We have another new contributor here at The Bookshop blog. I’m pleased to welcome Shane Gottwalls to our group of writers. Here is his first introductory post.
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Is it time to expand?
Gottwals Books has been open for nearly 2 years. My wife and I started this venture after realizing that a business degree and an English degree work well together for sorting and selling used books. The passion was there, my retail management background surely helped, and the finances were working at the time.
Our shop opened with what seemed like quite a load of books. We started off fairly successfully with an opening day that promised great things. As time passed and the initial shock of a nice-looking used bookstore (in an area in sore need) went away, the sales remained consistent, yet stagnant.
Since that era of low sales (we actually had one day where we sold $4… total!), our business has increased month by month. One way that the Lord has blessed us is in the fact that the store has always paid for itself… even in the slow days. We never went into the red, although our personal finances weren’t great for quite some time.
Recently, an opportunity opened up in an older, long-established shopping center about twenty minutes from our current location. There have been two or three successful stores in the center (they closed for personal and chain-wide reasons), and the people of Byron, GA are ready for another place to buy quality used books.