R.J. Julia Turns 10

R.J. Julia Booksellers in downtown Madison, Conn., is celebrating 10 years of selling books. While starting a bookstore in this small coastal community just 20 minutes from New Haven might seem like a no-brainer today, back in 1990 when owner Roxanne Coady was scouting for a space, it was anything but simple. Connecticut was just starting to emerge from a long recession, and there were still a number of boarded-up storefronts in Madison. At the same time chain superstores were springing up in neighboring communities.

Despite the competition, R.J. Julia has become one of the leaders in a changed marketplace where bookstores sell more than just books and community has come to be highly prized. No doubt a large measure of the store's success is due to Coady herself, who was named PW Bookseller of the Year in 1995.

Up Close & PersonalA CPA for one of the country's largest accounting firms, BDO Seidman, for close to two decades before downshifting to a career as a bookseller and mother--her son Edward was born two months after she opened the store--Coady likes to have everything just right. For openers, that meant re-creating the store's original interior using a photograph dating from 1923.

In 1995 Coady bought the building next door and a year later more than doubled her selling space to 6,000 square feet by grafting the two spaces together. The children's area in the back is one of the store's busiest sections, accounting for roughly 20% of sales. The original kid's section was turned into a cozy cafe for beverages and light snacks as part of the expansion.

R.J. Julia has a warm, personal feel, with lots of shelf talkers written by both customers and staff. There are public rest rooms and two roomy spaces for events--the one in the nautical section upstairs holds up to 50 people, while the one in the children's area can accommodate 120. The sense of intimacy extends to the store's promotional materials. The bimonthly newsletter/events calendar and annual holiday catalogue each include a personal note written and signed by Coady. This summer she shared her thoughts about the most recent BEA show, the books she's planning to read on vacation in Maine, even a plug for another bookstore she had visited for an ABA board meeting. Acknowledging that the personal touch makes customers feel like they know, maybe even own, both her and the store, Coady remarked, "Live by the sword, die by the sword. My letters are very personal. One of the things I decided when I opened my store was every single piece of written material would be written in the first person with active verbs."

For someone who says unabashedly, "I like to talk," it's not surprising that the goal of Coady's store is, in effect, to talk with customers--and to sell books. The formal mission, which has not changed over 10 years, is "to be a place for our customers, our staff and our community to share their enthusiasm and excitement for books in a way that enhances the experience for us all." Pulling out responses from a recent focus group, she noted excitedly, "Our customers get it. We asked them, if they were going to write R.J. Julia's mission, what it would be, and they put down: 'Community, connection, and celebration.'"

The focus group, unusual for booksellers, is just one of the business techniques that Coady has used to move her store forward. The problem, she believes, for many indies is "they don't think of themselves as retailers. A retailer trying to grow wouldn't not do surveys and focus groups."

Taking Care of BusinessFor Coady, one of the biggest concerns in today's tight job market is,"how will I pay my employees properly?" She worries about compensating the roughly 30 booksellers, or 18 full-time equivalents, who keep things running, and also making them feel good about helping customers who may make as much as quadruple their salary.

There is simply never enough money, especially for a relatively new store. "We didn't have the good '80s to pay off debt," she said. "We've had great growth; we've always had double-digit growth. [But] booksellers can't have a home run. Publishers can have Harry Potter. Morgan Entrekin can have Cold Mountain. In order to run a quality bookstore, you need quality salaries. The independent has relied on sacrifice."

In addition to decent wages, Coady believes in an open-book style of management. "Everyone knows what everyone makes, and everyone knows how to read a profit-and-loss statement," she said. The latter is essential for understanding the annual bonus program, in which everyone shares in 15% of the store's profit.

To raise the "p" in p&l, Coady is in the midst of reevaluating what it means to be a bookstore in the 21st century. Already R.J. Julia has a full schedule of events, which even in the slower months can be as frequent as two or three times a week.

The store joins with a nearby bank to produce a series of business breakfasts, and Coady talks about books once a month on her local NPR station. She also d s periodic book reviews on WTNH-TV (an ABC affiliate), and is one of the independent advisers for business books on Contentville.com. There are lots of kids' activities at the store as well, including an annual p try contest and a Summer Olympics at which Coady awards real medals to each of the winning readers. There's even a Booklovers Club, whose members pay an annual fee of $10 and get a 10% discount on all their book purchases.

Still, in a day and age where Coady has come to look at "everything as our competitor," she has had to search for new ways to fight back.

Bricks-and-ClicksObviously competing online is key. "The challenge for us," said Coady, "is we know we have customers buying from Amazon. What do we have to do to get them back? We're doing a good job as a bricks-and-mortar store, but in order to remain vital, we can't lose to Amazon."

Despite the fact the store has been online (www.rjjulia.com) since December 1998 with BookSite.com--in September it will switch to BookSense.com--she knows that her customers want more if she is to become a true "brick-and-click," as she prefers to call it. Citing Al and Laura Ries's The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding (HarperCollins), Coady noted, "What they say is that bricks-and-mortar stores are not thinking of online as a separate strategy. Stores that are serious are going to let them have sibling rivalry."

To get started, R.J. Julia will add a Web-connected kiosk as early as this fall, either on its own or through TitleSmart. "One of the things I'm anxious to get up and running is a freestanding kiosk, add our own recommendations and link it to our database," Coady commented.

Beyond that Coady is planning to go into direct marketing, preferably by e-mail--it's costly to snail mail her list of 23,000 customers. "We're going to try to figure out a way to earmark some specific useful information so the customer feels we're not selling them, but we're providing them with what they need," she said. "I might look up everybody who has bought The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and send them information on our three favorite cookbooks for the fall." As she sees it, "part of the value of our store is our ambience, and our knowledge." Direct marketing is one more way to give that to customers.

Read to GrowCoady bubbles with lots of business ideas--integrating e-books with p-books, setting up a loan system for independents--but she never forgets that business is a matter of, as she is the first to acknowledge, "balancing the head and the heart." For her, the latter was important in choosing a career in the book business. More recently it led her and her husband, Kevin Coady, to start the nonprofit literacy group Read to Grow Foundation. To get it going, the store hosted a lunch with Peter Jennings in fall 1998. The following year former president Jimmy Carter was their guest. The foundation's first program, Books for Babies, which launched in January 1999, provided a children's book for every baby born at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. This year the program has been expanded to include both hospitals in New Haven. "Because of it, every baby born in New Haven g s home with a book," said Coady proudly.

Her commitment to head and heart also led her to build in a book-raiser as part of the 10th anniversary in July. Next to a tent out back where R.J. Julia served a birthday lunch of hot dogs, veggie dogs and cake, and a musician serenaded all afternoon long, there was a yellow school bus for customers to fill with books for Read to Grow. Big donations were encouraged by giving out gift certificates, to R.J. Julia of course, for the largest ones. As a result, Read to Grow drove away with a busload of 5,000 new and "gently used" kids' books, more than half the total number of books it gave away last year.

In the end, turning 10 at R.J. Julia is much like turning one, two, three, or four. It's about creating a cutting-edge store where community and reading matter, where the staff count and where profit and good deeds go hand in hand.