We recently connected with Wendy Withers and have shared our conversation below.

Wendy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What can you share with us about the story behind how you found your key vendors?

Sometimes it really is “the right place at the right time” – two of my key vendors came to me, and I just had to notice them! The first was Katherine Starkey, a local Colorado artist and card-maker. Her card celebrating the “bookflood” an Icelandic Christmas tradition, was tucked into the bottom of a giveaway sack at the Mountain Plains Indie Booksellers conference. I loved the card, and contacted her about supplying cards for the bookstore. She was very happy to do so – her cards feature Colorado wildlife and scenes. The second serendipitous occurrence with a vendor came about via a FaceBook booksellers group that I am part of. Other store owners were sharing their favorite vendors for bags and stickers – I was only looking for bags, but kept hearing about the selling power of stickers (I didn’t believe it). Moonlight Makers is a small startup in North Carolina that features two best-friend moms and their families. Stumbling across their name and then visiting their page on Faire.com did it for me – now almost all of my bags are from their store, and they got me started on selling stickers (I honestly can’t account for their popularity).

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I have always loved to read – I was the kid that my parents told to ‘go outside and get some fresh air’ and I took my book along with me. My wife knows about my love of books and authors and stories. We worked together in the medical field (she was in IT and I was in finance). We got the heads-up that our medical group was going to be absorbed by a larger competitor, and it gave us a nice 18-24 month window of opportunity to transition to something new. I have NEVER worked in retail (even in High School), so when my wife said “Hey, why don’t we open a bookstore in our town” it felt like she asked if I wanted to ride a Unicorn. But for about 15 years we have lived in Parker Colorado without a local bookstore, and having the time and opportunity to really review our options, we started down the path. There is actually a training course, offered through the ABA (American Booksellers Association), and we did our research and due-diligence, made a business plan, and voila! It’s been harder than I thought, and took most of my savings to invest, but COVID hasn’t killed us and the community really has welcomed having the local bookstore of my dreams!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to unlearn: just because I want to read a certain book, or find the subject fascinating, doesn’t mean that it will appeal to anyone else. This is actually a difficult lesson, because I naturally gravitate towards books and subjects that interest me. However, after purchasing 18 copies of the Barack Obama/Bruce Springsteen collaboration book and selling exactly 2 over 18 months (that is just ONE example), I realized that my own judgement of what will sell is not an accurate barometer in most cases. Predicting what will do well on the shelf is about belief in the subject as well as ability to sell it to others. We do ‘shelf-talkers’ (paper with book review blurbs under the book), and I have gotten adept asking frequent customers to help me put these together (so I get a variety of reader-types covered).

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

The initial capital to start the business came from my retirement savings. May not be the smartest move, but it was the easiest as I only had to get my own permission. We did write up a business plan and do research into the demographics of the town of Parker to ensure that I wasn’t risking everything, but I still don’t think that even with my MBA that I could have qualified for a small business loan out of the gate. I was brand new (at age 51) to retail and the book business, and even now, after 2.5 years in, I still don’t know if I could qualify.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.booksareawesome.org
• Instagram: @booksareawesome2019
• Facebook: facebook.com/booksareawesomeparker
• Linkedin: wendy withers

Image Credits
I took all of the photos, sorry if some are upside down…. Not an IT professional!