Chapter 4 Ecosystems and Communities Section Review 4-1

If anyone could pull it off, she could. That's what friends and colleagues said when Roxanne Coady left New York in 1989 to open up a bookstore in a pocket-sized town.

Of course, they believed in her. She had been i of the top tax accountants in the country. She was whip- smart, driven, and tireless — "on 82 unlike boards," equally she likes to say, which is only a slight exaggeration. She even grew up in business: As a girl, she kept the books for her father's bakeries. "If you were to selection a dream person to commencement her own bookstore, it would be Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Faith Middleton. "She'south so smart near business."

Coady well-nigh proved everybody incorrect.

For the beginning several years, R.J. Julia Independent Booksellers, located on the main drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew by leaps and bounds. The im-pressive growth, withal, obscured a dotcomlike inability to turn a profit. Coady says that she ignored budgets and "blew probably $250,000" of the money that she and her husband, a former real-estate developer, had saved up. Information technology was twice what she should have invested, simply she couldn't resist going all out on free wine and food at book signings, stylish extra-force numberless, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving problems, I threw more money at them," she says. "I didn't run the store like a business."

As an auditor, Coady had e'er used her caput. But equally a bookseller and book lover, she allow her center take over. She congenital the most appealing bookstore she could imagine, while neglecting to build a sustainable business. "Now," she says, "I'yard combining head and heart."

Thirteen years after dramatically irresolute careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull it off after all. In the same time that nearly half of the independent bookstores in the country have closed, R.J. Julia has accomplished more than $3 million in annual sales and a small profit. And Coady, its always-fashionable, opinionated, and animated owner, has made the transition from successful accountant to successful bookseller.

A Bookseller Waiting to Happen

Coady'due south passion for reading and her talent for accounting were inspired by her parents, who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the Us in 1948, settling in New York'due south Lower East Side. Although her mother had yet to empathize English language, she read to her children anyway, pronouncing the words phonetically. Once Coady learned to read, she wanted to tackle every children'south book in the library in alphabetical club. When she was in eye schoolhouse, her father, a bakery, purchased the first of 10 bakeries, chosen Em's, and brought her to a meeting with his accountant.

"Who's going to do the bookkeeping?" the auditor asked.

"She is," her father replied.

He wasn't joking. The accountant agreed to teach her, and Coady, the oldest of vi, juggled school, family unit babe-sitting duties and payroll books until she left for college. "Now my male parent feels I piece of work as well hard," she says, laughing. "He says, 'You tin't ride two horses with i ass.' I tell him, 'Daddy, this is what you raised me to do.' "

Past the 1980s, Coady had become a partner and national revenue enhancement director at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international accounting firm. She was the first adult female selected for the chore. "People tell me at present, 'It must have been slow working with taxes,' " Coady says. "But I loved it." She had a twelfth-floor corner role overlooking Central Park and was making about $250,000 a twelvemonth. In 1988, she was featured on the cover of Money mag, which dubbed her "the accountant's accountant."

Exciting stuff, to be sure. But it wasn't enough to go on her there. "As much equally I enjoyed the work, it wasn't enriching," Coady says. "It was in terms of dollars, simply information technology wasn't enriching to my eye." At least not in the style that books had always been.

Fifty-fifty every bit she climbed the corporate ladder, Coady remained an clamorous reader. She would always deport a novel with her, stealing a few moments in a taxi, on the train, anywhere. She was forever recommending favorite titles to friends. "I ran a piddling library out of my house," she says. "People would say, 'Oh geez, that was the all-time book you gave me.' "

They were telling her something. It was fourth dimension to brand a change.

Creating a Modern-Day Town Green

R.J. Julia, named for Coady's grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration camp in Globe War Two, is much more than a store where yous buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. It's a local institution that has become interwoven with people's lives as few businesses are. "It's the heart of the customs," says Norman Weissman, a retired writer, director, and producer who lives in neighboring Guilford and attends a monthly book-society meetings at R.J. Julia. "The bookstore and the town are inseparable." Area residents feel a responsibility to support the independent bookstore — their bookstore — even if it means paying a piddling more at times.

From the beginning, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to be a modernistic-day town green. "I felt people were becoming disconnected from each other," she says. "We had lost a public place for chat about things that mattered." The store hosts more than 200 events a year, from volume signings to book-club meetings to children's-story 60 minutes on Wednesday mornings. By lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has made Madison, an affluent littoral town with 2,200 residents, a regular book-bout stop betwixt New York and Boston. The walls are lined with dozens of autographed photos of past visitors: Jimmy Carter, Garrison Keillor, and Anne Rice.

At Coady'south suggestion, Lee Jacobus started a classical literature book club at R.J. Julia. A professor emeritus of English at the Academy of Connecticut, he prepares equally though he were notwithstanding teaching in a classroom, reading, analyzing, and making notes 40 minutes a twenty-four hours, three days a week. "It's an enormous fourth dimension investment and, yes, I practise it for free," says Jacobus. "Merely this is an institution that should be supported. It's of import to the intellectual life of the town."

For R.J. Julia to distinguish itself in an increasingly crowded marketplace, Coady believes it has to offer unparalleled service and expertise. Like their boss, the staff is well read, which prepares them for "manus-selling" — that is, recommending books that they or their colleagues take read. "That'south the value that we add together to the book-buying experience," Coady says. "We put the right book in the right easily." The shop'southward height-selling section is staff recommendations, where each book is accompanied past a "shelf talker," a capsule review from a bookseller, or in the case of the new Harry Potter, past a bookseller's child ("I'm 11, and I finished in exactly five days, down to the hour! Once you lot get-go reading it, you won't cease!" raves Hana, the manager'south stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is one of about 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she'south sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking nigh books all day. She tin't imagine working at a chain, even the 1 that's coming to Waterford, about fifteen miles from where she lives. "There are too many rules," says Coopersmith. "Here, I can requite a discount to a customer whenever I want to." Information technology's true. Coady lets the staff do whatever it takes to make a customer happy. There may non be many official rules, but the staff definitely knows the kind of store that she wants R.J. Julia to be. When it comes to sharing likes and dislikes, Coady'southward an open book. Equally she reminds the staff, she prefers the offer, "Allow me know if I can be of help," or "Are you finding what you need?" "Can I assistance y'all?" strikes her as intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, information technology was love with R.J. Julia at outset scan. The night wooden bookshelves, contumely fixtures, and renditions of various writers' signatures painted on the hardwood floor requite the identify the ambient of a neighborhood bookstore in Europe or New York. Ferringer, the head of the political-scientific discipline department at the University of New Haven, can spend entire afternoons shopping, which translates to between $350 and $400 worth of books a calendar month. And withal, it's hard to say who benefits more: Ferringer or the bookstore. "I know them by name," she says of the staff. "There's Nancy, Karen, Lisa, Suzanne, Meredith, Beth, Babette, Roxanne."

"It'due south the heart of the community," says an R.J. Julia customer. "The bookstore and the boondocks are inseparable."

Maybe the all-time measure of R.J. Julia'southward human relationship with its customers comes from Denise Harrington, an gorging murder-mystery reader and a customer from the beginning. During a recent visit, she picked up a special order, The Thin Adult female, a lighthearted British who-done-it, written past Dorothy Cannell and originally published in 1984. What'southward remarkable about her purchase is that Harrington never requested the book. In fact, she had never fifty-fifty heard of it. "Suzanne ordered it for me without my knowing," she says.

"I knew she'd dear information technology," says Coopersmith.

She was correct.

The Roxanne Upshot

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, like many small towns, was in refuse. Suburban big-box retailers were becoming the rage. "Later on I opened, the theater, the hardware store, the v-and-dime, and the restaurant all closed," she says. "I idea, 'What did I just do?' " Now, Madison is a different story. Although the business commune consists of only one long block on Boston Postal service Road, in that location's an art business firm and an elegant Italian restaurant across from R.J. Julia. In that location are a variety of shops and boutiques. In that location's even a Starbucks.

As an entrepreneur, Coady has come up a long way herself. She's running R.J. Julia similar a business organization, with budgets, a training manual, and more-structured evaluations. By coincidence, her son Edward and the store were built-in in the same year. Since turning 13 this year, says Coady, both have had their bar mitzvahs: Edward became a man, R.J. Julia a mature business.

In reality, though, adding corporate discipline to the bookstore remains a challenge, especially without the financial incentives she had at her disposal at a major accounting house. Instead, Coady offers a coincidental, fun environment in which booksellers can be their passionate selves. They constantly remind her that the operative give-and-take in independent bookseller is contained. When Coady tried to become the staff to wear matching R.J. Julia shirts, they declined. And so she bought R.J. Julia buttons, which no one wore for long. A newly arrived box of green R.J. Julia lanyards in the function could exist next. "This is where the democracy thing shoots me in the foot," she says.

Coady'due south natural effusiveness and love of writing — she reads well-nigh six books at a fourth dimension — make her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the flooring, our sales become up twenty%," says store managing director Meredith Warner. Organized religion Middleton, the radio host, experiences the Roxanne Event twice a month, when Coady appears on her show to talk well-nigh books. Recently, as she described Family unit History, Dani Shapiro's novel nearly a female parent'southward attempts to salvage her fractured family, "the hair stood upwards on the back of my neck," says Middleton. "You lot could hear a pin drop in the studio."

That passion infuses every square foot of R.J. Julia, and every ounce of its owner. When Coady first contemplated changing careers, she imagined that running a bookstore would be a change of pace, less demanding for her than being an executive at a big firm. "I frequently joke that I gave up money for fourth dimension, and now I have neither," she says. She's still a type A, and so it comes as no surprise that running a successful bookstore isn't enough. Currently, she'south expanding the children's department, revamping the souvenir-shop area, and drawing up a business program to have the brand in new directions.

A second R.J. Julia? A chain of stores? Coady can't say. That chapter has nonetheless to exist written.

Sidebar: 5 Neat Reads

"Everybody has fourth dimension for one discretionary thing," says Roxanne Coady, the owner of R.J. Julia. "Mine'south reading."

Below are five of her all-time favorite books. If these aren't enough, check out R.J. Julia's lists of recommended books for adults (www.rjjulia.com/fivefeet.htm) and kids (world wide web.rjjulia.com/threefeet.htm).

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

"Information technology'southward about Earth War Ii and the Holocaust from the perspective of a pocket-size German town that may or may not understand what'southward going on, merely in a quiet style is mimicking what'due south happening. You feel the impact of betrayal and of being co-conspirators through silence."

Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey

"A view of the Revolution from Abigail's vantage betoken, what information technology was like at dwelling house, raising her kids during a unsafe time."

The Volume of Laughter and Forgetting past Milan Kundera

"It's virtually sorrow as a way of defining y'all, how yous need it to live and part in a meaningful way. It's a philosophical book, just in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka fashion."

The Bluest Middle by Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a blackness girl who has been driveling, and the novel is nearly how she moves through that experience. This is one of those books that changes the fashion yous expect at the globe."

A Child's Anthology of Poetry by Elizabeth Sword

"I've been reading from this to my son since he was ii, and nosotros always find something that amuses us, whatsoever mood we're in."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Baltimore. Learn more about R.J. Julia on the Web (world wide web.rjjulia.com).

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Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/47069/chapter-two