Twenty-nine-year-old Tatnuck Bookseller, New England's largest independent bookstore, announced the opening of a new store in November in Westborough, Mass., less than 15 miles from its flagship location in Worcester.
"We're doing exactly what Tattered Cover is doing," said Tatnuck founder Larry Abramoff, referring to the Denver bookseller's recent decision to add a suburban location. "We've got an inner-city store, and we have to grow our overall business. Westborough used to be our market. Much more competition, traffic congestion and the Internet have interfered with that. Instead of Muhammad coming to the mountain, what we're doing is bringing the mountain to Muhammad."
The Westborough Tatnuck, located in a former grocery store—Abramoff is working out of the deli—will be significantly larger than the Worcester store, which carries 88,000 titles. "It will be quite a bit bigger, " Abramoff told PW. "The building is 30,000 square feet. It will have books, books and more books and a very, very large children's section. We'll also have our offices out there eventually, and we'll rent out part of our other space." Unlike the Worcester Tatnuck, which has a full-service restaurant, the new store will have a cafe. Abramoff plans to make use of the new store's open layout to host events throughout the store rather than in a centralized events area. He estimates that the title count at Westborough will be about 125,000 and will include a large number of remainder and bargain titles.
"I'm psyched. I'm ready to open," said Abramoff, who has already hired a significant portion of the store staff of 30 to 50 booksellers and has trucked in fixturing from several other bookstores.
In addition to its retail division, Tatnuck, jointly owned by Abramoff and his wife, Gloria, operates two college bookstores—one for Worcester Polytechnic Institute and one for Clark University. Other services include corporate and Internet sales at www.tatnuck.com and custom publishing.
