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Walden Books Bookstore
There are in fact 485 stores in the Waldenbooks Specialty Retail segment. However, that segment includes, in addition to Waldenbooks, also Borders Express, Borders airport stores, and Borders Outlet. The Waldenbooks chain was founded originally in 1933, when Lawrence Hoyt opened the first store in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Fifteen years later, the chain had grown to over 250 locations. In 1981, the chain became the first bookstore to have stores in every state. The big change in direction came as Waldenbooks was acquired by Kmart in 1984. Later, in 1994, Kmart in turn sold the chain to Borders to form the current Borders-Walden Group which was renamed in 1995 as the Borders Group. Since 2004, however, many Walden books locations have been re-organized as "Borders Express" stores to unify the stores under one Borders brand. There is also a program to scale down the number of Waldenbooks locations, starting with the most underperforming locations. Walden books has a website at www.waldenbooks.com, which redirects nowadays to the main borders.com website.
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