Two new bookstores prove you don’t have to be a box to compete in today’s book market.
By:Josh Appelbaum
The thing that sold Deb Hunter on the small basement retail
space at 12 Nassau St., the former location of Witherspoon Books, was a toilet.
Tucked away behind the storefront, the washroom is pretty typical,
with a small porcelain sink and a rectangular mirror. To the right is a door that
opens on three steps, with the commode perched atop them. Ms. Hunter says it will
be converted into what she calls a throne room. "We’re going to have a tie-back
curtain and a red carpet that goes up the stairs," she says.
Remodeling a bathroom and making it unique even a point
of conversation isn’t a typical starting point in a plan for a new entrepreneurial
venture, but Glen Echo Books in Princeton isn’t your typical business. With Glen
Echo (which opened in September) and its sister store, Chicklet Books in Hillsborough
(which opened December 2004), Ms. Hunter offers a point of departure from big-box
book retailers, their cookie-cutter concepts and bloated prices.
Rosemary Foglesong, who manages both stores, says atmosphere
and going the extra mile is what sets Glen Echo apart from other bookstores. "We’re
service oriented and we try to be accommodating to customers," Ms. Foglesong says.
To that end, she and Ms. Hunter ship books to customers and
do everything from travel to people’s homes to buy books, sift through boxes of
them in cars parked on Nassau Street that contain screaming toddlers and flustered
parents, and even serve cookies and coffee to those who are able to peruse the
more than 2,500 titles, both new and used, in the store.
The store also discounts most books anywhere from 20 to 50 percent
off the list price. Additionally, Glen Echo discounts magazines by 10 percent,
something Ms. Foglesong says is unheard of among booksellers.
The quaint storefront that is housed in a converted bank vault
is a mere 550 square feet. The main space is painted a placid blue and raincoat-yellow
adorns the seemingly un-primed walls in the children’s section. Little nooks under
windowsills and in tight corners that display themed books, CDs, ornaments and
miscellaneous tchotchkes boost the comfort factor for browsers.
The store, named for the South Jersey farm where Ms. Hunter’s
husband, Stan, grew up, is her second bookstore. This capitalizes on a successful
wholesale book business with 11,000 square feet of warehouse space in Hillsborough
and Kentucky.
Glen Echo carries the kind of esoteric titles that Ms. Hunter
says would be out of place at Chicklet, which is geared more toward the mother-and-child
set. Chicklet (the name is a variation on the chick lit genre) is similarly cozy,
but is more inviting to toddlers. The fish tank there captivated my 2-year-old
niece for nearly 20 minutes.
The new store skews toward academic titles, but includes lots
of tried-and-true fiction and non-fiction. Subjects are organized somewhat haphazardly
with Post-It notes and P-Touch labels.
Ms. Foglesong, who worked as a buyer for Barnes & Noble
for nine years and at the Stanford University Bookstore for three, says the Glen
Echo concept emerged to meet the demand of Hillsborough customers who wanted to
sell their used books. "When Deb opened Chicklet Books (used books were) not a
part of the concept," Ms. Foglesong says. "The idea came from our customers in
Hillsborough. At the time the public library was going through some renovations
and wasn’t taking book donations. People were coming to see if we’d buy their
books back. We never thought of selling used books."
Ms. Hunter says there were logistic considerations to be made
in buying used children’s books. "It’s hard to find clean, gently used (children’s
books) that aren’t chewed on."
Although she had plenty of experience buying and selling used
books on the wholesale market, Ms. Hunter needed to do some research on how to
buy from the public, which took her on a whirlwind tour to the "great bookstores"
in the country, including Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Ore. "I was able
to sit with the manager for one whole day and talk and watch buybacks, and I thought,
‘Hey, this is cool,’" Ms. Hunter says.
She says Glen Echo is now the main outlet for her new and used
wholesale stock. Ms. Hunter plans to continue to refine both stores with aesthetic
improvements and by hosting more readings and book signings, with designs on opening
a chain of stores. "I want to see which concept, Chicklet or Glen Echo, really
takes off in the near future, and I’d like to go national, as a different type
of bookstore," Ms. Hunter says.
Such ambitions might seem a bit grand for the upstart retailer
among myriad bookstores in the Princeton area. However, Ms. Foglesong says the
market for books is so rich that she doesn’t see other retailers like Micawber
and the Princeton University Store (or even the mammoth Princeton Public Library)
as competition. She says readers were actually hungry for Glen Echo to open. "When
people found out that we were looking at a space (in Princeton), people starting
calling to ask when we were going to open," Ms. Foglesong says.
She also says there is an interest in readings, book signings
and other events. "We knew we were going to have the support we needed even before
we opened," Ms. Foglesong says.
Besides, Ms. Hunter doesn’t seem to take a wait-and-see approach
to business: Glen Echo is actually the third retail business she’s opened since
2004, after opening the gift shop Purple Door adjacent to Chicklet Books in the
Triangle Shopping Center in Hillsborough.
Ms. Hunter says her three storefronts and two wholesale outlets
keep her busy, but serve a collective purpose. "Anyone in business will tell you
that there are slow times in every business," she says. "When the retail locations
are slow in January and February, my wholesale (warehouse) business really takes
off with retailers stocking their shelves for the spring."
And Ms. Foglesong says the wholesale arm of Glen Echo and Chicklet
ensures that titles are accessible to customers, but mentions that readers most
often influence what they purchase for the retail outlets. "We don’t tell the
reader what to buy," Ms. Foglesong says. "They tell us what to buy."
Glen Echo Books is located at 12 Nassau St., Princeton. For information, call
(609) 921-2268. Chicklet Books is located at 381 Triangle Road, Hillsborough.
For information, call (908) 359-2790. On the Web (both stores): www.chickletbooks.com