History
The original Borders bookstore was located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it was founded in 1971 by brothers Tom and Louis Borders during their undergraduate and graduate years at the University of Michigan. The Borders brothers' inventory system tailored each store's offerings to its community. A sister company, Book Inventory Systems (BIS) (1976–1994), was founded to serve as a wholesaler for and provide the brothers' custom inventory system to regional independent bookstores such as John Rollins, Thackeray's, Schuler Books, and Joseph-Beth Booksellers. Former Hickory Farms president Robert F. DiRomualdo was hired in 1989 to expand the company.
The first Borders bookshop, with a meager stock of used books, was located in two rooms above 209 State Street, north of the State Theater. From there the brothers soon moved, briefly, to a tiny ground floor + mezzanine operation in the Maynard House apartment building, on the southwest corner of William and Maynard Streets.
In 1975 they bought out the stock of Wahr's, an 80-year-old bookstore that was ending business at 316 South State, and hired Michael Hildebrand and Harvey James Robin to stock it with rare books and manage the old shop. Hildebrand had managed Gibson's used and rare book department in East Lansing for years and Harvey Robin had been a local restorer of rare books, who moved his bindery upstairs.
Wahr's had been mainly a textbook and school supplies vendor, but the brothers did not deal in textbooks. They moved the retail bookshop to much larger quarters that had become available across State Street, in the former location of the Wagner & Son men's clothing store. The old shop was renamed Charing Cross Bookshop and Tom Frick was sent over from the new bookshop to help.
The chain's flagship store was in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan at the corner of Liberty and Maynard Streets, in the building once occupied by the now defunct Jacobson's Department Store. Although not the original location, it was still identified as "Borders #1."
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