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New Children's Independents: Finding Their Own Niches
Judith Rosen -- 4/6/98
Creating a successful store today frequently means taking a road less traveled
As we head into the millennium, it sometimes seems as if children's bookstores have been closing at such an alarming rate that there soon won't be any left. But, according to Caron Chapman, executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC), that is not the case. Chapman said it seems as if when one store closes, a new one opens on its heels.

In addition, Chapman believes, the threat from chain superstores has peaked. "People know that a chain store is a huge possibility," she said. "No new bookstore can go into business without taking chain stores into account." Chapman did concede that fewer children's stores are opening these days than in the heyday of children's independents, but pointed out that "many stores are changing what they do. Booksellers might be open only two days a week to the public and do more book fairs, so their stores are more like warehouses. Or they might be changing their product mix. The diversity has gotten to be more exciting."

To find out more about the roles being played by new children's booksellers in the changing bookstore scene, PW conducted a survey of several owners of children's -- only bookstores that have opened in the past three years.

Setting Up Shop


Story hour attracts children to
a cozy corner of Flying Pig Children's Books

The aphorism about the three most important elements in starting a successful business-location, location, location -- continues to hold true for children's -- only bookstores today. Most owners shy away from the downtowns of large cities, preferring instead small towns, often in tourist areas, or the suburbs. For example, former stand-up comedian/fund-raiser Josie Leavitt and children's librarian Elizabeth Bluemle moved from New York City to Charlotte, Vt. (population: 4500), in June 1996. "There was this little café for sale, and we went from the idea for the store to the opening in 10 weeks with 6500 books," Leavitt explained. Their store, called Flying Pig Children's Books, is located 10 miles south of Burlington, alongside the town's two other businesses -- a general store and a gas station. According to Leavitt, "Business is good. We were up 20% over last year, and we had a great Christmas. We wouldn't have been able to do this in New York City."

After 20 years as a baker, Ellen Davis sold her bakery when she became pregnant, and started selling children's books from her home. Then a few years later, in the summer of 1995, when a small space became vacant in the local mall in Waupaca, Wis. (population: 8000), close to her son's school, she opened Dragonwings Bookstore. Davis said she believes she has a competitive advantage: "One thing about specialty stores in small towns, there's no competition." And it gives her a chance to be near her son.

Davis is not afraid to buck expectations in other respects. Most children's-only stores seek out the neighborhood feel of a strip mall or town center, but she chose an enclosed mall with a Sears department store. "It meant we could have a small store and have a much higher profile," she explained. "We have events in the central mall space. The main optical center in town is across from us. We've gotten a lot of business from families waiting for their glasses." Still, a 500-square-foot store that relies on the same counter for checking out, receiving, and filing publishers catalogues can be a bit cramped. "Our project for 1998 is to look for a bigger space," she said.

Auspicious Beginnings

For both Nancy Stone, owner of the one-year-old Children's Book Express in Denton, Tex., and Diedre House, owner of the three-year-old Book Ends &Beginnings in Oneonta, N.Y., a college community was the location of choice. And for House, who cut her bookselling teeth at Waldenbooks -- a popular training ground for several booksellers interviewed for this story -- Oneonta had the added advantage of two nearby colleges, including one for teachers. Despite her low initial investment -- she started with $15,000, about $35,000 less than ABC recommends -- House has already moved to a bigger space and now stocks close to 20,000 titles.

Stone originally was a partner in seven-year-old Brystone Children's Books (Wautauga, Tex.), but moved to the city of Denton, about 30 miles from Ft. Worth, to get her degree in library science. That plan got put on hold, however, when she decided to start another children's bookstore of her own in a "charming building" that she and her partner had originally considered for Brystone. She opened Children's Book Express with her share of the proceeds from the break-up of the other store, which she took in inventory. The ex-partners still get along well and often share appointments with sales reps.

Stone views the new store, which competes with a Hastings, a B. Dalton and a Walden, as a matter of "being in the right place at the right time. I am a former teacher and I had connections to teachers in the area. It's helped me establish my identity in the community." Despite family illnesses that have caused Stone to close the store frequently, since she couldn't afford to hire employees, she said that "business has been growing. It took five or six months of just hoping that things would take off. We had a good holiday season, and with our new book club in January, business has really taken off."

Stone's on-the-job training at Brystone helped, as did the small-business administration courses that she took more than a decade ago. Also, she has tried to be smart about using her 1500 square feet: "We do a lot of teacher conferences. I think that's what kept us afloat at the beginning. We use 1000 square feet for selling space and we do a lot of warehousing."

CeCe Wilkerson, owner of Curiosity Corner: A Children's Bookstore (San Carlos, Calif.) has found the hardest thing is "to keep up on the bills and keep the stock varied." Customers have helped by donating baby toys and books for storytime, and so has her mother, who fills in whenever Wilkerson has a book fair or other outside event. Since she had little money up front-her initial investment was roughly $20,000 -- Wilkerson decided to stretch her funds by focusing on classics and quality books. "I cater mainly to the younger kids," she noted. "I have some of the Thomas the Tank Engine trains and puppets like Stellaluna that go with books. I do some audio, some video and some software like Arthur." Her store, which was once a bridal shop, has little nooks for kids to read and play in where the dressing rooms were.

At the other end of the financial spectrum, Susan Kent opened Treehouse Readers (Kingwood, Tex.) in a northern suburb of Houston, with well over $50,000. "I was a first-grade teacher," Kent said, "and I loved it. I was going to be a stay-at-home mom, but when my child was four months old my husband was killed in a plane crash." Instead, Kent moved back to Texas to be closer to her family. Then with an assist from friends (a real-estate attorney, an architect and an accountant), she started the store, which takes its name from the giant tree inside that kids can climb into and read.

Treehouse Readers stocks books for newborns through middle-school children. It also carries required reading books for the local high school. "Toys are our sideline items," Kent added. "Mainly we're into educational toys that tie in with books-toys that you won't find at Toys R Us." As for business, so far things are going well. "There was only one other bookstore in Kingwood, a Little Professor, when we opened. Then a Super Crown opened and the Little Professor closed. But we're still growing every month. Our three-year goal is to turn a profit, and we're getting close."

Down but Not Out

Like Kent, most of the booksellers we spoke with were optimistic about sales, despite the fact that year five is usually the make-or-break time in a business. Still, there were a few for whom the initial years have been especially rocky.


Economical use of space helps stores
like Treehouse Readers keep growing.

One such store is David's Books in the Boston suburb of West Roxbury, Mass. David Gorin entered the children's business by a circuitous route. After working for a number of years at Booksmith and later at Little, Brown, he decided he wanted a store of his own. Five years ago David's opened as a used general bookstore, with a limited selection of new children's titles. To his surprise, Gorin found that the customers in his predominantly white, Irish Catholic community preferred the children's books to the used fare. So in November 1995, he reopened as a children's-only store, with no used books and a strong selection of local history titles to tie in with the Boston school system's history curriculum.

Despite the transition, or perhaps because of it, Gorin finds it "hard. It's so tough these days. This past year was my first good year. I got a good write-up in the City Weekly section of the Boston Globe. You can't pay for that kind of advertising."

Still, Gorin has yet to make the leap to a computerized inventory system -- "I do everything manually." He's also hoping for a coffee shop to open nearby to make West Roxbury more of a destination point, and has found unexpected competition with downtown Boston, where many of the young professionals in his community not only work but shop.

Linda Burney, owner of the three-year-old Read to Me (Wichita, Tex.), has also found the early years tough. Because of the opening of a Hastings superstore across the street a year ago, she's seen her business drop 9%. "Amazon has hurt me, too," she said of the online bookstore.

At this point, for Burney, "It's just month to month, and I'm barely hanging on." Nonetheless, she's working on finding a way to get over the hump. She has been doing a lot of business with teachers and has implemented various outreach programs, from storytimes at different sites outside her store to a shelf/kiosk in a video store. "A friend bought a video store across from the school, and I'm putting a shelf of accelerated-reader titles in there."

In-store, Burney expanded her selection for junior-high students. "I have a private junior high that buys its books from us." And she has set up a book swap in lieu of other payment so that she can "hire" two women to help with science activities for children ages three to nine.

Leslye Lawrence-Nead, who co-owns Seeds of Change Children's Books (Capitola, Calif.) with her husband, Kip Nead, is cautiously optimistic after two years in business. When questioned about whether she's making money, she responded, "No." But she's not worried, since she and her husband are making enough to get by.

Part of what keeps Lawrence-Nead going is her excitement about the store's focus on storytelling. Both she and her husband got hooked after listening to audiotapes by artists like Bill Harley, Jim Weiss and Jay O'Callahan. "We sell storytelling tapes, and we bring a lot of storytellers to our store. We also do storytellings at a local school."

Sidelines and Events

But as long-time booksellers know, optimism alone can't make a store work. A strong marketing plan, a good product mix and carefully thought-out events can also determine the ultimate success of a new venture.


Area schools and a children's museum bring
customers into Great Horned Owl

Lyndsey Starkey, owner of two Birth &Beyond stores in the Seattle area, one three years old and the other just four months in business, has the most unusual inventory of any children's bookstore PW surveyed. Actually, with only 1200 titles in stock, including books on pregnancy, childbearing and grief, it is books that are the sideline here, and products such as breast pumps and birthing tubs that constitute a major source of sales.

The backbone of her stores' children's business is what Starkey referred to as "the standards, like Pat the Bunny and baby-record books." The stores also stock items made by local moms, including mother-baby aromatherapy products, and feature lending libraries, where, for a flat fee of $10, new moms and mothers-to-be can borrow books and videos. According to Starkey, the stores have been successful from the beginning. "We are definitely filling a niche."

For Joan Raymond, co-owner of Great Horned Owl (Louisville, Colo.), six miles east of Boulder, opening a children's bookstore was also a matter of filling a niche. She and her partner, who had worked at Audubon Court (Milwaukee, Wis.), both live in Boulder. "We would gripe that the stores don't have all the books and they don't have the stuff that g s with them, like the Madeline doll or the Arthur doll." Neither woman was working, and so they decided to start a bookstore of their own. "We looked around for two years," said Raymond, "and then we heard about a new shopping center where the Children's Museum was going to open." The owners do story hours at the Children's Museum, and a lot of people buy last-minute gifts at the store en route to birthday parties there.

In-store events have also helped Great Horned Owl's bottom line. "We're certainly paying the bills without dipping into our pockets," Raymond noted, adding that she and her partner have recently hired two more staffers, "because otherwise we wouldn't have time to plan events, and events really sell books. In January, we had Madeline come and had a storewide sale of 10%. It was our best day ever. We were ahead of any day in December."

Great Horned Owl also caters to educators. The store offers a teachers' discount and has done one book fair already. "A lot of schools out here were having their book fairs with Barnes &Noble in Boulder," Raymond remarked. "Hopefully once we get more book fairs going they'll switch to us."

While the Arthur doll may be the most frequently mentioned sideline among new children's booksellers, Beanie Babies are right up there as well. A number of booksellers market them as part of book-and-plush duos. At Children's Book Express, for example, Stone said, "We started carrying the Beanie Babies because people asked, 'Don't you have inexpensive plush you could tie with the books?' " However, Stone has done more than just stock Beanies -- she uses them as an incentive to read.

"In January we started a book club that's really taken off. Four hundred kids under age 19 have signed up. If they buy 10 books, they get a free Beanie Baby. If they're an active member of the club, meaning that they bought a book during that month, they can buy a Beanie for $4.95." That's at least $1 off the cost of the popular toys in Stone's area.

The only sideline Dragonwings's Davis has resisted to date is books for adults. "Our focus is families," she noted, "as opposed to teachers. We're definitely a family-friendly store, and I have all kinds of things for kids to play with. Our little town didn't have a bookstore when I started, and there was a lot of pressure on me to carry adult books. If I had to be responsible for all the facets of choosing books for adults, I feel like I couldn't do that well. Now another store has opened up."

But where Davis found pressure, others have found sales. Flying Pig Children's Books maintains a shelf of adult books and also d s special orders. Bluemle estimated that "30% of our gross sales come from our adult section and special orders."

At Children's Book Express, Stone regards sales to adults as an extension of customer service. In order to encourage adult customers to shop with her for their reading needs, as well as those of their children, she offers 25% off special orders.

From special ordering books for parents to stocking birthing tubs, the newest batch of children's booksellers are remarkably diverse. Will this new crop of children's bookstores make it? If enthusiasm, good ideas, hard work and luck count for anything, these booksellers are well on their way.
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