Rare to begin with, Columbia area’s indie bookstores fight to survive the pandemic
Oops. He opened a bookstore right before an unprecedented global pandemic wreaked havoc on the economy, small local businesses perhaps worst of all. The timing!
If, in December 2019, Benjamin Adams had seen the coronavirus looming, he might not have signed the lease to open a tiny, independent bookstore in downtown Columbia. Who would have?
Then again, if he had seen the future and hadn’t taken that leap — rented a 500-square-foot nook in the historic Arcade Mall building on Main Street, filled it with a few hundred books, become his own boss at age 35 — Adams probably would have become a victim of the massive retail and hospitality industry layoffs that have swept South Carolina.
“At least in this case, I control my destiny. I got to decide if we were open or not. I had to figure out how to make it work financially, but I wasn’t at someone else’s mercy,” said Adams, who opened Odd Bird Books in February. “Since all outcomes in 2020 are bad, I think the one where I’m in control of it is the least bad.”
Many of the Columbia area’s small businesses, like Adams’, have so far managed to hang on through nine months of tight finances and general uncertainty. But as coronavirus cases rise heading into the cold, dark months of winter, there is general worry across the nation that businesses without deep corporate pockets and big support bases might not survive much longer. The holiday shopping season could make or break many of them.
It’s a time to hunker down and just hang on for Odd Bird Books, one of the exceedingly rare independent bookshops in the Columbia area. If he can make it to this time next year, Adams said, maybe he can make it, period.
“I hope for (the pandemic) to go away and life to be good again. But realistically, what I can or should hope for? I’m going to kind of stay agnostic on that,” Adams said. At this rate, his store will survive “six months, for sure. A year, probably. If we were having a conversation this bleak in October of 2021, I don’t know.”
Up against Amazon, indie stores fight
Across the river from downtown Columbia, on West Columbia’s Meeting Street, Ed’s Editions is Odd Bird’s main local counterpart.
Ed’s, the namesake of 71-year-old owner Ed Albritton, traffics mainly in used and antique books, like the trove of 12,000 to 15,000 World War 2 history books Albritton brought in back in the spring, which he’s still working to sell these days. Books are his passion, and the family business — run with his wife, Irene, and son, Eric — has been Albritton’s way of life for the past 20 years.
Ed’s Editions was on track to have its best sales year ever judging by the end of 2019 and the first months of 2020, Albritton said.
Then, like most local businesses, the store abruptly shut down at the end of March as the coronavirus pandemic picked up steam and stirred up fear across South Carolina. For two months, Ed’s doors stayed closed. But quickly, Albritton saw a major uptick in online sales, an arena where he already had solid footing, having begun selling books online in the mid-1990s, years before opening the brick-and-mortar store.
“One thing I remember about the early days was a certain level of excitement, you know what I mean? It was challenging, but I was gung-ho about it, and I had every intention about making it work,” Albritton said. “But this time around. Hmm. This time around there’s a little more anxiety that’s associated with it.”
Support has surged, in some ways, for independently owned bookstores across the country, even as the American Booksellers Association has estimated that 20% of them could shut down as a result of the pandemic. While mid-pandemic binge-reading has driven book sales to some degree, online retail giant Amazon consistently woos bookworms with convenient prices and convenient delivery.
Last month, the American Booksellers Association launched a “Boxed Out” advertising campaign to encourage consumers to reject Amazon and support local stores, the Associated Press reported.
Websites like Bookshop.org allow people to either contribute money to or purchase new books directly from small, independent retailers across the nation, including Ed’s Editions. And bookshops including both Ed’s Editions and Odd Bird Books are looking to drive more sales through their own websites rather than Amazon. (Ed’s also sells on Amazon, which takes a chunk of the store’s sales profits.)
Business at Ed’s returned slowly after the store reopened. The shop’s still not back to normal yet, but it’s “not doing too poorly either,” Albritton said.
Strong online sales have helped pick up the slack; they make up more than half of Ed’s overall sales and are growing. That means if worse ever comes to worst — not that Albritton’s expecting that — Ed’s could close its store and stay afloat as a business.
But saving the business while closing the store? That would still be a loss for the community, one that Albritton would hate to see.
“A used bookstore in particular, but a bookstore in general, is an integral part of a community. I think any community that has a bookstore is richer for it. I really do,” Albritton said. “In fact, that’s one reason that I have continued to stay open as (a physical) shop, because I know the people that come in here really appreciate the opportunity to come in here and shop and spend time and enjoy the smells of old books.
“It’s just a community experience that I think would be a sad day if we weren’t operating here.”
Hanging on until it’s over
Two decades behind Ed’s, Adams opened Odd Bird Books in February amid something of a national revival for small, independently owned bookstores.
Odd Bird would add a new element to Main Street’s revival, Adams thought, eventually bringing book clubs and readings and after-hours social events to the slowly but surely enlivening district. February started out with a bang, as word about the new store spread more quickly than Adams expected.
Then came March. Just when business was getting going, Adams closed the store and pivoted to delivering books and offering curbside pickups for several weeks.
Since the shop reopened, Adams is still offering book deliveries, though it doesn’t make much financial sense for him at this point. In fact, any major changes in how he runs his business wouldn’t make sense for him, he says, even if store traffic stays slow. His move for now is essentially to hibernate, keep operating as is and wait out the pandemic, he says.
Some days Adams won’t sell a single book. That’s OK, relatively speaking. Unlike larger stores with bigger expenses, Odd Bird can make it at this pace for now, Adams says. He’s looking for a likely sales bump around the holidays but, like most retailers, anticipates a couple of slow months to start 2021.
“I’ve been around enough to know that any given day doesn’t make or break a business,” said Adams, who had worked in other bookstores before opening his own. “This year, I kind of had to stress that any given month doesn’t make or break a business. And that was even true for bookstores for a while. And now, the bookstores that are kind of petitioning and saying, ‘Hey we’re on the brink,’ they’re I think coming to terms with the fact that any given quarter can make or break a business, for sure.”
Odd Bird has advantages that larger bookstores don’t have — cheaper rent, no employees but Adams himself, no pressure to stock a ton of unnecessary books just to fill shelves.
Maybe, in fact, Odd Bird and small stores like it are better positioned to survive than some larger bookstores, Adams thinks.
Still, its survival, like many small businesses, hangs in the balance of the pandemic economy.
“I think it’s going to be still going to be a tough time for a lot of businesses,” said Albritton, of Ed’s Editions. “I don’t know how the economy is going to fare another six months or a year down the road. I mean, I have faith in our business system and our economy, but I suspect there’ll be some up and down times.”
For Adams, the plan for now is to just keep making it until he makes it to the other side of the pandemic.
“I can do that for now,” he said, “to then hopefully get to the place where I can actually have the bookstore that I wanted to have, where people come in frequently and we have fun here.”
Odd Bird Books is located at 1332 Main St. #105 in Columbia and is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Ed’s Editions is located at 406 Meeting St. in West Columbia and is open Tuesday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 9:49 AM.
