Lorem Ipsum Books: the Next Borders?

Lorem Ipsum Books:About:

The Idea: Custom-build software to streamline bookstore operations and pricing.

The idea behind Lorem Ipsum Books is simple: start with a conventional used bookstore that maintains the bookstore experience, but operate it with a sophisticated inventory control and pricing system that dual lists inventory for sale on popular Internet used book sites, such as Half.com, Alibris and Amazon.com. Certainly other bookstores are doing this already, but with significantly more labor involved per-transaction. Our “secret sauce” to minimize the pain involved in transitioning to a changed retail environment is our soup-to-nuts bookstore management system.

This inventory control system, written by Lorem Ipsum, serves to both
manage in-store supplies, shipments, and processes as well as to
determine an accurate, real-time market price.
Conceivably this duality represents the key to the survival of used bookstores–sell the commodity product at market prices through the Internet’s global reach, while promoting the experience of the book and catering to local needs in-store. For most of us this reduction might be a too surgical view of the business of bookstores, however we believe it is healthy to be intouch with the realities of today’s changed retail environment.

Borders built its own state-of-the-art inventory software thirty years ago starting here in Ann Arbor and revolutionized the book world. (Yay.)

Is Lorem Ipsum the logical successor?

If you’re curious, buy their software and start a bookshop. Or wait ten years and see if everyone else does.

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