Morrow Family and Manchester's Northshire Bookstore, The

Vermont Business Magazine, Dec 01, 2004 by Marcel, Joyce

You could spend a day inside the Northshire Bookstore without noticing the passage of time.

Even before you enter this jewel of a bookstore, located in the heart of downtown Manchester, you know you are in for an intellectual adventure: on the pathway from the parking lot to the front door, carved into a stone tablet, are the words, "Nothing is written in stone." Just inside the door, 16 lockers stand ready to help customers burdened by outlet center shopping purchases or backpacks. A series of softly carpeted, wood-paneled rooms display an astonishingly wide range of books - about 40,000 at any one time. Soft music plays in the background maybe Linda Ronstadt, or Gordon Lightfoot or Bob Dylan.

Pass by the stand holding up the heavy new "Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker," turn the pages and browse for laughs. Run your hand wistfully over Gourmet Magazine's bright yellow $40 "The Gourmet Cookbook." Read all about the Red Sox, or get lost in the weird and wild world of manga Japanese cartoon-like illustrated novels that are all the rage right now.

Stop in the new Spiral Press Cafe for mushroom bisque, veggie borscht, or a roasted turkey sandwich made with mouth-tingling homemade jalapeno pepper jelly. Top it off with coffee, tea, beer or wine. Take advantage of the cafe's free wireless Internet. Then, replenished, talk about books with knowledgeable salespeople, or read fashion magazines, books of spiritual guidance, mystery novels like "Exquisite Corpse" by Robert Irwin (the staff, in a handwritten note, calls it "the perfect gift"), or literary fiction like "Ursula, Under" by Ingrid Hill, a book the staff loves so much they have sold more copies of it than any other bookstore in the country.

Northshire, like most bookstores, sells a lot more than new books. It also sells used books. It sells stuffed animals, clocks, dinosaurs, calendars, "Groovy Girls" hip-chick dolls, baby gifts, greeting cards, wrapping paper, videos and CDs. It has a Burt's Bees display featuring lip gloss, body creme and a wild lettuce toner. It sells candles and soaps, games and crafts, puzzles, and party favors. just before the movie "The Polar Express" opened, it offered an entire section of promotional tieins.

At Northshire, customers find not only the peace to explore, read and think, but also something more important: the temporary satisfaction of their intellectual curiosity - temporary only because new books are always coming in.

Independent bookstores are supposed to be an endangered species. Ten years ago, the American Booksellers Association had 10,000 members; today it has just under 2,000. In the age of Amazon.com, Internet sales, big-box bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, and the endless demand on people's time from careers, families, television and scores of other entertainment options, it is hard to imagine an independent bookstore surviving, much less thriving.

But just last year, Northshire finished a $1 million renovation which doubled its floor size to 10,000-square-feet and added 3,000 square feet of cafe/restaurant and back-office space. It employs a staff of close to 40 people, including five master booksellers, and it has sales well in excess of $3 million a year.

How does Northshire beat the odds?

"We do what we do with irresistible expertise, passion and joy," said master salesman Bill Lewis. "We kill the customers with kindness. We dazzle them with expertise and we reassure them with honesty. And I can't think of any thing else to say."

According to the ABA's media liaison, Meg Zelickson Smith, about 1.176 billion new and used books were sold in the United States last year. Independent book stores were responsible for 16 percent of them. For an independent book store to thrive, it must be well-run, Smith said.

"The truth is that as many stores may be impacted by competition, there are as many, like Northshire, that are expanding because they are run by good business people," Smith said. "They understand consumers, marketing, and what works in their neighborhood. They're well-capitalized. Bookstores go out of business for the same reason other businesses go down - the people running them are not good business people."

Northshire was started in 1976 by Barbara and Edward Morrow, who are still active in the day-to-day, management of the store. Currently, they are slowly passing the torch to their younger son, general manager Chris Morrow, 38.

Northshire is clearly a labor of love. When Barbara Morrow is on the selling floor, she seems to know most of the customers by name. As she walks through the aisles, she bends down to pick up tiny pieces of litter and takes them to the nearest wastebasket.

"When I go in other bookstores, I straighten the shelves," she says. 'It's in the blood."

According to banker Daniel Stannard, senior vice president of Factory Point National Bank, the Morrow family knows as much about their business and their industry as any client he has ever had. Besides being the Morrows banker, Stannard is one of their fans.