The Best Bookstore in.... Union Square(!)
We're opening a second store... in downtown San Francisco!
Hi all,
You might have already received some variant of today’s EXCITING NEWS from the bookstore (we emailed the following message to our PS-based customers directly a little while ago) but the NEWS is so EXCITING that I wanted to make sure I also shared it with Citizen Bookseller readers…
If you live in Palm Springs or have spent any time talking to either of us in the store, you probably know our story.
For one thing, despite having spent our whole lives writing and publishing books, we had never dreamed of opening a bookstore. We had zero experience in retail and (we assumed) zero aptitude for it. But we also knew a city as otherwise incredible as Palm Springs needed a bookstore – every city should have at least one! - and the city had given our family a lot. We wanted to give something back.
So we took out a second mortgage, got a little bit of money from family and friends, and opened this store with roughly half the amount of startup capital that people recommend you have to start a bookstore. And none of the experience.
It has not always been pretty, but it is SO MUCH FUN. This store is what it is because of you and our incredible Coachella Valley-native team. You shape the vibe, the stock, what the store feels like. And thanks to you, we are having an incredible fall. Our revenues are up double digit percentages in our new space! (THANK YOU!) And our Readers’ Festival looks like it’s going to be our best yet! (Check out the lineup here, and buy your tickets before they are gone!)
We couldn’t be happier or more content.
Still, Palm Springs gets a lot of visitors, and every so often one of those visitors will ask us: Do you think you’ll ever open a second location?
Our answer, emphatically: No! We never even intended to open this one!
I suppose if we were honest, the real answer would be: Not unless we were to discover a city where we a) own a home b) doesn’t have a bookstore and c) where we think the city would be as supportive as Palm Springs has been. And, given our only other home is in San Francisco, which is home to some of the world’s best bookstores already, that seemed close enough to a “no!”
You can probably tell where this is going.
You might have seen on the news that downtown San Francisco is undergoing something of a renaissance. Under the new mayor, the city has committed millions of dollars to revitalizing Union Square as the “front door to the city”, including giving financial and logistical support to help small businesses take over vacant store fronts on the square and around Powell Street.
A few months ago, Sarah (who spends a lot of her time in SF, where our kids go to school) called Paul (who holds down the fort in Palm Springs most of the year) to enthuse about how incredible the turnaround of Union Square has been.
Paul said he’d believe it when he saw it.
And then he saw it.
Small businesses are popping up all around the square, there’s a free kid’s lending library, movie screenings and the vibe feels even better than when Paul first moved to the city (and the country!) in 2007.
But you know what the new Union Square doesn’t have?
A BOOKSTORE.
In fact, it’s the only neighborhood in the city that doesn’t.
Did I mention the city is offering to help support small businesses to take over empty storefronts that they normally could never afford?
And so, once again, with not quite enough money (if you know any investors who happen to love books, feel free to send them our way!) and still nowhere near enough experience we just signed a lease to open our second location: THE BEST BOOKSTORE IN UNION SQUARE.
And, just as with Palm Springs, we’re doing it on a ludicrous timeline: Hoping to open the doors around Thanksgiving, in time for the holidays.
To be very clear, the only reason we can do this is because of the continuing success of the Palm Springs store which is, and will always be, our home store. The BestBookstore Corp is proudly based in Palm Springs (we put it on all of the SF city forms) and our book festival will always be held in Palm Springs, in the city’s sweet rec room, because they saved the festival last year when we almost had to cancel it. After the initial setup madness, Paul will still spend the same amount of time in PS, just as Sarah will spend the same amount of time in SF. We’re hiring an amazing team of booksellers and a manager to be in charge of SF.
In fact we want all of our bookstores – whether there are two or twelve one day (never say never) – to be postcards from Palm Springs to readers all over California. The color scheme, the bright open vibes, the whimsical bright Sarah card recommendations, the good luck monsters and pride cranes free with purchases when our kids decide to make them.
But you’ll get to share in the benefits of the new store too. Your gift cards will work in both locations, and both will be served by the same (existing) website so we’ll be able to stock more books overall and get them to you quicker. Having two stores gives us more purchasing power and more sway with publishers, and it will help us to have one store that isn’t in an extremely seasonal market. (The deadest time in San Francisco tourism-wise is January and February, just when Palm Springs is at peak season!)
And our San Francisco store comes with a large dedicated event space, so we will be able to do more author events. We will always announce them in this space and on our Instagram feed. If you ever want a signed copy from anyone speaking, just say the word, and we’ll grab you one and ship it your way!
We don’t know how we are physically going to be in two stores in two parts of the state over the holidays, but we will manage somehow. We might mix it up with Sarah being in Palm Springs, and Paul manning San Francisco on alternate weeks. We are going to swap off more throughout the year, so that each store gets a bit of both of our attention in it. (Not that our incredible teams need it. Lexie and Nancy have been absolutely crushing it day-to-day, and again we have an equally incredible small team helming our new SF store.)
We hope as our company grows that you will be even more proud that we are your hometown bookstore and you were part of this from the beginning. And, of course, next time you are in the Bay Area, that you’ll come to Union Square and say hi to the new team.
We’ll have more on the new store soon but wanted to make sure y’all were the first to hear about it before it gets announced in the media.
We are terrified and excited and, again, we couldn’t do it without you.
See you in store soon! (And wish us luck!)
Paul and Sarah