Interview with new Borders CEO

The NYT just published Gary Jones's first interview since assuming the top spot at Borders. A couple of his comments suggest that he's open to making significant changes to their stores, even though he has no specific plans to do so at the moment.

One area where he sees opportunity, he said, is in translating the time consumers spend inside Borders stores into more dollars spent. “Our customers on average spend a lot longer in a store than what I’ve been used to,” he said. But, he added, “they like our stores; they’re staying there, but they’re not spending as much as they could.” ...

He declined to say how Borders might distinguish itself from Barnes & Noble, but he said that while “people in our company can easily go in and tell a lot of differences between a Borders and a Barnes & Noble, I wonder how many of the average customers might tend to get them confused.”