After almost five years of stagnant sales, Mudsock Books & Curiosity Shoppe in Fishers, Indiana, a general bookstore with a large children's inventory, is closing. Cindy Rushton, owner of the store, which is in a suburb of Indianapolis, said she expects to shut the doors in mid-March. At that point, she estimated she will have sold off the last of her inventory of 20,000 new and used books, along with Melissa & Doug games, toys, and cards.
"The money has flowed in the wrong direction for almost five years," Rushton, who has an accounting background and opened the store in 2008, told PW. "We couldn’t seem to get the volume we needed, and never even broke even."
Rushton blames the store’s difficulties on the local culture. Fischers experienced a population boom in recent years, swelling from 700 residents in 1980, to 7,200 residents in 1990, to 76,000 today.
"It’s an area of big box stores," Rushton explained. "People used to have to go elsewhere to shop. They still have that mentality. It’s hard to get people into local stores."
Rushton, who will be laying off "three very part-time employees," intends to continue to sell books online, while looking for a full-time job in accounting.
"I’ll still have my fingers in [bookselling], probably for the rest of my life," she said.
