchase a building in SF to be a permanent home for the store once the current lease runs out.
- milesvp 9y ago
  I love this. It's both the epitome of anti capitalism, while being so completely fundamental free trade, that it almost makes my head explode (as a university trained economist). I especially love that many who espouse capitalistic ideals will have a hard time wrapping their minds around this too. It's so easy to forget that any time money changes hands without extortion involved that's capitalism at it's finest. And the fact that the store is looking to the future, and using the patronage (in it's most classical sense) to increase it's capital to help stabilize itself in the long term just really makes me smile from all the dichotomous ideas at play.
  - dluan 9y ago
    I mean, it's not really capitalism. It's liberty. Capitalism works under a lot of assumptions, one of them is no friction with information. This particular story is just taking advantage of a small, imperceptible (to the rentors) risk capital gap, but some savvy and attached fans saw it and wanted to take advantage of it. It's just like a lot of microfinance in say a poor struggling neighborhood in Bangladesh. There's money to be made there, but most traditional bankers or participants would ignore it or be blind to it. When socialism steps in is not when it's able to cover that gap, but when it has the foresight or wisdom to know why that gap should be covered. That wisdom is something that doesn't always happen in less than ideal capitalist systems.
  - exolymph 9y ago
    It's not anti-capitalism — people are paying for the existence of something they want. How is that antithetical to a competitive market?
    - Trundle 9y ago
      And why would someone who espouses capitalistic ideals struggle to wrap their head around it? It's a pretty simple concept.
  - cstross 9y ago
    It's an interesting example of the value of customer goodwill. In addition to being a bookshop, Borderlands is a cultural hub for SF/F readers in the Bay Area. As such, it's not simply selling SKUs at the cheapest viable price, it's providing an intangible curatorial service. Amazon may crowdsource reader reviews but they're unlikely to be as insightful as suggestions by enthusiastic staff who know what they're selling, and the usual recommendations engines are less effective than one of those staff engaging in Q&A with a customer to find something new that they might like. (And this is before we get into things like the cafe side of the business, or the author readings/signings. Disclaimer: I am an author and I occasionally do events there.)
    - thln666 9y ago
      This is why I signed up.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    This is a perfectly rational response in a capitalistic society. Sponsors obtain value from sponsorship through perks, social signaling, continued existence of Borderlands, personal gratification, and so on. On the other side of the transaction, Borderlands monetizes it's social and goodwill capital. This exchange of value for money is done in a way that may be somewhat unique for a retail establishment, but isn't anywhere close to anti-capitalistic.
  - noonespecial 9y ago
    Just another reminder that the money (and the people behind it) just do whatever they want Honeybadger style, and we scramble along behind them trying to stick labels on what just happened.
  - WaxProlix 9y ago
    > It's so easy to forget that any time money changes hands without extortion involved that's capitalism at it's finest. I thought that the existence of an individual or group of individuals who hold material wealth and can invest it (those who hold capital, or capitalists) instead of selling labor was capitalism at its core, and maybe therefore at its finest - is that not your take on it?
  - phaus 9y ago
    How is selling a premium service to make more money by using a clever marketing campaign that labels it as a "sponsorship" anti-capitalist?

andrewguenther 9y ago

I know a lot of small business owners in SF, and Borderlands' story is one that I've heard before. The minimum wage hike is killing a lot of coffee shops who had previously been able to offer quality coffee at not much more cost that what you'd find at Starbucks. With the wage hike, Starbucks takes the hit, keeps prices the same, and the smaller shops are forced to hike prices and turn away customers. I'm guessing I'll see a lot of commentary about paying a living wage and how these businesses must be mismanaged and that this is just the way the market "works." I won't necessarily disagree, but what is happening in practice still feels wrong.

stevejohnson 9y ago
Well, assuming the small coffee shops are well-managed, then we still have to ask ourselves which is more important, the cheap good coffee or a living wage for the workers?
- lj3 9y ago
  Losing your job because your employer couldn't afford to stay in business is better?
  - TillE 9y ago
    Low minimum wage = not enough to survive on, so you're typically working multiple jobs, which is insane. A high minimum wage is one key element of a strategy to ensure that nobody has to do that. Anyway, there's extremely little hard evidence of minimum wage raises leading to higher unemployment. Studies generally show no effect. There's no shortage of dubious anecdotes from people with a political ax to grind, though.
    - andrewguenther 9y ago
      I see this cited a lot, my problem is that these studies (from what I've seen, happy to accept more data) are done on a state or nation scale where most every business is then on a somewhat equal playing field. My problem with what SF and Seattle are doing is that it is easy for large companies to compensate in other markets. I'd be really interested to see a study done somewhere comparable to that dynamic. Also, how many people transitioned from a job at a small business to a larger one? Unemployment could remain unchanged, but competition could drop drastically. As I've said elsewhere, I'm in support of paying a living wage, but I don't think it can work on a city scale and these experiments only hurt the cause by producing bad data.

hsod 9y ago

A beloved cafe closed in Seattle recently for the same reason (no crowdfunding campaign was forthcoming). I still support raising the minimum wage, but we shouldn't expect to have our cake and eat it too. Making labor more expensive will make goods and services more expensive, and it will make some businesses non-viable. Now that I'm thinking about it, is the minimum wage a regressive tax in disguise? In low margin businesses, one would expect the additional labor costs to be passed along to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Therefore, the extent to which a minimum wage raises your "tax" burden is proportional to the % of your income spent on low-margin consumer goods and services.

revicon 9y ago
One of the issues Borderlands talked about when they first started the sponsorship program was that each book they sold had the price printed on the book cover (printed by the publisher), so they were unable to raise prices when wages increased. I suppose you could just put a new pricetag over the old one but it's so easy for someone to open up amazon's app and check prices online that it wouldn't make much difference.
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  Amazon already sells books for below the cover price (often, at least) so it's already the case that people buy from brick and mortar because of something other than price.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  This is one of the major issues with selling books, I hear. There's very little profit margin on the books themselves, so most stores have to make up the difference with higher-margin items like a coffee shop, swag, etc. On the bright side, there's little risk involved, since you're generally allowed to ship back any unsold books (or just their covers) for a full refund.
goobynight 9y ago
"is the minimum wage a regressive tax in disguise" Anything that increases prices could be seen as that, but I don't think it is that bad if you cut down to the necessities and you end up having a job at the higher minimum. This is just my intuition though. Worst case: prices go up and you are unemployed.

hackunomatter 9y ago

I never bought this "minimum wage increase destroyed us" story when it came out. The minimum wage increased from $11.05/hr to $12.25/hr. That's an increase of $1.20/hr. They claim this will cost them an additional $30,000/year. Let's consider that. Assume that their employees are all current minimum wage employees (otherwise they would not be affected). Given that they're open for 8 hours/day (which works out to 56 hours/week), it would mean that their additional cost would be an additional $3500/employee; so an additional cost of $30000 means they have 9 employees working all the time. Anyone who has been to Borderlands (and I have been a few times) can see that they do not have 9 employees all the time. Max I've seen are about 4. It's a bookstore, not an oil change place! In any case: whatever floats their boat. If sponsorships help them stay afloat, so be it. But they shouldn't blame the minuscule wage increase for their woes.

snarf21 9y ago
Or they could just impose a 10% price hike on all of their products and services to cover the cost. The thing that becomes clear is that greatly raising the minimum wage mostly affects poor people and the lower middle class. It reduces their buying power. It also greatly devalues the $15/hr woman who went to trade school to be an EMT for several years. EITC is a much better way to redistribute this wealth and it puts money in the people's pockets who need it most.
- caryhartline 9y ago
  So you're saying that employers should introduce a price hike that they don't need to make so that it can prove your theory that it devalues buying power?
  - snarf21 9y ago
    Not sure where you got that. There are two conflated issues. One, if they are not profitable and can't cut costs, then they need to raise prices or go out of business. This is essentially what they did. They offered "sponsorships" which are more like VIP memberships and people paid money for things that used to be free or not exist. Separately, there is a separate question of the (many) consequences or raising the minimum wage. A lot of smart people think that EITC and other programs are a better way to redistribute wealth. I happen to agree. If a small business has to raise prices, that doesn't generally affect the upper middle class and wealthy. They don't tend to shop at Walmart.

revicon 9y ago

Borderlands has always been a great place to go and discover new sci-fi authors and books, their staff is great and it sucks that the books business is so tough these days. I joined their sponsorship program as soon as they started it, it feels great to walk in and see your name printed on the printout on the wall by the coffeeshop door.

Oxitendwe 9y ago

Everyone is going on about a "living wage", but what about the illegal aliens who live in America who make substantially less than that, and come here illegally with great effort to get it? Why would they do that unless it was profitable? They seem to have no problem living on what most people would not consider a "living wage". It seems obvious then that the goal in mind with raising the minimum wage is to make it even more difficult to employ Americans, leaving those jobs to illegal aliens and punishing businesses who try to follow the law and only hire citizens. This gives those who hire illegal aliens more leverage by the fact that doing away with illegals would mean a substantially higher price hike for their products given that they would have to pay their employees that much more.

kartan 9y ago
> It seems obvious then that the goal in mind with raising the minimum wage is to make it even more difficult to employ Americans Do you realistically think that this is the goal? Do you think that someone thought, Let's look for ways that Americans can't get a job? > leaving those jobs to illegal aliens and punishing businesses who try to follow the law and only hire citizens If a business doesn't care about the law, why are they paying the minimum wage in the first place? Isn't hiring illegals, illegal? I see why you are worried. As the article says "We said that we thought the dramatic wage increase might likely be very good for San Francisco, but it wasn't sustainable for us.". So what is good for the majority is not always good for all individuals. But that doesn't mean that it is a bad idea.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  > If a business doesn't care about the law, why are they paying the minimum wage in the first place? Isn't hiring illegals, illegal? I suppose if it's easier to hide illegal employment altogether, rather than cook the books to hide underpaid employees, that would be a reason.
- Oxitendwe 9y ago
  >Do you realistically think that this is the goal? Do you think that someone thought, Let's look for ways that Americans can't get a job? Yes, for the reasons I mentioned in my post, which is that it gives them more leverage as an industry to protect their profits. If someone is looking to start enforcing the law and deporting aliens (harming profits because labor is now more expensive), they can then make an argument that this will lead to increased prices of their product. How much the price is increased is dependent on how much more they will have to pay citizens to work instead of aliens, which is determined in part by what the minimum wage is. >If a business doesn't care about the law, why are they paying the minimum wage in the first place? Isn't hiring illegals, illegal? Citizens have recourse and legal power to fight unlawful activity that illegal aliens do not. If a citizen is being paid less than the minimum wage, they have no reason not to try and extract the money they are legally entitled to by using the legal process. Aliens cannot do this, they do not want to bring attention to themselves because it could get them deported. So, it is better to violate the law by hiring illegal aliens than it is to hire citizens and pay them less than the legally mandated minimum wage. The fact of the matter is that minimum wage doesn't magically make everyone get paid more, it just makes jobs that don't produce more money than the arbitrarily-decided minimum wage illegal, and now nobody gets them. This apparently includes small coffee shops, but not e.g. Starbucks. The small coffee shop employees by the way seemed to have no problem with the former status quo, because if they did they would probably have either unionized or found other jobs. Instead, they all lost their jobs when their wages were legally required to be increased beyond that which the owner could afford. Way to go, guys. Now nobody gets anything, except Starbucks, who gets less competition and more customers. In whose best interests was this decision made in, exactly?

IMTDb 9y ago

This bookstore is now basically selling an new additional "premium service" (Private Wi-Fi, preferred seatings etc) for a yearly fee. It's really cool that they found a new way to make money, and that it works. But lots of businesses offer premium membership services. My local club has been doing this for year with some success. What's so new about this besides changing the name from "Premium Membership" to "Sponsorship" ?

tehwebguy 9y ago
Looks like it's 50% premium service, 50% supporting something people see as a public good.
- quickfox 9y ago
  That plus the fact that they went from being a regular bookstore to this and it worked.
rtpg 9y ago
I guess it's mainly that bookstores don't do it? It's like that restaurant that only allows up-front-paid reservations. It's kinda obvious once it's brought up, but goes against how that industry usually works
leggomylibro 9y ago
I'd definitely pay for a place to go and sit with a laptop or book for awhile...you know, I wonder if something like olde London's "social clubs" could work today, but cheaper. They were basically buildings or floors rented out to simply be a place to relax, kick back, do some quiet work, play pool, drink/smoke in what I can only imagine were velour jackets, etc. In practice though, they were very expensive and mostly an upper-class affair. I feel like we could do better these days with say, 4000 sqft. of mixed-use space on the border between an industrial and residential neighborhood where rent is reasonable.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Clubs in the classic sense absolutely still exist in cities like NYC. But they're definitely not oriented around sitting around and working on your laptop.

hxta98596 9y ago

Glad to see they came up a creative solution to stay open and it's working. If my local bookstore needed sponsorship to stay open I would be first in line to donate. With that said, something feels off-putting when I read these stories of requests for sponsors and donors to failing businesses. Seems increasingly common story too. I understand there's multiple sides to this debate, and what the trend may or may not lead to. I have no idea. Maybe it is market efficiency or maybe it's serious market failure. I see comments on both those sides. Either way I don't think relying on sponsors and donors for failing businesses is a good or long term way for an economic system and market to function. Two more examples of this trend toward needing donations to band-aid the bullshit we created: Noah Smith's recent tweet: "I swear to God, the sight of people with deadly diseases crowdfunding their health care is the most dystopian thing about America right now" [1] Walmart asking for donations of food for its own employees who do not earn enough in wages to support themselves: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2013/11/is_walmarts_request_of_associa.html http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2013/11/is_walma... Speaking of, an increase in the minimum wage was blamed by Borderlands and others for having to close down and/or ask for donations. (Side note, I was surprised to read of these book store employees they have who "cheerfully" worked for minimum wage. in San Francisco. for a ten-plus years! Amazing! but whatever). Wages are not the full story here...The cost of rent for good retail locations in these cities (SF, LA, NYC, etc.) is a major major issue. Nuts. I'm not suggesting we federalize major cities' downtown storefront real estate spaces. I think if someone bought or inherited real estate in a great city location and makes a fortune then congrats to them, smart move, happy for them. But fundamentally it is economics 202 that a local B&M business model and employee wages will never keep up with the monopoly that is big city real estate and their pricing power to rent seek. The numbers don't work long term. Period. A regular business can't beat a monopoly like real estate but it's especially difficult when there are flocks of new, overconfident fools for tenants waiting in the wings with a shark-tank-quality-biz idea and fresh capital they got from who knows and they are ready to sign a lease they can't afford. Look at NYC restaurant spaces, why do they cycle so often and so quickly? Or come visit Los Angeles (I'll buy you a beer) and then go to Rodeo drive in Beverly Hills. Rent is so expensive on Rodeo now (+$1000 psf I think these days) that landlords know their tenants are running at a loss and they still raise rents on them every year (or sooner)...Half the shops on Rodeo Dr. are major luxury brands renting at loss but there for marketing purposes, the other half of shops belong to these weird little overconfident new luxury brands no one has ever heard of but think they will hyper grow and cover Rodeo rent. They never do. These little American dream, Italian leather type stores last maybe 6 months before closing and the next overconfident fool with a pink faux emu skin handbag is ready to roll the dice and pay an even higher rent P.S. If your city or town still has a real bookstore, when was the last time you went in there and asked the staff for a book recommendation and then gave a new paper book chance? Good date idea too. Just good all around. Roll dice. [1] https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/844393961678655488?lang=en https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/844393961678655488?lan...

cyborgx7 9y ago

Do they really sell through all their stock? One of the prime arguments in support of a livable minimum wage, is that is also increases purchasing power of people, increasing the revenue. More people could have bought books and made up for the difference in wages they had to pay. They obviously wouldn't have ever seen that happen, had they shut down immediately before giving it a chance. And I have to assume that higher purchasing power in the book budget of people has been used up by the 300+ 100$ sponsorships a year.