Mirroring the battle raging south of the border between superstore booksellers Barnes & Noble and upstart chain Borders, a marketing war is set to break out over Canada’s billion-and-a-half dollar retail book market with the opening of the first Indigo bookstore in late August.

The store is part of a new large-format chain developed by Toronto entrepreneur Heather Reisman to rival Canada’s leading big-box bookseller Chapters, which is believed to control about 40% of the retail book market in Canada through its Chapters superstores, together with its mall-based chains Coles Bookstores, Smithbooks and The Book Company. Slated for a late-August launch, the first Indigo store will open in Burlington, Ont. ­ the same city in which Chapters, Reisman’s main competitor, opened its first store in November 1995. Two more are set to open in October, one in Kingston, Ont. and another in Toronto. All three stores are located near significant pedestrian traffic areas or in existing mall developments.

‘Indigo is a book-lovers superstore, a place where book lovers will feel at home,’ says Dan Mozersky, Indigo’s senior vice-president, procurement and distribution.

‘We differentiate ourselves by offering equivalent titles but better selection (than Chapters), better merchandising, higher level of service in all areas, greater investment in training and quality of staff.’

Mozersky says better service will be reflected in programs which will allow customers to access Indigo’s products and services in a wide variety of ways: running book clubs, supplying books to institutional clients like universities, providing a 1-800 number for customer inquiries, selling over the Internet and having an in-store kiosk that connects to an information Web site.

‘Our philosophy as a company is that service is what will allow us to thrive and grow into the 21st century,’ he says. ‘It’s pretty easy to open up a store and say ‘I have more books or I have more product,’ but what will allow us to survive will be attention to the customer.’

The store will also offer music products like cds and cassettes, something Chapters d’es not do. Printed materials will account for about 75% of the merchandise, with music and gift products making up the rest.

Ambience and architectural design are also important, says Mozersky. With an average 25,000 sq. ft. of floor space, it’s important that extra effort is made to make customers comfortable and encourage them to browse. ‘We are not going to follow a cookie-cutter formula, stamping out big boxes across the country. We have a definite point of view about the comfort level and the style of the stores.’

Though early indications were that the company would partner with Second Cup to provide food and beverage service in the new stores, Mozersky says that idea is out. The company is developing its own cafe concept, the Indigo Cafe, to provide the usual bookshop libations: coffee, tea, desserts and baked goods.

Promotion for the stores will be largely event-driven, with major activity in each local market. Though plans are just now being finalized, Mozersky says each launch will involve three to four days of activities and themed events that highlight the features of each store. Authors will be invited to do book signings, local community leaders will speak, musical and theatrical performances will abound.

A print campaign will run in the local media of each store location. Indigo’s agency is The Ongoing Partnership of Toronto.

Meanwhile, marketers at Chapters, Inc. don’t seem overly concerned about the new competitor. They’re taking a wait-and-see approach.

‘Chapters stores have been extremely well-received by book lovers, so I think our objective will be to continue to delight our customers,’ says Helena Aalto, Chapters director of marketing. ‘Other than advertising for staff, we haven’t seen what they can do yet. So we’re very interested to see what kind of bookseller they’re going to be.’

Aalto says Chapters has the advantage of experience as well as being first-to-market in Canada with the large-format bookseller concept. The company was formed from the merger of Coles and Smith Books, two retailers with 50 years of experience and expertise between them. Aalto says the company has no plans to start selling music products or otherwise change its merchandise mix.

Chapters is also expanding aggressively. Two new stores opened last week, and the company plans to expand from 16 to 25 stores by the end of 1997, with another 18 openings planned for 1998.

Indigo may well become known as a monument to one woman’s perseverance. Reisman has been trying to develop a large-format bookstore chain in Canada for more than two years.

Her original plan was to bring the Borders brand to Canada, but she was thwarted by federal competition regulators concerned about American incursions into ‘sensitive’ cultural areas like book retailing.

When Reisman decided to start her own national chain, originally called Now! Books & Music, she hired a former Chapters employee to look after mass-market book purchasing.

According to an Indigo press release, Chapters accused Reisman of purchasing ‘proprietary information’ by hiring a former executive employee, and hit Now! with a lawsuit in August, 1996, to guarantee that the employee would not reveal her previous employer’s trade secrets.

Chapters has publicly acknowledged hiring a private investigator to establish whether the ex-employee had, in fact, joined Now!