Winners: the fiber obsessed who shop, teach or take classes at [tag]Springwater Fiber Workshop[/tag].
A pledge drive raised the $100,000 necessary for the beloved shop and school, which have been in [tag]Alexandria[/tag] for twenty-two years, to stay open. (Actually, they’re going to close the store and then reopen it all fresh and new in January). You can read more about it here: “Pledge Drive Saves Fiber Workshop.”
Losers: Everyone.
Sorry, I was really sad about this one when I heard about it.
[tag]A Likely Story[/tag], a phenomenal [tag]children’s bookshop[/tag], closed it’s doors in November, just a year after being named the most outstanding children’s bookshop in the country. Kids really liked going there. To read. The Old Town fixture had also been open for over twenty years. Although it was always full of children, most of them dripping some sort of viscous [tag]mucous[/tag] as children are wont to do, it was a really cool store.
There’s also an article in today’s Washington Post about it, For Children’s Bookstore, an Unhappy End – A Likely Story, Beloved by Families, Faces Fiscal Reality.”
Stephanie Landrum, of the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, was interviewed for the story:
Landrum said that in the past year, 10 small businesses in Alexandria have closed. Some, such as the Cash Grocer on King Street or a piano store on N. St. Asaph Street, closed because the owners wanted to retire. Others, like the ReMix in Del Ray, relocated. With a hotel slated to go up across the street from A Likely Story, Landrum said she isn’t sure what kind of business might want to locate there. “Another bookstore?” she said. “Who knows. But the odds are slim. Independent booksellers are few and far between.”
It was surprising to me to read how few people at A Likely Story’s events actually stayed to buy books. The only time I ever went in was when I was with someone who needed to do actual shopping, so it didn’t occur to me that the mobs of people I always saw inside weren’t leaving their cash behind.
The closing of A Likely Story is such a tragic story in itself. Belatedly, the parents are going to miss the wonderful neighborhood resource that they didn’t support.
And yet I don’t know how to overcome the universal trend of people going into physical bookstores to sample books and then buying them online from Amazon, where they get a 40% discount and pay no sales tax. It’s not just children’s bookstores, it’s every bookstore that was profitable before Internet shopping and now can’t stay afloat.
If anything, I would have thought that in the case of children’s books, when you’ve actually let your child feel and read some of the book, you’d think he/she would scream if you didn’t get it for them on the spot, which would be considerable parental incentive to buy it at the store. Apparently and unhappily not…
While it’s too late for A Likely Story, any bookstore that wants to survive in the future is going to have to sell on the web and have its own SMALL inexpensive outlet space where people can sample books
and then order online for home delivery.
It’s a mark of technological change I’m afraid. In my own area used and rare bookstores are hanging on, but retail outlets are suffering.
It’s true. And even the self-righteously virtuous who insist they shop online only at stores like Powell’s are still sending their dollars out of their community, consuming fuel to get their purchase to them, etc. Not that I’m not just as guilty as the next person (or, at least some people), I’m just saying.
It is so sad. Read the message on A Likely Story’s website. It really hits home. We need to support our local businesses since not patronizing them leads to their demise.
Shopping on line is great, but next time, remember that the same thing can be quite often bought locally, and the local store owners will appreciate the patronage.
Also, when buying at the “big box” stores, pay attention to where the item is made… too often it is made outside of the US. When all the jobs leave the US who is going to employ the jobless. It is not such a big thing here, but go to the small towns in the midwest, south, etc that were once thriving producing towns… No decent jobs are left, and who is going to end up footing the bill????