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Borders Books in Singapore Enjoys High-Volume Business

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Finding a good bookstore in many Southeast Asian countries is about as likely as stumbling across a patch of snow in the streets of Bangkok.

After you’ve run through the Ho Chi Minh titles in Vietnam, you’re pretty much out of luck. In Laos, you’re out of luck, period. In Indonesia, books are wrapped in plastic, eliminating the joy of perusing in search of the perfect read.

Now, in Singapore, along comes Borders with Southeast Asia’s first “super bookstore”--120,000 titles, two-thirds of them new to Singapore, along with 2,000 magazines. It opened in November 1997 and has become so wildly successful that the book-buying habits of this island nation may never be the same.

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“Obviously, what’s surprised us the most is the incredible volume of business,” said Matthew Coyne, an American who is Borders’ general manager here. “From day one it was apparent we had to completely restructure the operation to meet demands and maintain customer service. We were overwhelmed.”

Singapore, whose government has long controlled the flow of information, does not let Borders or other stores sell books on communism, pornography or religious cults. Otherwise, no limits have been placed on which titles can be imported.

Many political analysts see Borders’ arrival as part of a larger trend in Southeast Asia: The Internet and media have grown more feisty, governments are less able to control the information their people have access to, and the region is experiencing a growth of intellectual freedom.

Borders Books and Music is located in a former department store on upscale Orchard Road. On many weekend days, sales of books and CDs hit 10,000. Despite the region’s economic problems, Singaporeans continue to buy books by the armful, and a strong Christmas season has carried over into March, Coyne said.

The company’s marketing technique, though unique to Southeast Asia, has long proved popular in the United States: Stock a huge number of titles, invite customers to browse and read in cozy alcoves and comfortable armchairs, put in a cafe and, for heaven’s sake, take those plastic wrappers off the books so readers can see what’s between the covers.

“Borders has become a happening, a meeting place,” said Simon Tay, an opposition member of Parliament. “Just having access to so many titles and so many magazines in an inviting atmosphere, well, it’s a very welcome change.”

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When Borders, the second-largest U.S. book retailer after Barnes & Noble, started looking for its first overseas outlet, Singapore seemed a good bet. The nation has an educated, prosperous English-speaking population, a large expatriate community that includes 30,000 Americans, a literacy rate of 91%, business-friendly import laws, and efficient shipping and distribution centers. The only question seemed to be: What did Singaporeans want to read?

Although many popular American authors, such as John Grisham and Stephen King, sell well here, Singaporeans--who place a high value on education and are keenly interested in world history--do have their own reading preferences. The military history and general history sections do “gangbusters,” Coyne said. Self-help and business books, such as Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power,” become bestsellers. Romance, mystery and crime don’t attract a great following, but science fiction does.

Borders has been so successful that the company figures that it won’t have the market all to itself for long. In August, Kinokuniya, a Japanese retailer with outlets throughout the world, will open its largest bookstore outside Japan a stone’s throw from Borders. Two other chains, Barnes & Noble and the Malaysian-based MPH Bookstores, have been scouting Singapore locations for similar stores, a Western commercial attache said.

The new outlet for Kinokuniya--whose existing mid-size bookstore here last year posted its first net loss in 16 years because of the regional economic crisis and the entry of Borders--will stock 300,000 book titles and will, at 40,000 square feet, be 25% larger than Borders.

“Borders totally overwhelmed the market,” said Keijiro Mori, Kinokuniya’s Singapore manager. “But we believe this market is big enough to support two super bookstores. We’re projecting we’ll be profitable within a year.”

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