Southaven Books-a-Million Reset

Today's post highlights DeSoto County, MS, retail.

Hey everyone! I'm back again, when I said I would be, with a new blog post - what a concept, lol! Today's post is a bit different in format than the previous ones... however, that's not to say that this blog has a set post format at all, since I have some other stuff planned as well. Anyway, carrying on: this summer, I posted pics of an old-school Books-a-Million in Lexington, SC, to flickr. In this photo, I mentioned that my local Southaven BAM - newer than the Lexington one, of course - had undergone a reset this year, and mentioned I had several pictures of it. Well, instead of posting them to flickr, I figured why not host them on my blog? That way, they don't take up my photostream, but they're still accessible: win-win, in my opinion!

Here's the outside of the Southaven Books-a-Million, as seen in late April of this year. The store is a standalone anchor of the Southaven Towne Center mall.

On May 18th, little reset work had been done - in fact, not enough to even make me register a full reset would be coming. The only change I remember was that humor switched from the right of my vantage point here to my left. I was taking this pic for a different reason - more on that later.

The rest of the store, looking towards Kids-a-Million and Joe Muggs, looked normal as ever...

...but one month later on June 18th, that view became a bit different! At least, from farther down this aisle, that is. The bargain books section, which was always (or at least as far as I can remember) to the left of this viewpoint, directly facing magazines along the back wall, had now moved into a rather cramped center aisle section across from Kids-a-Million, as in the Lexington store. I had thought that was an old layout thing, but apparently it was a new one!

What with the bargain books carving out a new home, several previous tenants of that area were displaced. Audio Books look to be confined to this rolling cart in front of the t-shirt display back center in the store, and they probably weren't the only ones!

In place of bargain books, shelving had been shuffled down, to become the new homes of the sections whose placards you see here. I think, anyway: it could be that these signs were left up when the shelves were moved, and that the space was to be filled with something completely different!

Ten days later, the staff was still working to complete the reset. Some sticky notes were left around the store, denoting what was to be done: take this one, for example, which says, "Add 1 unit this end. Shift manga. Adventure games added." Note that this is the same shelf seen in the first interior picture at the top of the post. Those shelves are home to manga (and apparently, adventure games), yet they never bothered to remove the aisle marker saying fiction/literature, poetry, and cliffs notes called that aisle home from an even earlier reset years before!

Here's an interesting new placement, courtesy of the reset: library classics right beside teen fiction. I doubt many teens would peruse the former, lol!

More empty shelving still present on June 28th. This is one of the aisles to the left of bargain books (well, left if you're looking at it from the left wall of the store, that is). Looks like cookbooks are on the other side of the aisle, but as you can see, no placards were up yet.

Bargain books themselves, though, were a different story! The display looks to be completely finished in this view. In the original view above, the tables were turned vertically; here, they're horizontal. With the newly constricted space, it seems like the crew were trying to figure out the best configuration here.

Another new shelving display, this one filled, in the former home of bargain books. There are scars on the carpet from the former layout of bargain books back here, but you can't see them in this photo, unfortunately.

Since the major work being done was on the other side of the store, you'd think that the sections on the right side near Kids-a-Million were safe, right? Well, I did too, so we were both wrong! Fiction/literature moved into the former biography section near Joe Muggs at the front of the store.

Good ol' Joe Muggs was the only area untouched by the reset, methinks. I suppose this being fiction/literature's new home makes sense (if nothing else does), since I'd hazard a guess that this is the most frequented section.

Last up, a bonus photo! This was a receipt I found in one of our books purchased from this store several years ago. The Books-a-Million and Joe Muggs logos are joined by those of BAM's other bookstores, Bookland and books&co. I was all prepared to write how those are now defunct, but upon doing my research, I discovered they both actually still exist, albeit in very few locations - not sure if they're on the back of receipts anymore, either. BAM also owns Yogurt Mountain, strangely enough!

This store calls the Southaven Towne Center home: I posted some pics of the rest of the mall to flickr today, and l_dawg2000 has an extensive album as well. Look for another blog post from me next month... until then, have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!

Retail Retell