Annie Bloom's Books celebrates 30th
Loyal customers helped the bookstore survive big-box and online competition
Shasta Kearns Moore / The Southwest Community Connection
Employee Ben Mills-Cannon (far left) greets customers Emily Berreth and Tyson Crowley of John’s Landing as they walk in to Annie Bloom’s Books in Multnomah Village, while Leslie Goodman (right) and Susie Petterson (left) browse the front displays. The bookstore celebrated its 30th anniversary with a party Oct. 25 and with monthly sales throughout the year.
MULTNOMAH – Walk through the front doors of Annie Bloom’s Books in Multnomah Village and employees will greet you with a smile while other customers quietly browse through the rows and stacks of new books.
Talk to nearly any one of those customers and they’ll tell you they’re there for the same reason.
“Because it’s a locally owned bookstore” said customer Peggy O’Neill, who has been coming to the store for 10 years. “It just feels good in here.”
That, say the store’s staff, is why Annie Bloom’s has survived as an icon for the past 30 years in the Village – despite the mainstream dominance of big-box stores and online bargain sellers.
“Our customers are really, fiercely, independent-minded,” said the store’s marketing director Michael Keefe. Keefe said he will sometimes suggest to customers to go to Barnes & Noble or another big retailer to find an out-of-stock book and they will shudder with disgust, explaining that they would rather wait for them to order it.
The bookstore’s staff – which averages seven years on-the-job experience – is also a key part of the equation, said manager Will Peters, who himself has been there for 16 years.
Being small and nimble helps, too. “Being smaller than a lot of big online stores, we can actually get things quicker, which is an advantage,” Peters said. “But we’re big enough to still have a wide range of titles.”
Peters said that after a burst of growth in the 1990s, revenue has been steady in recent years.
“Which, relative to everything else, is like growing,” he added with a laugh. Even with the advent of downloadable books and the like, Peters said he sees a future for the printed word.
“I think people are always going to want physical books … no matter what way technology changes,” he said.
Keefe agreed: “I think more so than with a lot of products, they have this intimate relationship with books.”
In the beginning…
Bobby Annie Tichenor started the store in 1978 with a friend, Susan Bloom. Bloom has since moved on, but Tichenor still runs the store.
“I sort of see myself here for several more years, but I see the bookstore continuing on,” she said.
Tichenor said the first few years were rough.
“I didn’t know how to decide what to buy,” she said. “I just bought what sounded good.”
She was just out of law school, and had even passed the bar exam, but realized after a short while at a law firm that it was the wrong profession for her.
“I just hated it – arguing with people on the phone all day,” she said.
But she knew she loved bookstores and worked to cultivate one that, today, sees a parade of visiting authors, spontaneous conversations starting up in the aisle, and a knowledgeable staff that cares enough to bring books to shut-ins and the elderly.
“What we have to offer is service and atmosphere, and I think we’ve gotten really good at that,” Tichenor said.
Employee Ben Mills-Cannon only started five months ago, but he said he can already tell that each customer has their own section of the store that they consider their own.
The bookstore, he said, is “kind of one of those places you wish existed everywhere, and unfortunately doesn’t.”