![]() ![]() Pop-ups and partnerships drive traffic and also expose the business to new markets. Many customers are reading for pleasure so heavier subjects sell less often – paying attention to sales helps him understand which titles to keep and which to remove from rotation. Most of Hicklin’s sales happen over the weekend so he only orders what’s needed to keep up with the stock that moves. The interest in rediscovering small towns means the time is ripe to invest. There isn’t another seller of new books for miles around so One Grand provides a genuine service for its neighbours. Small town or big city, attention to detail is appreciated everywhere. Hicklin’s shop might be small but it packs a sleek punch: each purchase is wrapped in fine paper, the deep shelves are made of quarter-sawn white ash, the cash desk moves to accommodate readings and a tea-and-coffee stand is available for customers who want to linger on the benches outside. In some ways it’s like the pace of reading a good book – slow, steady and engaged.” The liberation is realising that I don’t have to rush. “I had visions of doing more but there are only so many hours. ![]() They have that effect but it’s more about going to a space where people are reading that’s not predicated on anything. Our events are not necessarily to drive sales. We do a lot of pop-ups and bit by bit we have partnerships. It becomes a hook for people to come back. “We are committed to getting one new list of books a week – that’s the engine for the business. These are problems I didn’t think through: when do you retire a shelf when you have limited space? One-off events can be quite good for sales, actually, and to move retired stock.” Some of them probably won’t because they’re perennially popular. I’ve been here a year and some of these shelves haven’t changed. “I’ve probably changed over the titles on display less frequently than I intended. “Having a curated store relinquishes you from having any obligation to carry all the new titles, which is a problem for a lot of small independent bookstores – they can’t afford it. I have to sit here all the time – I don’t want to sit here thinking, ‘If only.’ I sit here thinking there’s nothing I would do differently.” ![]() I was supposed to open in the summer of 2015 but we opened at the end of that November. “Once you start you’re either going to go the whole way or you’re not. Nick Vogelson came up with the font for One Grand, the design for the paper and the logo on the door and the bags. He put a lot of attention into every detail. “I have a friend who is an architect and I gave him carte blanche. I would not want to regret something that felt unfinished. But I realised I was only going to do this once and there was no point in doing it half-assed. At one point I thought it would be a matter of whitewashing shelves and the rest would sell itself. “I had no sense of how much I would spend. It’s a place where you can do something you couldn’t in places where it’s already too expensive.” Small towns are resourceful and supportive in a way that might be less likely in Brooklyn, where I live during the week. There are a lot of artists it’s a magnet for people who want to escape the city but don’t want to escape its cultural life. It attracts people who don’t want to be in an extension of Manhattan they want to be somewhere that’s a little less polished. So there’s a real place that people can find, where people can go – the One Grand world – rather than just being an internet experience, and that’s worth the expense and the risk of failure to do it.” “I thought this was going to be an online bookshop but all I really wanted to do was sit in a bookstore and sell books. But I realised I could invite people to curate the lists for me so I asked for their 10 ‘desert-island’ books. “Initially I was drawn to the notion of building a bookstore around more esoteric lists about things. By Megan Billings Photography Shane Lavalette ![]()
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