Ann Arbor, MI—Borders Group, which entered the online bookselling fray after its major competitors, is turning to one of those rivals to help it make up for lost time. The bookstore chain is teaming with e-commerce giant Amazon.com to relaunch its Website. Borders.com will reemerge in August as a cobranded site powered by Amazon.com’s e-commerce platform. In the meantime, Borders will continue to operate the Website.
Seattle-based Amazon.com will be the seller of record for the new site, providing inventory, fulfillment, site content, and customer service. While the site will include access to such Amazon.com features as editorial reviews and personalization tools, it will continue to offer content unique to Borders.com, including store location information and in-store event calendars. The agreement follows a similar cobranding arrangement between toy seller Toys ‘R’ Us and Amazon.com, which launched in September.