I'm starting a second-hand bookstore soon, any advice?

[BEG]

Location Location Location.

I don't know that this is a good business to start. It seems that the stores here in Orange county are closing. Most have been in business twenty plus years.

I hear ya! However, the town where I'm planning to start it is "the" town within a 100-mile radius and many people have been requesting just such a business. Yes, we're in a rural area, but the people aren't hicks. Well, at least, not for the most part!

Whew, because we all know HICKS don't read.

[bijou]

Location Location Location.

I don't know that this is a good business to start. It seems that the stores here in Orange county are closing. Most have been in business twenty plus years.

I hear ya! However, the town where I'm planning to start it is "the" town within a 100-mile radius and many people have been requesting just such a business. Yes, we're in a rural area, but the people aren't hicks. Well, at least, not for the most part!

Whew, because we all know HICKS don't read.

[BEG]

Location Location Location.

I don't know that this is a good business to start. It seems that the stores here in Orange county are closing. Most have been in business twenty plus years.

I hear ya! However, the town where I'm planning to start it is "the" town within a 100-mile radius and many people have been requesting just such a business. Yes, we're in a rural area, but the people aren't hicks. Well, at least, not for the most part!

Whew, because we all know HICKS don't read.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Something else that really matters is organization. Have stuff logically sorted so folks can find it and keep the books neat and where they belong.

Too many used bookstores have stuff that is hard to find, miss stacked or otherwise useless.  Take a clue from the grocery store where aranging the inventory is made into a science.

Don't go for comfort.   Readers will sit on anything and read all the way through a book on you if you allow them to get comfortable.   You aren't a library.

No food, that just encourages people to sit and read.  Besides food gets into the books and the next person won't buy it.

[Lisa]

Just don't do anything to piss off customers, Lisa.

When I lived in Lincoln, a liberal femme, probably a primitive, started a bookstore.

When I lived in Lincoln, I spent a lot of money at bookstores.

I spent hundreds of bucks at this new bookstore within a few weeks, but then one day when I walked in, I noticed a new sign, PLEASE DON'T SMOKE AS IT AGGRAVATES [name of femme owner]'s ALLERGIES.

I never went back there again.

I myself had never smoked inside the store; I don't smoke when shopping.

If there had been a problem with smokers, a simple PLEASE DON'T SMOKE sign would have sufficed.

But no, it was all about her, her, her.

I never cared much for narcissists, and I'm sure she could have made a couple thousand more bucks off of me over the next year or so, if she hadn't been so grotesquely self-centered.

However, Lisa, I have no doubt you have a great deal more class and grace than she did.

yep...

and such is the problem w/ small business owners these days...

the majority of them are liberal moonbats &/or trust fund babies that don't really need the money ...

and of course, they have NO CLUE as to how to run a business....

the location/location/location thingie is overrated these days & comes with a HEFTY PRICE too...

if you want to pay for a high traffic location, you need an average sale of $45 or more & you need to have at least 50-75 reciepts per day, depending on your margins ....and w/ todays china/walmart/internet driven economy, margins SUCK so you'll need at the very least, 75 sales of $45 or more to prolly even break even (depending on how much you keep in inventory/staff etc.etc.) ....

big malls are setup to screw the small spaces that occupy them ...most of the smaller stores in malls today, are meerely there to hawk' their catalog/stock  sales & don't do jackshit for actual retail sales per store....

the anchor stores at malls are the only ones getting a 'deal' on rent, but, they aren't doing much of shit these days either since the asian invasion has destroyed our margins & brands...

Well, ya know, JCC, that works both ways. There are a lot more of us moonbats out there than you'd like to think or realize and, believe it or not, we do make money and spend that money. And we don't like to be put down or pushed away by businesses, either, any more than conservatives/republicans do. 

And just because you're republican doesn't automatically mean you're able to effectively manage and run a business. Yes, there are plenty of them, including my late maternal grandfather, who can do a bang-up job at it. But that's not automatically the case. One of my former bosses when I lived in OH considered himself to be a staunch republican, a strong devotee of Reagan. Great guy, we've stayed friends and stayed in touch through the past several years, even after my move. But he didn't know how to run the small business he owned to save his life and relied on his employees, including me, his moonbat secretary/manager, to at least keep it afloat. Same with my good republican friend's republican father, who nearly trashed the family business and would have done so had she and her siblings not stepped in finally.

And I've known several fellow moonbats who've built and run successful businesses. Including the moonbat who owns the building I'll be renting space in for the bookstore; she owns the building and also has her own successful business in it.

[Lisa]

Something else that really matters is organization. Have stuff logically sorted so folks can find it and keep the books neat and where they belong.

Too many used bookstores have stuff that is hard to find, miss stacked or otherwise useless.  Take a clue from the grocery store where aranging the inventory is made into a science.

Don't go for comfort.   Readers will sit on anything and read all the way through a book on you if you allow them to get comfortable.   You aren't a library.

No food, that just encourages people to sit and read.  Besides food gets into the books and the next person won't buy it.

That's an especially good point about organization. I'm thinking of the different categories I should organize them in, and should probably arrange the categories in order of what the popularity is likely to be. Cooking, gardening, farming and ranching are huge in this rural area, so maybe books in those categories should be the first ones displayed, at the front of the store. Western-themed books, whether fiction or history, are also pretty big here, so perhaps those could be displayed right afterwards, and so on.

[RobJohnson]

Unless you own a Barnes and Noble...most book stores simply become an expensive hobby.

[john c calhoun]

Just don't do anything to piss off customers, Lisa.

When I lived in Lincoln, a liberal femme, probably a primitive, started a bookstore.

When I lived in Lincoln, I spent a lot of money at bookstores.

I spent hundreds of bucks at this new bookstore within a few weeks, but then one day when I walked in, I noticed a new sign, PLEASE DON'T SMOKE AS IT AGGRAVATES [name of femme owner]'s ALLERGIES.

I never went back there again.

I myself had never smoked inside the store; I don't smoke when shopping.

If there had been a problem with smokers, a simple PLEASE DON'T SMOKE sign would have sufficed.

But no, it was all about her, her, her.

I never cared much for narcissists, and I'm sure she could have made a couple thousand more bucks off of me over the next year or so, if she hadn't been so grotesquely self-centered.

However, Lisa, I have no doubt you have a great deal more class and grace than she did.

yep...

and such is the problem w/ small business owners these days...

the majority of them are liberal moonbats &/or trust fund babies that don't really need the money ...

and of course, they have NO CLUE as to how to run a business....

the location/location/location thingie is overrated these days & comes with a HEFTY PRICE too...

if you want to pay for a high traffic location, you need an average sale of $45 or more & you need to have at least 50-75 reciepts per day, depending on your margins ....and w/ todays china/walmart/internet driven economy, margins SUCK so you'll need at the very least, 75 sales of $45 or more to prolly even break even (depending on how much you keep in inventory/staff etc.etc.) ....

big malls are setup to screw the small spaces that occupy them ...most of the smaller stores in malls today, are meerely there to hawk' their catalog/stock  sales & don't do jackshit for actual retail sales per store....

the anchor stores at malls are the only ones getting a 'deal' on rent, but, they aren't doing much of shit these days either since the asian invasion has destroyed our margins & brands...

Well, ya know, JCC, that works both ways. There are a lot more of us moonbats out there than you'd like to think or realize and, believe it or not, we do make money and spend that money. And we don't like to be put down or pushed away by businesses, either, any more than conservatives/republicans do. 

And just because you're republican doesn't automatically mean you're able to effectively manage and run a business. Yes, there are plenty of them, including my late maternal grandfather, who can do a bang-up job at it. But that's not automatically the case. One of my former bosses when I lived in OH considered himself to be a staunch republican, a strong devotee of Reagan. Great guy, we've stayed friends and stayed in touch through the past several years, even after my move. But he didn't know how to run the small business he owned to save his life and relied on his employees, including me, his moonbat secretary/manager, to at least keep it afloat. Same with my good republican friend's republican father, who nearly trashed the family business and would have done so had she and her siblings not stepped in finally.

And I've known several fellow moonbats who've built and run successful businesses. Including the moonbat who owns the building I'll be renting space in for the bookstore; she owns the building and also has her own successful business in it.

owning the building you are renting from is HARDLY the same as  leasing a space, borrowing money from a bank & running your retail book store while competing against THE BIGGEST corporations on earth selling the very same items you are...

your 'friends' owning the building have got it right.... (ie: OWNING THE BUILDING)

if you own the space, that right there IS THE BEST INVESTMENT IN BUSINESS you could ever make ....because if your 'store' fails, you can just rent out the space...

and of course if your store is successful, then once you pay off the mortgage, you'll be rent free in YOUR BUILDING....get it ??

if your  'friend' truly is, ask if you can BUY YOUR SPACE, instead of renting it...

[Jim]

do DVD's and videos as well, music too.  cover as many bases as possible.

[Baruch Menachem]

I think you might visit the local safeway or whatever thinking in terms of merchandising.

You might note that the essentials are all toward the sides and the back.  The impulse stuff is all between you and what you came for.

You might have a lot of eye candy stuff toward the front, but the gardening, cooking etc need to be near the back and be displayed attractively.

You want to get them in, all the way to the back, and maybe they will see something they like on the way back to the register.

Anyway, go to a few stores and look around and ask yourself "Why is this thing here, rather than there?"

I notice Sears never has their bread an butter stuff near the front.  It is always on a different floor.

Borders makes a ton of money doing it their way.  Look at their layout and learn.

[Jim]

regarding owning vs leasing (and this comes from my rich brother whos a commercial real estate guy), you buy the strip mall and let the other tennents pay your rent for you.  easier said than done perhaps but its the most favorable way to manage it.

[LaceDustBoots]

Lisa

In my town, we have about 5 used book stores but they mostly do "exchanging".  I was a customer at one and the owner got into a car accident and I volunteered to run the place for her while she was mending.  Did this for about 5 months and I increased her profits because I arranged/organized her store and applied my ideas as a customer.  The owner didn't advertise at all.  Just depended on walk ins and repeat customers/exchangers.  She was in a strip mall.  Are you going to sell the books as a final sale only or offer an exchange program?   

I like book exchanges because once I read a book, I haven't any need for it to sit around.  I only keep my favorites and those I've mostly bought brand new.  It's great for getting books for kids because once they are done with them, they can come in and exchange for more books for little cost.  It's also very popular for elderly people.  They were my main customers.  I could get about 5 books for about $15-$20 dollars.  When I brought those 5 back, I would get a credit to apply to the next batch.

My town isn't very big but all the book exchanges have been around for a long time.  So they must do okay.

I, too, love books.  It was fun, fun, fun running her little store.  Plus I'm a clean freak and well, she, not so much so I stayed very busy.