In a world where digital dominance often overshadows the charm of brick-and-mortar stores, my local bookstore faced the brink of closure. With loyal patrons dwindling and sales plummeting, I knew we had to act fast. Armed with nothing but a passion for literature and a discovery of data, I embarked on a journey to uncover insights that would breathe new life into our beloved bookstore. In this blog, I’ll share the innovative strategies we implemented—from analyzing customer preferences to optimizing inventory management—that not only saved our store but also transformed it into a thriving community hub. Join me as I explore how harnessing the power of data can rekindle the magic of independent bookstores in an ever-evolving retail landscape.

I’ve been working for Half Off Books throughout my twenties and while a lot of people normally see themselves in their first job for a year or so, I can say I found a lot of growing to do being apart of the company. Working at a bookstore has it’s perks like being surrounded by countless subjects and having great conversations with fellow book lovers. One of the most exciting things about working small business is being a part of the development. I’ve definitely seen a lot of ups and downs while being there, but I’ll focus on a shorter period for this article.

Back in 2019, Half Off Books had a location in Fullerton, Ca with a full team of 8 people in place and were open from 10am to 9pm. Our owner started to open another location in Pasadena, placing me in a manager role with little experience on leadership but plenty of time. He advised me on how to delegate with the staff and I’d reach out with any questions. Unfortunately, he passed away soon after from an accidental death and the Pasadena location was not thriving like we had hoped and now with two locations and the entire team in shock, I could tell this was not going to be easy to handle.

We lost our leadership, our map and what felt like our mission, and for the next month, everyone wasn’t sure what to think of. We tried to continue on with the two stores because we thought to ourselves this is what our leader would have wanted. We owed it to him to make it work but bills piled up and we couldn’t allow the profits of one store to pay off the other. I decided we would close up shop in Pasadena and let go of the few people there. With only one store to focus on, things got much easier. We wrestled with the impact of what happened and considered how to navigate out of feeling so lost.

Among so many tasks, one of the first things I had to assess was making a profit and managing our inventory. After so much moving around, we had to review what we had. Utilizing our Square POS system, I was able to download an excel spreadsheet of our entire inventory. Upon review, I noticed there wasn’t any data for the “unit cost” so it was harder to budget the inventory moving forward. I recognized a process needed for intaking books using the invoices so that the team and I can keep costs updated as they changed. Publishers do not explicitly advise us on those changes so before we put them out, we update our records.

With our inventory process updated and small margin products being discontinued, we were confident that we were definitely improving our net performance. Having taken an accounting class, I was able to determine changes like this to help improve the stores bottom line and although I didn’t have a perfect income statement, I did have an intuitive sense of what the store needed and did my best to help review the owner’s expenses and advise what was necessary. We continued to stay profitable for about a year and then Covid happened.

Like most small businesses, it was disruptive, and pivoting was not something we were prepared for. We didn’t have a website without inventory available and taking time emailing customers high quality photos of bookshelves provided a minimal income and almost not even enough to pay one person. Also, since we weren’t buying new inventory, our used stock was thinning out.

We did our best adjusting to the times and established several new sources of income and although it wasn’t near enough, it helped us get by. To show you what other income sources we used, I put together a small pie chart down below.

To gather this data, I had to extract from several sources.

• Sales (Instore)
• Online (Sales made off our website)
• Amazon (obscure books and CDs/DVDs needing specific exposure)
• Bookshop.org (new online affiliate program)
• Libro.fm (new audiobooks)

First were sales pulled from our Square POS Reports. I exported six of the slowest months that carried us the most (March – August). Since we weren’t doing any instore sales technically, I was actually driving books out to peoples homes and I had to pay myself later until we were able to be profitable again.

Next was the Online sales which was tricky since our old method didn’t exist anymore, but I recovered raw data for the entire year from old emails. It was also our first year ever selling items through our online store, so it didn’t help that we didn’t have much awareness to begin with.

Bookshop and Libro.fm are affiliate programs that we started using which we marketed through our emails. Throughout the year I was able to generate reports from their dashboards.

Amazon provided a CSV file and I created and cleaned a table of data on excel. I got sort of a dirty total from finding all the withdrawals that we’re made. I tried not to get in all the details.

All this wasn’t really making the cut and just when rent became a threat we were lucky to find ourselves opening back up. At this point, we slowly opened up with reduced hours from 10am-4pm and only had 3-4 employees. It helped keep exposure low and bring down payroll by 45%. Compared to our original hours of 10am – 9pm with 6 employees it was comfortable.

Customers were eager to shop again which also meant they also wanted to sell. We weren’t ready just yet to take in used books from the public but after reaching out to the CDC and exercising common sense, we were confident in taking practical steps to protect us and our guests.

When we were open 10-9 and buying 10-7 that’s mainly what we found ourselves doing but opening back up, our hours adjusted to 10-4 so our buying hours were 10-12. That changed later and we increased our open hours 10-7 and our buying from 10-2. Those happen to still be our buying hours to this day.

Adjusting our hours came with lots of benefits.

• We were able to manage having a leaner staff.
• Our inventory wasn’t dealing with higher turnover.
• Less work for us to clearance and recycling older inventory.
• We saved money by not buying as much as we were before.
• Staff weren’t fatigued from constantly making offers late into the evening.
• It increased our productivity by trading off time for other tasks.

And

• After 2pm, we were able to take breaks without straining others still working.

What was exciting was that we were finding a new comfortable groove for us to actually take a breather and find ourselves being profitable again. With a review of our week, we were able to assess the best placement for our team.

With all this internal hustle and bustle being fine-tuned, I then turned our attention to marketing. I was never trained for much marketing except for one job. I emailed our customer base about our Fire Sale every quarter of the year. One month, one week, and one day before the sale. We had a group of 5000 subscribers and I felt like there was a chance at really tapping into that group by adding more value to our campaigns. At the time we were using Mailchimp which was plentiful in its analytics.

Our audience new what the email was for, and I believe that’s why this graph below shows a very low open rate. To increase that, I figured we should engage more. This entailed telling our audience about all the things we had to offer. That meant gift cards, pre-order services, affiliate programs, and discounts and rewards programs. As you can see, it worked to the tune of 20% increase over the next 2 years. Though our click rate stayed at a low level our sales data on our POS backed up the proof in demand. Unfortunately, compatibility between our store sales and Mailchimp fell short of providing supporting evidence of this.

We also found other ways of support our bottom line!

• We changed recycling company and saved 110% monthly.
• We started selling non-listable books to third parties to offset recycling fees.
• We started reserving funds in a high yield savings account.
• We created categories for our items to target discover and act on sales data. CD’s, DVDs, Blu-rays, Records are all being documented.
• and

With the help of all these platforms and discovering all the ways to make things work, with the help of my team and the feedback of our customers, I was able to feel confident knowing we were moving in the right direction. I still wish we had our leader to be a part of the wild ride we had but I’m sure he’d be proud of all of us.

Thank you for reading! I hope this article resonated with you and that the data I shared added depth to the story. Your feedback is invaluable, so please let me know your thoughts—I’d love to hear how I can make the data even more engaging and easier to understand.

While this may not have been my finest attempt at illustrating the impact of data on preserving bookstores, I hope it has sparked your interest in their vital role in our communities. These small businesses are the heartbeat of our local economies, and every choice you make as a consumer contributes to their survival. Together, we can support these cherished spaces that bring so much to our lives.

Happy reading, and I look forward to hearing from you!