AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE THAT SUCCEEDS

In Business, May-June, 2005, Vol. 27, No. 3, p. 10

About the joys of running a business that inspires a special kind of intimacy with customers.

Gene Logsdon

IN AN AGE when even some college libraries are turning away from books in favor of “digital information centers,” whatever they are, Carol Rueger and David Wiesenberg's Wooster Book Company, in Wooster, Ohio, seems like a booklover's fanciful dream. Except for one important detail. After some 12 years in business, the husband/wife team can cautiously claim success. It has not been easy. Success never is. On one particularly hectic day on the job recently, David whispered in my ear with his customary wry humor, referring I'm sure to great quantities of volumes that needed his attention, not individual books. “I hate books.”
The truth, of course, is quite the opposite. It takes a great love of books to put in 80 to 90 hours a week on the job, as Carol does. Personal dedication to books keeps them going. As Carol puts it: “My lifestyle and profession are seamlessly merged. I like what I'm doing. I can weave my social life into my workplace time. Since we own the business, we can create the tone in which the work takes place. That is very important to me. It keeps me motivated.”
David puts in about 60 hours a week but also does what might be called public relations work in after hours on various community boards and local projects. “It is important for a person in business to take an active and committed role in the community,” says David. “Actually that's not a bad idea for folks in general.”
Daughter Julia works as floor manager and product manager, and although son Nick is not employed by the store, he does maintenance work for free in his spare time.
The Wooster Book Company is a true independent, one- of- a- kind bookstore, but it is not exactly small. The store carries about 50,000 titles, “probably near as many as some Big Box mega-stores,” says David. “We just have fewer of each item.” They hire an equivalent of about 6 to 8 full time employees.
The business is remarkably diversified, certainly another key to its success. In addition to selling books, Wooster Book publishes a few titles every year. “These are typically regional, nonfiction books,” David points out. “We publish books we think will do well in the regional market, which we know well and which we can reach efficiently.” Located in the heart of the largest Amish community in the world, they have done well with books about Amish life. Books about nature in Ohio or by popular Ohio authors, like reprints of Louis Bromfields's books, have done well too.
The company also works with authors who want to produce and finance their own books. “We have many inquiries for this kind of publishing, but we have to look very closely at these projects. The author's expectations may not be realistic. We would actually like to step back from this area because marketing vanity books is often difficult, that is, financially impractical.”
In addition, the company undertakes collaborative publishing projects with entities such as the Ohio Division of Natural Resources or the Ohio Library Council. “They identify the content of the project, or we may suggest something to them, and then Wooster Book puts it together,” David explains. “We would really like to see this area of our business expand.”
Last but not least, Wooster Book is closely affiliated with the Buckeye Book Fair, the most popular book fair in Ohio, held each year on the Wooster campus of Ohio State University. “In a way, the Book Fair is a competitor,” says David, “but we decided that it would be more productive in the long run to be associated with it. Their mission is the same as ours-- reading is good. So I'm a trustee of the Book Fair, chairman of the grant committee, which gets my name out to a lot of folks who are looking to buy books for programs, and we are the primary sponsor.” Also, Carol is currently a Board Member of the Great Lakes Booksellers Association, a very influential mover and promoter of books in the Midwest.

REACHING OUT TO CUSTOMERS
To promote their business, the Wiesenbergs rely heavily on their newsletter. “We use it to position ourselves with customers and prospective customers,” says David. “We want them to think of us when they think about books and reading. A regular newsletter is a good way to make them aware of us. We keep the mailing list as up-to-date and accurate as possible. We aim to send out six a year including a special holiday edition. It's also a good way to promote the books we publish.”
The newsletter keeps customers apprised of events regularly scheduled to bring people into the store. Authors do readings and book-signings. Regular events for children, like puppet shows and parties, are themed to particular books. The bookstore once hosted a baby shower when a College of Wooster English Department professor and his wife adopted a child from Russia. It also hosted a wedding shower for a middle-aged Mennonite woman who was getting married for the first time. “The time committed to getting people into the store is at least as important as selling books,” David says, “so we work hard at that. In our publicity we try to feature the store as a sort of tourist destination, or a fun place for local people to visit. Our window front displays are pretty cool, often starring our cat, Booker. Once we had a window with live actors from a local production of Camelot. That stopped traffic out front.”
To display books, Carol has found that what she calls “shelf-talkers” are effective. An employee will write a short review of a book and put it by the book on the shelf. “People like them. It is an effective way to sell a specific title.”

START-UP AND FINANCING
The Wiesenbergs started up the business in 1993 with $64,000 of their own money and $128,000 borrowed. They shopped the loan to several banks. “If I remember correctly, the best offer was one percent over prime,” says David. “The budget we made up for the first year came out just about to the penny.” He smiles. “Everyone was surprised.”
They paid off the loan in 1998. In 1999, they purchased the building they had been renting and the building next to it, and joined the two (through a 3-foot thick wall!), adding two-thirds more room to the original store. In 2000, they remodelled the front facades of both buildings to unify the store's appearance and in 2003, their best year so far, they replaced the roof, bought a used Honda, and took a three-week vacation to Europe. “It will kill me to pry my fingers loose of the money,” says David, “but this year we must replace the computer system.”
The couple is cautionary about the picture of progress these improvements paint. “To get a true idea of financial progress, I have to point out that our sales per square foot are about one-half of what would be considered industry standard,” says David. “That is, we could or should double our retail sales with the space and inventory that we currently have. By owning the building we don't have to pay rent of course, but there is the mortgage on the building. Also, by working long hours, we think we are keeping the payroll down, although I'm not sure that's good thinking.”
Carol had no idea that she would end up running a bookstore when she and David married. She grew up in Canada, was valedictorian of her high school class, graduated from Ohio University, Athens, with a double bachelors in zoology and philosophy, did graduate work at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. Then she ran a chemistry lab in Ashland, Ohio and worked as a Systems Manager at the College of Wooster. After they married, she and David moved to a small farm not far from Wooster where she got a real education: replaced the chimney, jacked up the back of the house, dug out the old decayed foundation, poured footers and laid up the block, then set the house back down on the block. “Oh yes,” says David. “Carol is extremely competent at all kinds of things. Our first house was humble, no indoor plumbing, but it had the most wonderful, rich soil. Cost us the price of a car today. We kept pigs and chickens. Carol still keeps bees. She had a huge garden and still gardens. Grew wheat just so she could bake bread from scratch. She operates under the principle that you can do anything that you can find the instructions for in a book.”

DESTINED FOR BOOKS
As for David, his destiny was with books from the beginning. “I may have been born with a book in my hand. I'm sure my mother took a book to the hospital with her. No doubt a library book. Books are expensive to buy.” [Little smile]. In high school, he worked in a bookstore. He describes himself in college with the words of one of his professors, as the “best read student he had ever met.” In order to keep his grades up, he jokes, he continued to take humanities courses until he was sufficiently unemployable.
So what does a person do if he can't read for a living? He entered the printing business. Without ever having worked in production, he says, he was designated a Master Printer of America in 1985. Then he combined his practical skills with his over-riding passion and The Wooster Book Company was born. Awards have continued to come from the printing industry and elsewhere: Successful New Business Award from the the Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce, several local Design Commission Awards and a Friend of the Young Child award. Last year David won a prestigious Ohioana Citation from the Ohioana Library Association for his contribution to the State of Ohio in the field of humanities, or in David's words, “for figuring out how to create employment for himself and other English majors.”
Asked for “memorable moments” in the book biz, David knocks off a few one liners. “Once we got a school order for a dozen or so copies of 'How To Kill A Mockingbird.' Another time, a customer told us how he really enjoyed Jane Eyre and had even met her.”
His eyes twinkle. “The other day a customer came in asking about a Charles Lindbergh biography. We had it on hand, and when he identified the title as Spirit of St. Louis, he whipped out his cell phone, called a radio station and won a 'honeymoon retreat' weekend for knowing the answer to an on-air quiz.”
Carol thinks she can top that one. “I did an out-of-print search for a customer on a fairly obscure title. After 11 years, I finally found the book at a library sale and bought it for 25 cents. I made a gift of it to the customer, a regular, to sort of commemorate the length of time it took me to find it. It turned out that this was exactly the same book that the customer had read 40 years ago - her library card number was in the book.”
David's all time favorite memorable moment illustrates the joys of running a business that inspires a special kind of intimacy with customers. “A retired CEO here in town purchased a fancy cookbook one day and returned several hours later with a homemade and fabulous key-lime pie.”

Copyright 2007, The JG Press, Inc.