Bookselling

Bookselling: Independents Fight Back
Judith Rosen -- 1/1/01
Two new organizations are making "locally owned" a battle cry for independents



At regional trade shows over the past year, Boulder Book Store owner David Bolduc and Jeff Milchen, president and director, respectively, of the Boulder Independent Business Alliance (BIBA), have been offering booksellers a blueprint on how to turn "locally owned" into an advantage. "I see 'locally owned' as a coming marketing strategy that is ours," Bolduc told a group of NEBA stores this fall. "Don't let multinationals, through smoke and mirrors, make it theirs."

It took Bolduc four years to get to this point. "I looked around," he told PW, "thinking about what we could do to set ourselves apart from the chain stores." It was then that he came upon the idea of using "locally owned" as a rallying cry for other Boulder independents. "I put up the seed money," said Bolduc, who considers the $15,000 he invested in BIBA well spent. "If I had put that straight into advertising, I never would have gotten nearly as much coverage."

With Milchen, Bolduc walked Boulder's downtown area and talked about setting up an organization for locally owned businesses, which he felt were inadequately represented by the Chamber of Commerce. As a result, BIBA, which was officially launched in January 1998, now has 160 members, ranging from a 300-staff hardware store to many single-owner stores.

Bolduc hasn't stopped new chains from coming into Boulder. But, he said, when a Borders opened a few blocks away from his store this fall, BIBA had already created an environment in which customers could understand the impact of the chain on the community. A local activist organization, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, organized a day-long demonstration against both the new Borders and the Gap.

Through BIBA, Bolduc was able to connect with several other nonbook businesses that were also affected by the superstore openings. Together they have run ads aimed at students, including "You're Not a Clone. Why Shop at One?" For the general public, they played off the BookSense theme, "Independent Businesses for Independent Minds."

Legislation, Bumper Stickersand a Web Site
BIBA has been instrumental in the Community Vitality Act, legislation that would limit continued encroachment of chain stores in Boulder. The act is intended to force the city to give purchasing preferences to local businesses and to lease city-owned property to locally owned, nonformula businesses. In addition it would limit formula retail stores and restaurants from moving in, by allowing them only to replace existing formula businesses.

Whether the act ultimately passes is less important to Bolduc than the visibility it has garnered for BIBA stores. "Taking extreme positions gets attention," he noted. "When you do certain kinds of actions, like legislation, the things that happen because you're walking on that path are crucial: connections with other community groups and a bigger vision of your place in the world."

To foster those connections, BIBA has created a Web site (www.boulder-iba.org), bumper stickers, window decals, bookmarks and a biannual directory of members. It even hired a local designer to create a two-color coffee cup that lists the independent cafés on one side and "By buying this beverage from a local, independent business, you've just helped keep Boulder the great town we all love!" on the other.

"The thing we're working on now," said Bolduc, "is a frequent buyer's card. Here at the store, we've had a frequent buyer's club where for $10 a year you get a 10% discount off everything. We're looking to have one card, and you can use it at all the stores. Probably the store that sold it would get the sale price, and a percentage would go back to BIBA. The directory could list each store's discount. That makes it flexible for as many people as possible."

Salt Lake's Coalition
While the Salt Lake Vest Pocket Business Coalition in Salt Lake City is not as well organized in terms of coffee-cup promotions and directories, it has had a big impact on preserving neighborhood businesses that are scattered in pockets throughout the community. Officially launched in March 1999, the group began with six local business owners, including Betsy Burton of the King's English Book Shop, one of two remaining general independent booksellers left in Salt Lake, which once had as many as 11. The six owners went to City Hall to protest the financial incentives offered to chains, which in Burton's case meant the opening of a second Barnes & Noble nearby.

"We were angry and were wondering why the city gave such preference to the chains," Burton told PW. Quickly the six swelled to a group of 150 members with political clout. In the last mayoral election, both candidates paid lip service to the importance of small neighborhood businesses.

As Burton sees it, promoting locally owned businesses as valuable assets to neighborhoods that give them character "is a movement whose time has finally come. There's a new community awareness." Like Bolduc and Milchen, she's found that the people in her area don't want the continued homogenization of national chains that choke out independents.

In a city ringed with Borders, B&Ns and Media Plays, Burton describes her store's business as "struggling, but it's better this year." She is encouraged that her customers want to talk more about the value of her store to the community and they see shopping there as a political act. She believes that if her city provides a level playing field, her business will continue to rebound. "The battle cry of Vest Pocket is ˜We do not want special treatment, we want equal treatment,'" said Burton. "I believe we can compete on a level playing field. Once the chains quit deep discounting, all our customers will come back."

For Milchen the next step is to create a national organization, linking not just BIBA and Vest Pocket, but offering support to other communities eager to get started.

"We've already laid the groundwork for the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA)," he told PW, crediting BIBA's assistant director Jennifer Rockne with helping him on the project. His goal for AMIBA is "to create a voice on the national level, to help businesses market themselves more effectively, and to create an ongoing campaign about the values of independents in the community." Milchen hopes to get AMIBA up and running sometime in 2001.
Independent Resources
Boulder Independent Business Alliance
This is probably the best organized and funded local independent business group. Director Jeff Milchen is at work on a national umbrella organization, and can be contacted for more information at www.boulder-iba.org or (303) 402-1575.
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Based in Minneapolis, this organization is concerned with maintaining communities. In addition to producing a quarterly journal, The New Rules, it is the publisher of Stacy Mitchell's book, The Hometown Advantage. Contact: www.newrules.org; (612) 379-3815.
The King's English Book Shop
This 23-year-old independent is a founding member of the Salt Lake Vest Pocket Business Coalition. Contact owner Betsy Burton for guidance on forming a similar group, at www.kingsenglish.com; (801) 484-9100
The National Main Street Center of the National Trust for Historic Preservation
This 20-year-old nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., works on revitalizing historic or traditional community areas. Contact: www.mainst.org; (202) 588-6219.
Sprawl-Busters
This group of consultants, headed by Al Norman, author of Slam-Dunking Wal-Mart! (Raphel Marketing), has successfully helped communities stop superstore expansion. Contact: www.sprawl-busters.com; (413) 772-6289. --J.R.


It's a Publisher... It's a Bookstore...
Chronicle's Postmodern Experience
C
hronicle Books of San Francisco has created what might be called the city's first postmodern retail book experience: part marketing expo, part tourist attraction and part bookstore. The Chronicle boutique, as employees call it, opened in the Bay City's Metreon: A Sony Entertainment Center in September.

The Metreon, located on Yerba Buena park, adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art complex, is a four-floor "entertainment retail" center that includes multiple theaters, a children's playground, specialty chain stores, restaurants and hands-on retail displays. Controversial when it opened three years ago, the Metreon was dismissed by many locals as a blatant monument to merchandise that belonged in Los Angeles, not the City by the Bay.

Perhaps an effort to embrace things San Franciscan was part of the strategy of the Metreon management when it approached Chronicle in August of this year and offered the publisher a prime area on the ground floor entrance to display its books, aka "branded merchandise."

Chronicle quickly agreed, and the area opened on September 20.

The display is marked by a large "Chronicle Books San Francisco" banner that is visible from the park outside the area; it seems to mimic the art exhibits across the square. Indeed, the fact that Chronicle Books is a local publisher, as opposed to a bookseller or design exhibit, is nowhere stated in the boutique--a fact that did come up for discussion at Chronicle, according to marketing manager Jason Mitchell: "We decided to assume that everyone had heard of us, much the same way other Metreon tenants Microsoft, Sony and the Discovery Store assume everyone knows of them."

The Chronicle space features seven display tables highlighting Chronicle's gift books, cookbooks, travel titles, children's books and stationary items. Even the display tables are for sale, or, to be precise, exact replicas can be ordered from the Chronicle Giftworks Catalogue. The boutique merges on one end into a Starbucks, and with smaller artisan kiosks on two other sides. A few steps away are the ticket counters for the 10 movie theatres.

The cash register is watched over by a uniformed Metreon attendant rather than a bookseller. Chronicle is a vendor in the arrangement; sales and ordering are handled by the Metreon, in conference with Chronicle, which d s provide some special themed displays.

According to Craig Hetzer, associate publisher of the gift division boutique, sales have been good, especially in children's books and local interest titles, reflecting the large tourist trade that travels through the Yerba Buena complex.

"We are in a sense San Francisco's highest-profile publishing house, and this was a great opportunity for us to extend our brand awareness. As we continue to build a cohesive publishing program, we work on making sure that one can recognize a Chronicle book. A space like this, in which much of our work can be seen en masse, furthers that awareness."

While brand recognition is at the heart of the boutique idea, there is something slightly ambiguous about a space in which a publisher has become a marketing firm, and bookstore has become art exhibit. But then, if San Francisco needs to offer a brand experience to the masses, then by all means "let them have books." --Barbara R ther