Book Culture’s owner Chris Doeblin says the store’s upcoming space on Columbus between 81st and 82nd streets needs to sell $3 million a year to break even. And one way that they’re getting ready to hit that high number is by getting the community excited and involved with the new store — even before it opens.
A few days ago, the bookstore put up a plea to neighbors to write their hopes for the store on sticky notes on the window and several people have already taken them up on the offer. They have also held a bagel breakfast (bringing free bagels from the famed Absolute Bagels on 108th) and an evening jazz reception. It’s a smart way to engage locals, who will hopefully buy — and not just browse — when they open. We hear the opening could be as soon as next month.
Thanks to Emily Baer for the photos and Kate Hinds for the tip.
I admire their plucky attitude, but who really believes this store is going to pull in $3 mil? Good luck… May as well start planning for another bank/pharmacy/froyo spot to be taking over that space in 6 months.
Chis told me the date was the 15th of November.
so, success requires sales of more than $8,200 per day, every day of the year.
at $50 per book, that means around 165 books must be sold every day of the year. not much room for a slow day.
i’ve never been a business person and can’t imagine how you do that, but i sure love bookstores!
good luck!
I think everyone (myself included) loves the idea of this but will balk when it comes time to put their money down on the counter. Maybe one or two purchases at the beginning to be supportive, but after that I just don’t know.
There have often been small businesses in the neighborhood that I love the idea of, but they have to charge higher prices than you can find online due to the costs of running a brick and mortar business in NYC. Sometimes I knowingly pay more to tell myself I am supporting a local business. But over time, I usually start wearing down. While everyone wants a bookstore in the neighborhood, most people aren’t willing to personally subsidize it.
Plus, the truth of the matter is that I probably haven’t bought a paper book in 5 years. I log on to the NYPL site (or Amazon if I am feeling fancy) choose what I want to read, click a button, and seconds later it appears on my kindle which I can easily slip into my coat pocket.
I guess what I am saying is that they have to supplement the book sales. Otherwise there is just no way they can hit this target. Maybe they could have a pharmacist in the back and a froyo counter in front?
A perfect example: I recently decided to buy a nice pair of dress shoes. Harry’s had the ones I wanted but while I was in the store I looked them up on Amazon. $20 less. Part of me wanted to buy them from Harry’s just to support a local business. But I thought to myself, if a guy from Harry’s was standing on the corner asking for donations to keep the business open, would I put a $20 in? Probably not. Similarly, I ended up buying the shoes on Amazon.
(I am not trying to pick on Harry’s. I love Harry’s. I have bought several pairs of shoes there and they often have competitive pricing.)
I rarely shop at Harry’s because I don’t believe that shoes need to cost $200+ a pair for a woman. They made the decision to go upscale and offer more expensive shoes (maybe to make their expanded rent roll, who knows), and upscale shoe pricing is a joke and a scam. So I don’t see a moral dilemma in window-shopping there and then purchasing cheaper somewhere else. They have the choice to price more competitively and to offer more reasonably priced shoes. Plus they offer no incentives to be loyal. With a bookstore, it’s wonderful to have, but they will have to offer a lot more than books to make their rent. Perhaps they should have chosen Amsterdam Ave in the 80’s which is generally cheaper rent than Columbus. In any event, I wish them luck.
My family owned a retail store on Long Island. It never ceased to amaze me that someone can walk into a retail store, browse their selection, engage their salespeople, possibly even sit down and try something on … and THEN leave the store and go order it online as if they have not made use of the store’s time, air conditioning, inventory, and services.
One reason that online stores are cheaper is because YOU do the shopping, pay the shipping, risk it not fitting, and have to take it to a post office office to return it.
Harry’s is a GREAT store. They are NOT Amazon’s showroom and it is wrong of you to use them that way. If you walk in, shop, sit, and select, then have the decency to make the purchase.
Wow.
when a customer shopped your store, left empty handed, then went to (say) Tip Top shoes to buy—did that ever cause you dismay?
same outcome for you as your saga with the air conditioning, time, etc—no sale.
people do that all the time. i shop fairway vs zabar’s, buy in both, and if a zabars knife is a lot more than the online knife, i buy it online.
people’s discussions about ‘bricks and mortar’ vs ‘onlinie’ seem right but they don’t actually hold much water because there is little difference between that behaviour, and shopping Harry’s vs Tip Top (to keep it simple).
While I agree that “showrooming” has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, Harrys is a good example of why this behavior occurs.
They sell you something and if you don’t like it you can return it….. For a store credit. This is a retail tactic that is outdated and needs to change. So instead you can purchase from Amazon, pay 20% less and have the ability to return the item for a full refund in your original form of payment.
If mom and pop shops like Harrys want to survive selling goods for more than Amazon, they should at least provide a more attractive policy for returns, etc. If not there’s no way they’ll survive.
Jack, I explicitly said I did NOT do that. I always prefer to research online. When making purchases I generally like to separate the information gathering from the purchase. I source information online from a wide variety of sources who aren’t financially invested in my decision. After I know what I want, I choose the best place to purchase it. The primary criteria is price but might also include convenience, the ability to “test” something, the chance to support a local business etc. As I mentioned, I have purchased several pairs of shoes from Harry’s when I was unsure of what I wanted or wanted to try a few things on. What I am trying to say is that for a lot of people, supporting a local business isn’t going to immediately trump the price or convenience of buying online.
That is the uphill battle that this bookstore is going to face. If I find myself browsing their shelves, or asking for an opinion and find something I want to buy, I will absolutely buy it from them. I may even buy a book or two out of guilt or a sense of responsibility to the neighborhood. But when it comes down to my week to week reading, like a lot of people today, I will continue making the cheaper, more convenient, and environmentally friendlier choice of downloading books to my Kindle from Amazon and the NYPL. Maybe that makes me and everyone else who uses an e-reader bad people, but it doesn’t change the business environment that this store is going to have to face.
I bet you Eric took that $20 to help pay the rent of around $3,500 for a one bedroom walk up on the 6th floor. Sorry people, it all starts at the greedy property management companies. Whatever happened to Jimmy McMillan?
https://www.rentistoodamnhigh.org/
Exactly, Eric. If you order from Amazon you should do your market research on line also. To “shop” at Harry’s, have a knowledgeable and accommodating salesperson assist you, and then try on the shoes only to leave and order from Amazon is disgusting. At least of the moral fiber to buy from Harry’s or don’t use them as your personal shopper. Some nerve. You saved $20 bucks. You also took the commission away from a hard working person, used the beautiful stores services, undercut the profits of the shoe manufacturer, and fed the Amazonian business model which has not interest in free enterprise.
That should have said I do NOT typically like working with sales people.
No, I totally agree with you. If I had done any of these things I would have purchased from Harry’s. In this case, I knew exactly what I wanted, including the size. I merely walked into the store, went right to the Allen Edmonds table, picked up the shoe I wanted and turned it over to look at the price. I do typically like working with sales people. I do most of my own research online and know exactly what I want when I walk into a store.
I have to agree with you, I think the right thing to do is, if you test-drive a product in a store, buy it from there if possible. (And to be clear, I’m not sure if the poster actually tried on those shoes at Harry’s or just noticed them there.) Seems only fair. I will also say, I’m actually a reverse-showroomer: I go online–very often to Amazon-for product reviews, but then try to buy the product in-person in a local store. My significant other can’t understand why I do so, but it’s because I like having businesses around in my neighborhood. And that costs money. (That said, is it any less bad that I effectively use Amazon to facilitate my purchases elsewhere.?)
Are they going to sell crack, in addition to books?
I seriously wish them well, I will definitely support them, but it really does come down to math, and I can’t see it…
True Story: I worked for Gary Merckie’s Super Runners Shop on the UWS. i spent an hour with a customer giving him a gait analysis and figuring out wihich shoe he should wear for his first marathon. I have ran 5 marathons and more than a dozen half marathons so I was using my professiona experience. I let him try on several shoes, let him run out side the store to check them out (Gary always insisted!). He then asked me to give him the model numbers so he can check the prince online!. I told him to go to go, well, you know where. He wote a letter complaining about what I said. Gary told him, that if he had been there, he woud have said the same thing. People, retail stores are not showrooms for the internet.
If you shop at a store and take time from a salesman and use their experience and knowledge, either buy from them, or not, but do not ask for info so you can buy online. Remember a retail store is more money, but you get service and easy same day returns. Support local businesses, otherwise don’t get angry if there are only banks and box stores in your neighborhood.
Would love to be wrong but they won’t make it . No way they are going to sell an average of $8,200 worth of books per day.
At $25 per book, that would mean they would need to sell 330 books a day, or about a book every two minutes for 12 hours a day. Just to break even.
I’m so happy this store is opening. I do not want to buy from Amazon anymore–they are responsible for the closing of independent bookstores in Manhattan. In France there are laws that restrict Amazon from both discounting and offering free delivery–and independent bookstores still exist. I plan to take my Amazon shopping cart list to these store and ask them to order the books.
I think it would probably be more accurate to say Barnes and Noble was responsible for closing independent bookstores in Manhattan and Amazon was responsible for killing Barnes and Noble. Also it seems kind of weird to have a law that restricts a company from making books both more affordable and more accessible to the public.
Absolutely, I agree. There used to be a small, lovely bookstore right around there, if not that exact location, when I first moved to the neighborhood. Does anyone remember the name of that bookstore? I saw a reading there by Martin Amis, so much better than the cavernous B&N readings.
Just a note about the French system – as well as preventing Amazon from offering discounts, the government also gives direct subsidies to bookshops. Unlike New York, Paris – a similarly high-rent city – is full of bookshops, and because of the subsidy, the owners can charge reasonable prices and still stay in business. In other words, books are far more affordable and accessible to the general public. Sadly, this will never happen in the USA.
Online vs Tip Top….I still feel guilty, 2 years later, about buying a pair of sandals from Zappos, after seeing and trying them on at Tip-Top (where incidentally I buy most of my shoes). I saw the sandals, tried them on, liked them, but Tip Top did not have my size remaining in red, the color I wanted. I asked them if they could order it for me. The answer– “no, it’s too late in the season, the manufacturer is through with that style until next year.” I went home, signed on to Zappos, and bought the shoe in the right color and the right size, it was delivered in 4 days. I’m unhappy to have done that, but that type of inventory modeling seems to be more and more inevitable.
Sorry I missed the bagel and jazz meeting. I am so pleased that we have a new bookstore to replace the many in this neighborhood which have closed. This I a very courageous move.. I intend to wean myself from amazon and support them. Hopefully many other will do so as well.
The business model was going to be more like Book Culture’s Broadway location, which sells gifts, toys and cards as well as books. So while the books sold per day math seems impossible, “books plus” is definitely more feasible…
I think many people forget that there’s also the holidays and special events which can make up sales for an average day. Also, I believe there’s enough of a trend where people are starting to buy things that are more expensive if they know they’re supporting a business that has a good mission behind it.