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HOLLAND
COLLEGE • January 14, 2003
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INSIDE |
FEATURES
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bookstore that runs on love By Zachary Kurylyk A bookstore runs on love and not money, says Louise Vergnano, owner of Charlottetown’s Reading Well Bookstore. Vergnano was one of four women who originally got together and opened the small independent bookstore. Now she is the sole owner of the store, having bought the other three women out last February. Vergnano said she started the store “not really knowing what a business is all about,” but she has grown to enjoy runnning the business. “You don’t run a bookstore for money,” she says. “It’s out of love. “You don’t make a lot of money in a small independant bookstore” Vergnano said the Indigo Books superstore opening in Charlottetown has affected her, but it could be worse. “It hasn’t hurt us as much as it would have if we were a mainstream bookstore,” said Vergnano. “What we haven’t been able to do since Indigo came is pick up new customers.” But, the Reading Well Bookstore still has its regular customers, says Vergnano. “We have real loyal customers that became friends over years.” One advantage bigger chains such as Indigo have is greater buying power. Because they buy larger volumes of books from publishers, they can get better deals. “In a lot of cases, we don’t get as high of a discount as Indigo,” said Vergnano. Besides her stock of new and used books, Vergnano also sells crafts in her shop. However, they aren’t the usual “maritime” crafts one would expect to find to find in a local shop. In her store’s front window, Vergnano has crafts ranging from a digeridoo, African necklaces, an Indian whistle, and an African hand drum. The crafts are imported through Ten Thousand Villages, an organization that pays the craft workers fairly for their work. “The Mennonites of North America bring those in,” said Vergnano. “We order all our things directly from them.” Reading Well Bookstore is the only store on P.E.I. that sells Ten Thousand Villages crafts. “It does draw in some different people,” Vergnano said of her craft display. “I have been told we should (expand) because there’s a lot more competition in books than there is in crafts here.” Verganano says she hopes to see the business in the same place in ten years. “We’re moving a bit into second-hand books, and we sell on the internet,” she said. “I’m trying to move more and more into local books. That’s what I’ll push on my web site.” |
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