The book on retirement - Art and Susan Bachrach own Moby Dickens bookstore in Taos, New Mexico

Nation's Business, Jan, 1995 by Michael Barrier

For many couples facing retirement, the most pressing question is where shall we live? For others, the question is what kind of small business shall we start? Sometimes the answers to those two questions can come together in a particularly satisfying way. Such has been the case for Arthur and Susan Bachrach, who own a Taos, N.M., bookstore called Moby Dickens.

Taos, which first strikes the eye as a rugged Old West sort of town (locals sneer that Santa Fe, less than two hours down the road, suffers from "terminal effeteness"), is actually an intriguing mixture. It's best known as a ski resort, an artist colony, and a center of New Age mysticism, but its population of 4,500 also harbors a surprisingly large number of book buyers.

"People come here because they want to live here," Susan Bachrach says. "One of the phrases here is, 'Be nice to your waiter; he might have three Ph.D.s.'"

With that kind of customer base, Taos supports 10 bookshops: Moby Dickens and two other general bookshops, as well as specialized and secondhand stores.

Art, 71, and Susan, 60, met at the University of Virginia when he was teaching psychology and she was studying in the nursing school. They eventually would up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, where they lived for 18 years.

They have lived in New Mexico since 1987. Susan first visited Taos in the fall of 1973, when she came to see a friend, "and just fell in love with it. Every place in the world is beautiful in late October, but here the air just glistens." With Art's agreement, she used a modest inheritance from her mother to buy a house in Taos.

A few years later, they tried to buy a local bookstore, but someone else beat them to it. The new owners went out of business in two years, though, and the Bachrachs quickly rented space for a store of their own in the same building.

Susan's retirement nest egg from the National Institutes of Health paid the rent and bought the books--getting started involved a total investment of perhaps $25,000 to $30,000. The store opened in November 1984. Art, then 61, had been on someone else's payroll all his life. "It was scary, in one sense," he recalls. "But I just couldn't envision sitting home or playing golf when I retired."

For the first two years, the Bachrachs were absentee owners, relying on a manager who had a degree in library science; they came to Taos at Christmas to help out when the store was busy, and again in the summer so the manager could go on vacation.

They had help, too, from a Santa Fe bookshop owner; who gave them insights into the book-buying habits of northern New Mexicans and visiting tourists. (New Mexican architecture is a popular subject--the famous Taos Pueblo is just up the road. Readers are also drawn to books on metaphysics, nature, and Native Americans. Business books sell poorly.)

To educate herself, Susan got a job in a bookstore in Potomac, Md., for two years. The owner "was very generous about teaching me everything I wanted to know," she says. "He let me order, let me pack returns, let me do whatever needed to be done." The Bachrachs moved to Taos in July 1987.

Moby Dickens--small, airy, and brightly lit--had sales of $600,000 in 1993. The store has been averaging an impressive seven inventory turns a year--a rate that has made the Bachrachs glad they invested $18,000 in a computerized inventory system in 1989.

Moby Dickens has been successful enough that the Bachrachs could retire for real--if they wanted to. "Every year, we have serious offers," Art says, "and we just aren't interested."