Retail Operations During COVID-19: Changing Hands Bookstore
Retail Operations During COVID-19: Changing Hands Bookstore – Phoenix, Arizona:Â Now is an uncertain time for retail. The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing retailers to make difficult decisions like whether to close their store or not, whether or not to lay off employees, whether to ask for rent deferral or not, etc. We think that now it is more important than ever to come together and share ideas and practices between retailers all over the nation.
For the fourth episode in this series, Fred Clements interviews Gayle Shanks, owner of Changing Hands Bookstore with locations in Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona, and former president of the American Booksellers Association. Gayle has cultivated a passionate community around her bookstore and while talking to Fred, finds the similarities between the struggles that both bike and booksellers have faced for the last 20 years.
Enjoy listening to Retail Operations During COVID-19: Changing Hands Bookstore – Phoenix, Arizona
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Changing Hands Business Vision:
There’s more to a bookstore than the books on the shelves.
When you buy a book from Changing Hands, part of the price you pay goes to:
- Supporting our friendly, hardworking, knowledgeable staff
- Supporting programs on local public radio stations KJZZ and KBAQ
- Supporting local schools and teachers
- Supporting over 200 local, national and international charities and service organizations
No part of the price you pay goes to:
- Remote corporate headquarters where decisions are based solely on maximizing profits
- Absentee owners who don’t work in the store or live in the community
At Changing Hands, we are dedicated to doing business as a responsible member of our community in a manner that results in making a modest profit without exploiting our employees, our vendors, or our customers. When you shop at Changing Hands, you join with us in building community.
Changing Hands Bookstore — an independent community bookstore
Fred & Gayle
Tue, 8/18 10:45AM • 55:45
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
books, store, bike, booksellers, people, bike shops, community, customers, buy, employees, business, author, bicycle, retail, sell, events, years, amazon, changing, bookstores
SPEAKERS
Fred Clements, Rod Judd, Chad Pickard, Gayle Shanks
Rod Judd 00:10
You are listening to bicycle retail radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.
Fred Clements 00:16
Thanks for tuning in to the NBDA Bicycle Retail Radio Podcast. I’m Fred Clements. I’ll be hosting today and talking to Gail Shanks owner of Changing Hands Bookstore with two locations one in Phoenix and one in Tempe, Arizona. They’ve been in the retail book business for 46 years now, and you might think it’s highly unusual and maybe it is to talk to someone in an industry totally unrelated to bicycles, and to do a podcast that is aimed at bike shops talking to a bookseller but I’ve had some background with booksellers. I think there are a lot of parallels, not just as small businesses, but the community engagement and part of which Gail is really good at so I thought we’d talk about About what she just give the listener a chance to see what the lay of the land is in the book business and her business changing hands book shop, and then move into some of the specifics of what they’re doing in community engagement and the like. And then because we’re in the middle, hopefully, it’s only the middle of the Coronavirus issue then we’ll move into that what a lot of bike shops are taking different strategies, some open some clothes, some partially open and the same challenges facing booksellers, with the Coronavirus in that we get into that sort of toward the end, but I thought it’d be nice to sort of set the stage to see a little more about Gail’s business. Another thing that I found interesting is booksellers I think, were among the first independent retail industries to be challenged to buy a little company years ago now but a little company called Amazon that seemed to target for whatever reason the book business before others, and then, of course, moving into other things and I think it’s been referred to I saw this Gail may have said this fighting a pandemic of online the heaviness for a lot of years but I think it hit the booksellers first and harder and along with corporate chains and then technology can racing in with Kindle and the like. So booksellers have really had a fight on their hands and the number of stores declined quite a bit, but before the Coronavirus is really making a comeback, in terms of the number of stores, and they’ve really cleaned up their act. Gail is a former president of the American Booksellers Association and has been working in dealing with a lot of association-related issues as well, you know, on behalf of her industry. So I think there are parallels to bikes and I wanted to welcome Gail and, Gail, thank you for being willing to do this and share some of your insights.
Gayle Shanks 02:52
Well, thanks so much for having me, Fred. You know, I’m just thrilled and I think I agree that both bikes and books have been facing a lot of similar challenges over the last 2025 years, and especially from the online buying community. And I agree, Amazon started as a bookseller and I was just listening recently to an interview that Terry Gross did with the producer and director of a frontline look at Amazon and the impact it’s had on retail in the entire universe. And it was really interesting to hear him talk about Jeff Bezos talking about why he started selling books initially. And he said he did that because books were uniform, pretty much in shape and easy to mail didn’t get damaged in the mail in general, and not Not only were they an item that could easily be sent in the mail, but they were also something that he could grab on to in terms of understanding who the consumer was by what they were reading. So he had this in my mind and ulterior motive of collecting marketing data. Early on, I’ve always thought that Amazon was really not about the products that they were selling, but more about how they could market the customers of Amazon to other people to get more sales for those other companies. And the value was really in selling the information about me, as opposed to selling me a book or what have, you know, your customers a bicycle. And you know, if they knew that your customer was only interested in bikes that cost $3,000 or more, they could sell the information about you, too. Somebody like Bose, you know, that sold headsets for thousands of dollars or, you know, home stereo systems, you know, that you could install in your house and they wanted a certain customer. So you know, they would find that customer from Amazon selling that marketing information. So it was a very insidious and unsavory way of really ignoring people’s privacy and by, you know, gathering information on their purchases, moving that to a different platform and that of marketing, that personal information. So, now that was bothersome from the very beginning, in addition to the fact that in the very beginning, Amazon was discounting books dramatically, often way below the price that we weren’t even able to buy the book from. wholesale from the publishers And they started very quickly bullying publishers into giving them prices, which we could never really get, which were not disclosed to us by our publisher partners either. Because they were terrified of sharing that information and somehow maybe Amazon would stop buying from them. And that was scary for them. So a long answer to
Fred Clements 06:27
that rings a bell a little different in the bike industry, we have overseas retailers who avoid customs you know, bicycles have a tariff placed on them and bicycle parts up to a limit and, and some of the bike shops can buy retail overseas for less than wholesale here, similar to what you just described in the book business. So it’s been a real challenge. So I met by Miss I looking at your website. I’m certainly no expert on any of this. But I noticed it seems like your strategy and correct me if I’m wrong, but your strategy has been to move towards community engagement. community building, trying to be more than just a place to pick up a book, you know, the people that look like you have author events 300 or more per year prior to the virus, and bike shops. Similarly, we’ll have classes or presentations. How did the author’s events work? How did that come about?
Gayle Shanks 07:20
Well, we have always had author events from, you know, the time we were in tiny little 1000 square foot bookstore. We had authors, local authors, or some national authors that were coming through Arizona, and they would stop in and we would have a book signing for them. Generally, what we meant by a book signing was not just that, you would stand in front of a table and the author would sign their book, but they would give a little talk, answer questions, read from the book that they had written, and then sign the book. And what we found early on was that was starting to build a literary community in Tempe, where we started, people would want to come and meet the author, but they also wanted to meet the other people who would come to the event. And there would be conversations prior to an after the author had finished reading. And those conversations started developing this network of customer relationships and bookseller and customer relationships that we found to be the sustaining piece of what we were doing. And also our reason to exist. When we first opened our store. We always want it to be that community-centered bookstore where people would come in, talk about politics, talk about the environment, talk about great literature, and the idea that we could provide that space was part and parcel of why we opened the store. So, you know, in the early 70s, there were already chain stores. There were B Dalton’s in those days, the crown bookstores. And it was before Barnes and Noble had started and borders Barnes and Noble and Borders. But they came soon after both starting as small, independent bookstores themselves and then turning into small and then larger chains. But our author events are what have kept us alive. Not only do we do events with authors present, but we do a lot of events where we have a poetry teacher teaching poetry to a group of 20 people. So we have writers, poets, fiction, nonfiction narrative writers who come and We charge the people who come Generally, the teacher gets half of what we charge, and the store gets the other half. And our community is just thrilled. And oftentimes with popular teachers, those workshops are often full within an hour or two of us posting on the website.
Fred Clements 10:26
And it looks like you have a community of volunteers to help out unpaid people to help at those events. That’s another expression of community as soon as
Gayle Shanks 10:35
we do we love our volunteers. They are customers first. And they early on asked us if they could help in any way and we decided that having them come to our events was the perfect way to involve them in the store. They get front row seating because they’re really they’re the ones that are getting the books ready for the authors to sign. They’re the ones that are going up and down the lines, making sure you know if there’s someone using a walker that he or she would get to the front of the line or a baby screaming, you know, they make sure that they’re sort of our feet on the ground during those events so that our staff can really be running the events themselves. And they just love it. We give them trade credit in the store for their work. So they’re thrilled because they would be buying books anyway. And this way, they can get a little bit of trade credit, and they get to meet the author very often. And they’re really competitive about which authors in which events they volunteer for. And we have a volunteer coordinator on staff who works with them, and, you know, brings them in depending on how many people we need for a particular event. And that has been just terrific. Not only do we get essentially free help, but it also builds tremendous loyalty among those volunteers who just absolutely love the store and would do anything for us. And as we’re, you know when we get into talking about, you know, what do stores do when there’s a pandemic like we’re experiencing right now? It really is those loyal customers who we, you know, have built up over the years, including those volunteers who have produced this groundswell of support for the store and never want to see us close their doors and never open them again. And, you know, those volunteers provide some of the best of that group.
Fred Clements 12:52
In fact, I saw one of the things that I’ve asked about later but what you’re doing now is, you know, you know, your doors are Closed gift cards are and I noticed you, you noted that gift cards if you really want to support the store, buy a gift card, give us money. Now it’s like a short term loan because we’re in business, you can fulfill the gift card and not that that was a pretty creative way of putting that.
Gayle Shanks 13:16
Right. And we got $25,000 worth of gift card sales in two days. Wow. I wrote my newsletter. And, you know, I just might mention, you know, to you bike store, folks that one of the things that I’ve done for probably 25 or 30 or 46 years, is I have a monthly newsletter that I write and it gets sent out to our email subscribers and is often linked to on our social media. And it is a newsletter that starts out saying dear bookstore friends, and I will talk about weeding in my backyard or the wolf flowers that are blooming. I talked about upcoming events, I talked about what’s going on in politics. I talk about what I’m reading, you know, basically, it’s just me, sharing with them some stories from inside the bookstore. And sometimes it’s, you know, one of our customers telling us something about one of their children, you know, coming back from college and the first stop they want to make, is it changing hands or it’s the young kid who’s standing at the door of the wildflower and they are dying to get in and run to the train table in the kid’s section, or, you know, I just sort of collect these stories. And I share them with our customers on a monthly basis. And I get dozens and dozens of responses. And I think what it does is it really has melded our community to our store. And it’s not a newsletter just about me. It is a newsletter about what’s going on in our world. And when this Coronavirus hit it was, you know, something that I didn’t know how to deal with it or what to think about it. And I just poured my heart out into that letter. And I think that has really changed in so many ways that dynamic of, you know, our inner actions with our community.
Fred Clements 15:30
Great. Yeah. So I see here, you have two locations, one of which has the first draft book bar, which is beer, I noticed because I like beer and sublight food like pretzels and things. So that’s in your second location is that’s in Phoenix and your original store was in Tempe? Right? What’s behind your first draft book bar?
Gayle Shanks 15:53
Well, you know, for the same reason that I was talking about before when you’re competing online. You’re trying to do is provide an experience for your customers in the real world, not in the online world. And when we decided to open a second location five years ago, we were looking at a more urban location than our Tempe story is. It’s more in the suburbs. And we were asking ourselves, what could make our store unique, among other retailers, as well as other bookstores. And one of the ideas that we came up with was, how cool it would be to have a bar inside our store. And so we worked with the owners of this 50s modern building, to repurpose it to include not only our bookstore and the first draft book bar, but also a common area that we could share with the other renters in the building. And so the bar sits halfway between our bookstore and this open space and it serves coffee and breakfast items in the morning moving into beer and wine as the afternoon goes on, and it has enhanced that aspect of community gathering place by a hundredfold it started out really slowly. It’s very expensive to put in a bar and all of the things that you need to have in bar refrigerators and dishwashers and water filters and all kinds of refrigerators and espresso machines but after five years, it is in the black and it is very busy and it has really enabled Our customers to have an experience that they can have in very few other places, especially in bookstores. And it’s being used as a model. There are probably 10 book bars now around the country, and more to come, or there were more to come before we were sort of stopped in our tracks. But that said, you know, there’s nothing more fun than carrying a glass of wine or a craft beer in your hands while you’re browsing the shelves. And, you know, there’s dozens and dozens and dozens of pictures of people in our store with a glass of beer in their hand that they have posted on social media. And we just, of course, love that. We have mugs and pint glasses that have changed hands and the first draft brand is all over them. And it’s just been quite an exciting thing to see that it’s, you know, totally taken off and if we didn’t have a bar on the other side of us Tempe, we would have opened a bar in our Tempe store as well. But we don’t like to step on our neighbor’s toes. And we now send people next door to get their beer.
Fred Clements 19:15
So you have somewhere around 60 employees between the two stores and the bar? I think so the people that serve the food and beverages are one skill set. And but for the other skill set, I was really interested in hearing from you. In the bike business, you know, it’s hard to find good employees who will work for what bike shops can pay. Yeah, find a lot of enthusiasts who love bicycles, and then they have to kind of be taught the business in many cases. What are your criteria? I mean, does everyone have to be a have a master’s in English or something? How do you hire for a bookstore?
Gayle Shanks 19:50
You know, it’s changed over the years to be quite honest. I mean, in the beginning, we wanted to have people that, you know, were lit majors or really loved books and have been either worked around books or, you know, had been avid readers since they were children. And those are still criteria that we use. But we have definitely expanded over the years, we have the same issues. You know, there’s not a lot of money in bookselling. And so our employees don’t get paid a lot of money. And we explain that to them upfront, I do an orientation with all of our new employees, each and every time we get new ones in the store. And I say, you are going to be worth so much more than we are going to be able to pay you. And, you know, this is the reality here. And if you need to move on, at some point, we are going to be so sad to have you go but we love the idea that you’re passionate about books that you want to be around other colleagues who are reading and talking and thinking books and a community that comes in with the expectation that you are going to be their resource, and you’re going to help them find the very best books that are out there. And it has been remarkable that we have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of little hands running around in the world now that have come through our store, some of whom have stayed a year, some of whom have been there for 40 years. And really, it’s quite a job to window through them and find really good ones. We have a test that we give them with titles and authors and genres. And, you know, if they want the test in a big way, we probably don’t even interview them, but if, you know they do well, and they get most of the answers, right, and they recognize authors and titles, you know, it’s a big step, but we use other criteria, too. If they’ve worked as a waiter, you know, those are usually really great. Employees because they understand how important public service and really good customer service is. So, you know, we’ve really figured out the smile, you know, you need to have a smile, you need to be a happy person. In order to work in a bookstore, we explained to them that they need to leave their personal problems at the back door when they come in and that retail is theater, which I’m sure all of your bike people know the same thing. You know, if you’re going to sell an expensive bike or even just a starter bike for someone, you got to have someone who writes bikes, loves bikes know about bikes or can pretend that they do, for some reason, you know, they’ve never been able to afford an expensive bike. Those are really important qualities.
Fred Clements 22:48
It sounds very similar to the philosophy of Do you hire for expertise? Or do you hire for personality? Well, the answer is both. Yeah, I can’t work retail. Unless you Like people and lighting, like what you’re selling, and so you have to have some knowledge. But it’s so we often say, you know, we hire for personality, we can train you on the rest, as long as you’re enthusiastic, maybe it’s less so with bookselling, because it’s so deep and complex, the world of books is pretty, pretty complex. I imagine. So, yeah, so you mentioned earlier margins on books not being great. That’s very similar to bicycles. You have a used books program, and many bike shops do similarly. Because often in the bike business anyway, that if you can buy right and then sell a used bike, the margins can be much better than on a new bike. You know, on a new bike, we’re looking at a 36% margin on average. So could you describe a little bit of how the US book program came about and how that works?
Gayle Shanks 23:48
Well, our name changing hands came about because, in the beginning, we were a used bookstore. We only have one case of new books and the entire rest of the store was so useful. Because we love the idea even in the 70s of recycling and reusing. So our initial store opened with the majority of the books inside being used books, and our hearts are still in a huge way in those use books. And the margins, as you say, with our books are so much greater than with new books. What are the issues that booksellers have in the country is the books come pre-priced. So if you turn a book over, and it’s a paperback, it’s gonna say 1699 on the back. If you open a hardcover on the inside flap, it’s gonna stay 2599. And we have a very hard time you can’t really sell books, in my experience at more than the cost that’s printed on them. And for years, our industry has been debating taking the prices off of books. Asking publishers to please take them off so that we can determine our own prices. And just sell us the books at a net price. And then we will decide how much to sell it for. But unfortunately, again, Amazon has had a lot to say about that. They want their prices, you know, a percentage off of the retail price, and they want a standard retail price on books. And so they fought very hard to keep that price on those books. And again, publishers are terrified of Amazon, pulling, you know, their buy buttons off of Amazon’s website. And so they pretty much listen to whatever they have to say. But we’re finding more and more that we have to have a mix of products in our store. And changing hands was one of the first bookstores to really go into the gift business in addition to the use books that we sell And the new books that we sell, we also sell an enormous amount of gift items. And the gift items are mixed in with the books. And we find that if someone’s buying a cookbook, and they see a beautiful, you know, handcrafted ceramic salad bowl with salad tongs right next to the cookbook, they will in addition to buying the cookbook for Mother’s Day, buy the salad bowl and the salad tongs along with it. And so instead of getting a $30 sale at our registers, we might get an $80 sale at the registers and on the gift items, we can mark them at whatever we feel is a fair price. So we have what we call a mix of products in our store and that has truly allowed us to be more profitable.
Fred Clements 26:54
Yeah, that’s great. I saw on your site shirts, mugs, toys, puzzles, shirts, with the freezer. READ WRITE, resist. And in one READ WRITE resistant vote
Gayle Shanks 27:08
exactly. We had one that said to me right resist for the last year. So this year, we decided we needed to put a vote on there.
Chad Pickard 27:16
Well, yeah. What does being a member of the NBDA mean? Go to NBDA.com to learn about member benefits programs, and preferred partner discounts.
Fred Clements 27:34
So related to that, I think and I was going to get into this in the sort of Coronavirus discussion but you have booked care packages that I know you’re continuing to offer through this crisis but and I assume you were doing that before book care packages where you people can order as gifts or you’ll come up with maybe you should describe it not me. What’s the book care package?
Gayle Shanks 27:57
Well, they were initially For children, we have these baby baskets, we call them. And we’ve had them for years. If you have a new baby in your family or you’re going to a baby shower, and you want to start that child’s library, we have a couple of different programs, you could get kids, all the classics that they might not, you know, have the good night moon and Where the Sidewalk Ends, or, you know, whatever we put together and think of his classic children’s books, or you could buy them new books that have just come out that might one day be classics themselves. And we’ve been doing that program for a long time when the coronavirus hit and we have to close the doors to the public. One of our employees came up with this idea that we should do these care packages because so many people were staying at home, were not able to get out and those of us who have loved ones who are You know, stuck in their houses, often with young children trying to teach them to homeschool them at the same time that they’re still working from home, or in a panic as to what were they going to do with their kids all day. And so our employee me came to us and said, I think we should put together these care packages and they should have books and they should have puzzles. And they should have, you know, markers and they should have colored pencils and coloring books and things that the kids can do at home. And we launched them just as quickly as we could. And we were blown away by the response from the community. We have sold over 2000 care packages now in less than 20 days. So we have been able to keep our staff working safely inside the store. You know, obviously we don’t have many of them at the same time because we want them to be safe when they’re there. They wear gloves and they wear masks now and they put together these packages, there was a little survey that was sent out to our customers saying, what kinds of books do you like to read? Or what do you think your friend likes to read? Or do you just want to be surprised and delighted? The majority of them say, Oh my gosh, I haven’t had time to read in such a long time. Just surprised me. So the staff is ecstatic because they get to go around and pull their favorite books and put them into these packages. And we’re sending some gift items along with it. Just some fun, you know, magnets for your refrigerator, little post-it notes, we enclose a postcard with a stamp on it that says, send some love to someone, you know, and tell them that you’re thinking about them. And the response has just been incredible. So, you know, it’s they often these things come from the grassroots, it can come from this really smart woman who not only came to us with the idea, but she came to us with, you know, four legal pages of how she would implement it and how we would promote it. And, you know, I’m just so enamored with my employees and just amazed at what they have been willing to do to keep the store afloat and keep their jobs. And it’s mostly about keeping changing hands alive. And secondarily that they can continue to have jobs there. I just, you know, I’m just I’m in tears. I’ve been in tears for 20 days now.
Fred Clements 31:39
That’s an inspiring boy. In fact, I noticed your focus on employees on your website. Again, you have profiles on every pretty much every staff member, you have their name, you have a photo, you have a description of what their background is and what they do. And then there are reviews book reviews their recommendation, so you’ve really Given the employees face on the web, and really, I guess that’s another community really is your employee base. But I’ve often thought bike dealers could do the same thing. You know, play up the employees talk about your favorite rides and your favorite equipment, it seems like, has that been hard to manage? What how does that all come together?
Gayle Shanks 32:19
No, it hasn’t been hard to manage. And I want to say that five stores should be doing this because what we found is that customers want a connection. They want a personal connection. And, you know, when I go into my local bike store, I want someone there that I’ve seen before I want them to know Yeah, I realized this little folding bike that can fit in my car because I like to take it to the greenbelt. And if I’m having a problem because my tire pump won’t, you know, fit on the little tire, whatever you call that thing that you pump it up with. You guys know that thing, but I Don’t Want to go in there? And I want them the next time I go into say, How did that work for you? You know, we changed out that stuff. And, you know, I know we didn’t have a pump that could get in there, but did it work? And it’s like, it was so great. You know, you’ve just changed my whole world. And I would then continue to seek out that person for other issues that I might have. But beyond that, when you go in, and you know, my grandson is 11 now and we bought three bikes for him lightning, starting when he was tiny, and, you know, I want to go in and say, what kind of bike Do you buy for three-year-old? Do you buy it with training wheels? Or do you buy it? You know, do you buy a tricycle? You know, what do you recommend? And I think when someone has personal experience, and they say to you, you know, my kid is five now and when he was three, I was kind of going through the same thing and I couldn’t decide tricycle by foot’s trainer wheels, this way. I decided, and you know, all of a sudden you have an expert in a field that you don’t really have that much experience with. And that’s what I was looking for. And I went back to that store, when, you know, Hayden was six. And again, now he’s 11. And, you know, we just got them another bike. And it’s the same, you know, it’s that kind of thing. And I want either that person to be there who helped me the last time or someone else who has their own set of stories because that’s the connector. I mean, if I have to go into Costco and buy a bike or go to, you know, where else would you buy bikes? I don’t know, I don’t buy them at chain places, but maybe Walmart or something, you know, you’re not going to have someone there that’s going to have the experience or the capacity to stop and talk to you about what would be the right bike at the right time in your life. And, you know, it’s huge and so You know, my employees have great followers in our community. I mean, if they read two books that one of them recommends, they’re waiting for the next five books that they read and loved. And they come in and they asked for them by name. And we say, Oh my gosh, you know, she works at the Phoenix store. But if you, you know, want us to give you some recommendations, we’ll look her up online and tell you what she’s reading right now. And they want to do that.
Fred Clements 35:28
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s great. I noticed you know, so your marketing, what I could pick up is marketing through social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I noticed something that may not be a big thing. But if you had an affiliate program where if customers or who own businesses or the like, tell me if I’m describing this wrong, but if they put a link to your changing hand’s comm site on their site, to drive traffic to your store, you pay them a commission for the sales that are generated through that weak, that’s pretty creative. How does that work? Well,
Gayle Shanks 36:04
that of all of the things we’ve done is the least successful really. I mean, it’s, it works better, really when we do in-store book sales. That might be something also that the bike stores could do where, you know, we’ll get an organization. Usually, it’s a school or a synagogue. What else if we have some nonprofits who have a night at the store and as their participants come and wring out their sales at the cash register, we give them a percentage of what their participants bought in the store that night. And often we’ll run those through a weekend so you know if a school is doing a fundraiser they’ll say anything you buy at changing hands in their books for Schools Program Friday, Saturday Sunday will be, you know, we’ll get either trade credit or cash from the store at the end of those three days. And that has actually worked much, much better for us. So we reach out to those organizations, a lot of times they want us to do book fairs at their school are at their synagogue, and we used to just, you know, schlep boxes and boxes of books to someplace, you know, to a school cafeteria and set it all up. And it was just an enormous amount of staff time, energy, we’d have to rent you know, u hauls or something and it just didn’t work out as well for us. We ended up losing money and so years ago, we said if you want to do a book fair, we do it inside the store and the PTA comes and they’ll bring cookies and, you know, cocoa if it’s in the winter, you know, Kool-Aid or something, if it’s in the spring and we just have a great time we’ll put on music and you know, they do activities and It’s worked out great, but the affiliates, we did it because people were asking us to do it. But honestly, if we’ve given away $300 over the years, I would be really surprised. Okay.
Fred Clements 38:15
So I guess next on my sort of informal list here is the topic of the month of the year I guess it’s the Coronavirus in. So it looks like you made the decision to close your stores and the bar to the public as of March 31. And through at least April 30. On the magic we’re all going to be closed for a little longer than that but to keep the staff on and keep them paid, you’re still conducting business in a limited way. You’re assuming your doors are locked to the public but it looks like one thing I noticed your website you know for online orders you have looked like a current catalog of what you have in stock there on your website. So if people can buy either for curbside pickup or you will ship to them books that they want. On, certainly gift cards we referenced earlier, audiobooks. And then, of course, the book care packages. That sounds to me like a home run that you put together there. Any other I mean, what else about the changes you’ve made with Coronavirus? This challenge?
Gayle Shanks 39:16
Well, we actually closed the store on the 17th of March. So we’ve been close, you know, about 25 days, maybe 20 days. And we just obviously just didn’t think it was safe the first couple of days. In March, we were letting customers come in. And our staff was just feeling nervous about, you know, being at the cash register and having people come up. And so we were, again, trying to figure out a way that we could keep them safe, keep the public safe, but we could keep our business going. It’s the hardest thing that I think I’ve ever faced in 46 years of owning the store. It’s We adore our staff. As you know, I’ve been talking about them, we’ve done everything we can to keep them on the payroll. We told them early in March that we thought we could afford to keep them on the payroll till the end of the month, the end of March, and that we would continue to pay the art portion of their health care expenses. Even if they weren’t working, because some of them had young children at home. Some of them were caring for older parents, and they really couldn’t be bringing potential germs home. At the end of March, we had to make some really hard decisions about how we were going to move forward. And we realized that we really couldn’t keep the bar staff on. There were a few of them that we were able to train to be booksellers and start helping us fill these care packages, which take a lot of time and a lot of energy. And some of them were willing to do that they were making more working at the bar because they get tips, in addition, you know, to their wages. And for some of them, it made more sense to go on unemployment. were applying for the SBA loan, and, you know, changes every minute. We’ve spent the past week trying to figure out how we’re going to get that money so that we can, in fact, keep the staff on and pay our rent, and those other things that will help us with. But I think that you know, for us, the bigger issue was really how to keep our customers involved with our store, and they want it to be I mean, I cannot tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of emails and social media, things we were getting, from people saying what can we do, we want changing hands to be there. We want you to open up again, we can’t believe we’re coming to the door and your clothes. And, you know, what can we do? What can we do? What can we do and we said, buy books, buy books, buy books. And, you know, we have hundreds and hundreds of orders coming through, I want to tell you, in spite of all of the buisiness, and all the care packages, and all of the, you know, credit cards, we are still down 60% from, you know, our normal month of March and the end of February and at the beginning of April, from last year. So, you know, it’s not enough to sustain the business. But I think it might be enough if this changes, and we could open the doors again in a few months. But no one in retail knows what that’s going to look like. And so for bike stores, for bookstores, for boutiques for restaurants, you know, we are all going to have to start at ground zero again, when those doors can actually be opened and you know, There’s, for every hundred customers that are staying loyal and buying from us, there’s probably 100 who have said, Well, I’m just going to try buying online or I’m going to buy more online, I was already buying online. And we are going to have to pull those customers back into our stores again. And we’re gonna have to get those authors back. Coming to do events, again, they’re now going to do virtual events. Will they ever do physical events? Again, we don’t know. You know, it’s possible the publishers could say, well, it worked fine. You know, during the virus, the month of the virus was keeping stores closed. Maybe we should keep doing them virtually. And the stores are going to scream, you know, at the top of our lungs saying, No, we need you to send those authors so that they can be in the presence of their readers. And please don’t think that this was anything but a stock gap. But I do think, you know, again, bike stores, I mean, there’s the bike store. Mini has these bike rides in the morning, and, you know, on the weekends. And it’s not just about selling the bike, it’s about those people coming together. Somebody’s putting together the ride, telling them where they’re going to go. They stop and get breakfast, they get back on their bikes, and they ride back to the bike store. And it’s about that community. And I think, you know, for all of us in retail, the more we connect with that community, the more likely we are to be able to open our doors and have that community back supporting us again. But it all plays back to that. What are we doing for them? How are we going to keep them in? How are we going to be in their minds, even while our doors are closed, and that’s why we are just coming up with one idea after the next Easter is three days from now and We decided we had a lot of bunnies, you know, plus plush bunnies and a lot of Easter books. And we said, well maybe we could put together Easter baskets because people can’t go out and you know we had Easter candy, we have Easter toys, and we put a picture of an Easter Bunny with some candy and grass and a basket. And we sold 190 baskets in two days. We didn’t even have enough bunnies, we were selling them beyond the point where we had bunnies. So, fortunately, our supplier our plush company is overnighting us funnies and you know we have to turn the button off. But that kind of thing you know is the way that is going to enable us to continue to be connected with our customers and our customers connected with us. So you know we probably could have sold 200 more Easter baskets But we just couldn’t do anymore in the space between now and Sunday. So, and you know, and there’s graduation on Mother’s Day. And so, you know, for bike stores, maybe it’s graduation, I put a huge push, you know, toward helping people understand that if you buy a bike for someone, that’s a graduation present, that’s going to keep your local bike store in business and buy it now, even though graduation. I mean, no one knows when they’re going to graduate because, you know, the schools are closed down. But what if you had graduation in April, you know, because the kids are no longer in school and, you know, you buy him some great bike or some bike accessory or, you know, whatever, and say that not only is this a great present for someone, but it’s also keeping your local business, in business for a little bit longer until we can get through this together and I Just finding more and more that community really wants to pull together right now they want to bring cookies in, you know, they want to make our banana bread, they, you know, all of these things, but you don’t even know like, someone brought us three loaves of banana bread that they made and the employees were like, should we eat best? And if they put gloves on, you know, who knows? So?
Fred Clements 47:25
Yeah, yeah, it was, as you mentioned, it’s sort of an open question. Once the crisis is over, there’s bound to be sort of a mixed time where it’s not 100% over but we’re still using social distancing up to a point and, you know, what’s the, how does the new world look? Is it different in a significant way? Is it the same? I like to think and I guess time will tell that people who are stuck at home are going to be so ready to get out and go to a brick and mortar store for their passions, that we may be in a pretty good position as well. retailers, you know, I hope so anyway, so
Gayle Shanks 48:02
I hope so too. Yeah.
Fred Clements 48:05
So anything sort of in closing that you have I sort of just cost you anything that I haven’t asked that you think is key then or that might be important.
Gayle Shanks 48:15
Well, you know, one thing that I think has kept my colleagues in the country alive is their involvement with their local first organizations. I think that education is so important in terms of reminding the public continually how important small business is to their community, to their state, to the way they think about their community, the way they stay connected in their community, that if we are all staying in our houses, you know, clicking our garage open, clicking our garage close, sitting down in front of our computers. buying things having, you know, these endless trucks in our neighborhoods delivering. It’s so environmentally unsound, to begin with. But secondly, there’s no sense that you live in a community any longer. You are basically living in your own little box in your own little house. And I think one thing that this Coronavirus has really taught us is how important our neighbors are, how important our relatives are, how important business people are, how important those restaurants word that you used to go into but now you can only get you know endless plastic bags filled with stuff that you have to come home and heat in the microwave which is better than not having them but you know that sense that you get when you go into a restaurant and you know the owner and they know you or you know the bartender or they know you or you know that sense of connection is so important. And I think it behooves all small businesses right now, to figure out away. I mean, social media has never been easier in many ways than it is right now. And I just think all of the energy we bricks and mortar store, spend on connecting with our customers, you know, sharing information about other businesses that are in our community. Hey, did you know that you know Nelson’s meat shop is now you can pick up produce boxes there? Did you know that not only do they have produce boxes, but they’re giving to the food pantry, they’re, you know, they’re doing all these incredible things? You know, we’re constantly connecting in with other small businesses that we know and pushing out their exciting ideas as well. And I think the more that we can do that, the more that we are teaching the consumer How important we are to their lives. And what a loss it will be if we are not here and not able to open our doors again, when this is over, you know, to think about death strip malls and dead shopping centers, you know, that are just, you know, plastic bags blowing around in the dust and no cars in the parking lot. I mean, that just breaks my heart to think about that. And I think it’s our job to really get that message to those people who are at a loss now what to do and remind them that where they spend their money is voting with their pocketbook, that if they choose to keep stores like changing hands in the business, they are giving us that opportunity to continue to give not only back to them, but to All of the organizations, the nonprofit’s that we support the literacy organizations that we support the, you know, the food banks, all of these places that small businesses participate in. And they allow us to continue to do that by voting with those dollars that they have to spend in our stores. Not out of our state, not with a giant, you know, monopoly that’s trying to form you know, called Amazon. They get to choose where they spend their money. And I think by choosing their small local community, businesses, they are going to, in effect have an enormous impact on what their own lives are going to be in the future. And I think that’s what we need to do during this weird time in all of our history, is just hammer that message And I think it’s going to come into very responsive and receptive brains right now, I think we have a moment in time when people are understanding that isolation is not the experience that they want. And that community is going to keep them whole as humans. And I think that’s really important.
Fred Clements 53:25
Well, thank you for that very well said. I appreciate that. Check. I would encourage all of our listeners to check out the changing hand’s comm website to see some of what you’re up to. You have an extensive list of community engagement and involvement of companies and, and charities you’ve given to over the years. And, you know, to your point, I think it was one of the when I work years ago with some booksellers, the notion that you know, every dollar spent at a local retailer has a much greater impact on your community to just trace the dollars and what goes on and the rent. You’ve paid. In all and the salaries, you pay that, whereas the UPS driver, you know, you got to bless them for doing hard work, but the only part that goes back in the community may be a portion of their salary. That is that one delivery to one store. I mean, it’s nothing the sales tax doesn’t even go locally in many cases. So yeah, good point. And I agree. Yeah. So Gail, thank you very much for doing the podcast with us today. And I mean, I’ll take a risk here and give your email address if some of our bike shops want to reach out to you. It’s Gail, GAYL. E at changing hands calm is your email address. And I really appreciate the time we’ve spent and I believe I pulled you away from working in your garden. So I’ll go right back to that and it’s good for the soul to be outside a little bit. So
Gayle Shanks 54:49
thank you so much, and I really wish all of you bike stores that might be listening to this, you know, survival and thriving, you know, as we move together, because I definitely need my local bike store. And I want them to be there. And so, you know, I think together we’re going to figure this out and we are figuring it out and happy to help in any way I can. And please do email me.
Fred Clements 55:18
Thank you again. I appreciate it very much. Thanks, Fred.
Rod Judd 55:20
This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com
After spending 12 years as a writer and editor, Fred Clements worked as executive director and vice president for the National Bicycle Dealers Association for 28 years. He then moved to Interbike in a retail relations role, later transitioning into consulting. He enjoys helping the NBDA with podcasts from time to time and rides about 3,500 miles each year on his road bike.
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