Borders knew that for every $100 in grocery store sales, $12 was eaten up by the cost of simply running the grocery store. In a famously low-margin business (for every $100 in sales, the typical grocery store sees only $2 or less in profit), eliminating a big cost center like that could be transformative. “Intuitively, I knew I’d have a great financial model if I could eliminate store costs,” Borders told Businessweek.21 And that was the promise of ecommerce, right?
