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Indigo Books and Music Opens First US Bookstore

Indigo’s long-awaited US expansion launched this week in New Jersey. It’s first US bookstore opened in The Mall at Short Hills, which is located about 5 miles from Barnes & Noble, and 27 miles from Amazon Books.

One first-hand account makes it sound like a very inviting location compared to the B&N stores I have seen, which usually have cluttered aisles and little seating.

Indigo Books and Music has made its long-awaited U.S. debut with a 30,000-sq.-ft. store at The Mall at Short Hills, Short Hills, N.J. The space is designed around Indigo’s “cultural department store” for booklovers concept which combines typical book store categories such as books, magazines and stationery with such non-traditional ones as toys, home décor, wellness and other lifestyle products. It will also offer in-store events for kids and adults. (An in-store café is due is still under construction.)

The Short Hills outpost is warm, spacious and inviting, with an open floorplan designed as a series of zones, each with its own focal point. Books are the main attraction, but they are often complemented with products that tell a story around a book category. The Wellness Shop, for example, displays books on meditation, mindfulness, self-help and other related topics along with scent diffusers and candles.

If you live in northern New Jersey and can visit the store, I would love to hear what you think.

Indigo is Canada’s largest bookstore chain, although it now calls itself a cultural department store. it has around 200 stores in Canada, and plans to open 3 to 5 stores in the US over the next year or so.

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Comments


Allen F October 9, 2018 um 11:34 am

Good luck to them, but they’ll have B&N’s problem of 'location, location, location' as in no amount of 'culture' is going to make it worth the drive for a limited selection of books.

Hopefully that mall brings in enough people that they have some foot traffic and some buy.

(FYI I’m in Texas and can’t think of anything I’d drive all the way to Jersey for! 😉 )


Carly October 9, 2018 um 11:42 am

I am literally next door, I could walk to that mall from my office.

Guess I’m taking a field trip this week. I’ll let you know how it is.


Susan October 9, 2018 um 1:00 pm

That will be great to order Kobo devices from Indigo and have them shipped from New Jersey instead of Canada.


Beverly Klotzkin October 9, 2018 um 7:26 pm

I want to go there–I’m about 20 minutes from that mall. I’ll definitely look into it.


Gordon Horne October 11, 2018 um 2:10 am

Interesting to hear they’re expanding. The local Chapters (the western branding of Indigo) has abandoned their downtown location for a mall on the edge of the city center. The walk-by traffic is at least an order of magnitude less at their new location. 18 bus routes have a stop within one block of the downtown store entrance. The streets around the mall have no pedestrian traffic to speak of, the mall is difficult to access unless you drive, and only 4 bus routes stop at the edge of the parking lot.
I had assumed moving to a location with many fewer potential customers was a step on the way to giving up.
Downtown they were between a large local independent bookstore and a large local secondhand bookstore a block in either direction. In Munro’s I often hear people say, "Let’s check out Russell’s." In Russell’s I often hear people say, "Let’s check out Munro’s." Without exaggeration, I don’t think I ever heard anyone in either store say, "Let’s check out Chapters."


Randall October 13, 2018 um 9:29 am

I went at the beginning of the week.
Happened to be in the mall and saw this new store which looked inviting.
At first I wasn’t sure what it was, I saw books but I also saw pillows, throes, candles in a pottery barn style display. I then realized it’s really a bookstore with accessories. I quickly walked thru and my first impression was that is both huge and really quite nice. They have a kids section in the back. They have the more recent books on display throughout the store but the have a side area which seems to have a TON of older books stored library style.
I don’t live in the area but look forward to going back and checking it out further


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