"We needed lower overhead costs, the restaurant next door wanted to expand into our space and we got a text from a friend about the vacancy here," said Cameron. The owners reported that though they'd been thinking of ways to save on overhead for some time, the decision to move came together somewhat suddenly. She added that the "separate space and entrance allow for there to be longer hours in the coffee shop without requiring staff to be in the bookstore."Ĭameron and Schroeder opened Brilliant Moon in 2013 in McCleary, Wash., and moved to Shelton in 2015. "We'd wanted to have a coffee shop at our last place, but it never exactly worked out," Cameron told the Kitsap Sun. Despite the reduction in space, Cameron and Schroeder have not reduced the store's inventory, and later this year they plan to turn the store's back room, which has its own entrance, into a coffee shop. The new space is about 600 square feet smaller than its old location and previously was home to a restaurant. Mother-and-daughter owners Lindy Cameron and Mary Schroeder spent the days after Thanksgiving moving the store up the road to its new home in the 1912 building on Shelton's Railroad Avenue and managed to reopen before the first weekend of December, in time for Shelton's annual Holiday Magic event. But as at the Book Cellar, customers are shopping less at night and "squeezing their bookish activities into the 11-4 time slot."īrilliant Moon, a book and gift store in Shelton, Wash., moved into a new 1,800-square-foot location in early December and will add a coffee shop some time this year, the Kitsap Sun reported. "Awful to think about, but we live where we live." Bitter cold "doesn't seem to be affecting sales" overall, Herrmann continued. The store would have had even higher sales, but storms on December 22 and 23 "cost us literally 4%-5% for the month," he added. Some of the gain was attributable to a signing by Hillary Clinton on December 5. They did leave a small one open to the side." Still, customers have been loyal, and Blue Willow tries hard "to make each person know that we were grateful for their perseverance in traffic to get to us." While walk-in business has been affected, "we are going strong with author events, conferences, and whatever else I can think of in the new year." And at Gibson's Bookstore, Concord, N.H., December sales were up "significantly over the previous December," owner Michael Herrmann reported. She called the construction "hideous," which included one day when there were "no entrances open to our shopping center on the street in front of us. With more than a thousand homes in the area flooded, "we have temporarily lost some of our core customer base and, sadly, a good number of our elderly customers who were still in their homes but now will never be back," Koehler indicated. The store's solid results are striking in part because they happened even with the damage and disruption caused by Hurricane Harvey and by heavy construction around the store. Sales were boosted in part by Blue Willow's pop-up store at a design show at the beginning of the month. At Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, Tex., December sales were "definitely up from last year," owner Valerie Koehler said, and "last year overall" was up, too. ![]() Traffic during the daytime is steady but slows at nighttime, "so once people stop coming, we close a little early," Takacs noted. The deep cold has led to some changes in consumer behavior. The store benefited, too, from several big events toward the end of the year. The Saturday before Christmas was "crazy busy"-and a surprise because she thought more people would already be traveling. In Chicago, Ill., Suzy Takacs, owner of the Book Cellar, also called December sales "great," likely the second-highest December for the store ever. ![]() With Christmas on a Monday, it seemed folks had time to shop, so there was never really that panicky frenzy that can occur at the end." Despite frigid temperatures, she continued, in the past week "people were still buying gifts for those they see after the 25th." In addition, families came in to visit and some were buying books for themselves. For example, Judy Crosby, owner of Island Books, Middletown, R.I., called December sales "great, up from last year about 4%." There was "a long build from Thanksgiving on. General indications are that the solid sales at bricks-and-mortar bookstores reported during much of December continued at a healthy pace through the end of the year, a view that was reinforced by comments from indie booksellers in the days following Christmas.
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