I've often written about the benefits of off-loading some of the work you would normally have to do to another company or service.  That's why I talk about a lot of third-party services:  Google Maps/Checkout/CSE, analytics, affiliate programs, etc.  All of them take some of the workload off of your shoulders and puts it on someone else.  No, I'm not advocating shirking your customers off onto someone else.  What I'm advocating is taking advantage of a good opportunity to free up more of your time to work on your site, your product, or your company.

Borders, the brick and mortar bookstore, does just that with its online arm, Borders.com.  In fact, according to Internet Retailer, Borders.com is supplied, processed, and shipped by another company:  Amazon.com.

In addition to Borders.com, Waldenbooks.com and their UK counterparts are all basically huge Amazon.com affiliate websites.  Amazon.com processes all orders, collects all payments from customers, and ships all of the product from the host of Borders websites.  Borders gets a cut for referrals just like any other affiliate website.

But as the Internet Retailer article mentions, Borders is considering a change in its e-commerce strategy that might separate the company from Amazon.com.  They're not releasing many details, but Borders has been mulling over a redesigned e-commerce plans for many months now and says that any changes in the way it does business will be announced before the end of Q1 2007.  The changes being considered, however, would take the company a year to complete and wouldn't go into affect until 2008.

I don't think ending the relationship with Amazon.com is a good idea for Borders.  Just yesterday I wrote about a 4 million item sales day that Amazon.com had earlier in the month.  Does Borders really want to go into head-to-head competition with that?  Barnesandnoble.com hasn't fared very well against Amazon.com.  Personally, I don't even like Borders offline.  They need as much help as possible online and there's no better company to do that than Amazon.com.  I think a separation of business with Amazon.com would be akin to shooting themselves in the foot.

Don't you think the citizens of Tokyo would rather have worked with Godzilla than be crushed by him?  Yeah… same thing here.