Illuminating Our Mission
When first we discussed what we wanted to call our store, we hit upon an image (and a shared experience): a girl in her pajamas, covers pulled up over her head, flashlight lit as she reads late into the night. We decided on the name 'Flashlight Books' because we want to go one step further than merely selling books in a store. We want to share our genuine passion for stories, for the written word, with our clientele.
One of the major goals of Flashlight Books is to capture that love and enthusiasm that coaxes us to stay up for “just one more chapter" and encourage it in teens and preteens, when reading for fun seems to fall by the wayside, up against busy schedules and assigned school books. We want reading to be cool again, and for our store to be a place where kids want to come join in an open mic night, attend a book club meeting, or sit down for a tutoring session. And, of course, pick out a book.
Illuminating Us OR Who Are We And Why Are We Qualified To Run A Bookstore?
The two of us, Marian and Shoshana, have always been that kid with her nose in a book. We didn't have to spend long working in a children's bookstore before one of us turned to the other and said, "This. This is what we're doing forever." Our manager soon confirmed this by declaring us both completely unfit for any other business. And there it began.
Marian served as an Assistant Manager for The Reading Bug, a children’s bookstore in San Carlos, CA, for six years. Shoshana has worked at several different children’s bookstores, including The World’s Only Curious George Store in Cambridge, MA (where she served as Assistant Book Buyer and Events Coordinator) and The Reading Bug (where she was a book buyer and manager). Both have spent significant amounts of times working with inventory management, book ordering, customer service, general management, and store organization. Both still feel completely unfit for anything else.
Illuminating Our Plan
We don’t just want to be the local bookstore; we want to be YOUR local bookstore. As such, we will offer many services and events to connect you to us and us to the community.
Storytimes - We will hold storytimes three times a week (Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays) in the mornings, geared for children 0-5. On Fridays, following storytime, we will also host a free craft.
Book Clubs - At opening, we will be establishing a book club geared for children aged 9 - 12, that will meet monthly. Each month will focus on a different book genre (fantasy, mystery, historical fiction, etc). We hope to offer more book clubs soon after.
Book carts - We hope to partner with local assisted living homes and/or hospitals to start a book cart program, where we will bring books for sale to these facilities.
Author visits and other events - There’s so much more we hope to share with you! We will bring authors in to speak about and sign their books, hold special storytimes and craft workshops, cookbook parties, and more!
Given our particular focus on teens and pre-teens, we will offer several programs geared specifically to them.
Open Mic Night - Once a month we will extend our evening hours for an open mic night for kids to express themselves and show off their talents.
Tutoring - We hope to collaborate with tutors and/or a tutoring company to host tutoring sessions in our space in the afternoons.
Hosting the Arts - We want to encourage children's creativity, and as such will provide a space in which they can showcase it. We want to allow kid's music groups to play, and to sell crafts and creations by consignment.
Illuminating the Budget
We estimate it will cost about $200,000 to open our store, assuming a 1300 square foot space. That includes roughly $77,350.00 in inventory (~$70 of books/merch per every selling square foot), And of course, if we end up in a larger space (we are still working on finding one), that figure will be higher.
22.5% of the funding will be coming out of our own pockets, the rest between Indiegogo and a loan. We are only asking for a portion through crowd-funding, as we want to keep our asking goal reasonable and attainable, but as you can see, every dollar helps, and every donated above our goal will make us that much more secure and aid our success.
Risks and Challenges
The Elephant in the Room: Amazon
When discussing the health and growth of independent bookstores, it is inevitable that The Amazon Question arises. Amazon is the greatest competitor to indie bookstores; they offer a level of instant gratification and convenience that we can't. However, they do not offer the kind of thoughtfulness, expertise, and community relationship that a brick-and-mortar independent store can, and we believe that matters. Indie bookstores are having a resurgence, and the localism movement has more people aware of the fact that where they spend their money matters.
Amazon is also investing in physical stores and another of our challenges is that they are slated to open one in Walnut Creek. However, we strongly believe there will be no real overlap or conflict between our store and theirs. Amazon bookstores focus on bestsellers, as well as their tech: Kindles, etc. They also do not specialize in children’s books. While we will carry popular children’s books, we will also have a focus on backlist (that is, books released before the last few years), and in general our selection will be more thoughtfully curated. We also will be focused on events, community, and connecting with local schools and other institutions, which is not something Amazon Books has involved itself in that we are aware of.
Are Print Books Still Relevant? The Ebook Question
The children’s book market is still stable, and even on the rise; according to Neilsen’s studies, as of 2016 the children’s book market has grown 52% since 2004. (http://bookweb.org/news/publishing-insights-nie...) Other studies, (http://www.scholastic.com/readingreport/what-ki...) show that kids prefer print books to ebooks, given the choice. Additionally, AAP reported for October 2016 that children’s/YA paperback sales were up by 4.2% (compared to the same month a year previous), while children’s/YA ebooks were down by 17.7%
Financial Stability
Even with careful budgeting, bookstores are financially tricky beasts. Margins on books are low, and these days costs like occupancy and payroll are high. We are combating these risks in various ways. To help raise our margins, we will be carrying a selection of non-book items - toys, plush, games, stationery, and other gift items. We will also carry bargain books, which have better margins than new.
To help keep our payroll small, we will try and staff the store ourselves for as long as we can. Shoshana and Marian will both work full-time to cover all shifts. Occupancy costs will be harder to influence, but the spaces we have been looking at do not have excess square footage, and we hope to find a landlord who understands the value a bookstore brings to a downtown center.
