Agency CEO Hires Laid-Off Borders Workers to Sell His Book

Well played, sir. To promote his book about the evolution of successful businesses, Aaron Shapiro has hired booksellers laid off from Borders, which he cites as a perfect example of a corporation that failed to adapt. Shapiro is CEO of digital agency HUGE and author of Users Not Customers, a business book focused on how industries must transition intelligently to the digital marketplace. Borders is a perfect cautionary tale, Shapiro writes: "At the start of 2011, after the company took back control of its Internet operations (from outsourced partner/competitor Amazon), online hardcopy sales accounted for less than 3 percent of Borders’ revenue—that’s less than a third of what Barnes & Noble derived from its online hardcopy sales.