These are my thoughts on how Borders could turn it around:

1. Get the equity bankers out of the building. They only know how to move debt around and bring their consulting friends to the table. They know nothing about running any business much less a retail business. This is the responsiblity of the board of directors. They made the deal with the devil. They should undo the deal.

2. Realize they are a retailer and not a book seller. They have a great team of people, hundreds of stores and still have some decent branding. All of these should be put to selling items online and in the stores. They need to think beyond books, music, movies and coffee. They need to use this great network to distribute other saleable items and I do not mean Teddy Bears. When I worked their I suggested they sell guitar strings and picks etc. There own demographic numbers tell them that greater than 15 % of their customers are musicians who leave and buy that stuff somewhere else.

3. Get their head out of their ass. Borders.com??? An online book store 15 years after Amazon launched. This was the second shot at borders.com. The first time they wrote off like 20 million dollars. What they should do is get a much better relationship with Amazon. I run a bookstore out of my basement and I have a better deal with Amazon than Borders does.

4. Listen to your employees. Especially the long term ones that were part of the companies success in the past. They are very smart people with great ideas. Bankers have bank ideas. Merchants have merchandising ideas. Only the latter can save the company.

God Bless all the Good people in A2 and across the country.