How a Canadian Chain Is Reinventing
Book Selling
By Alexandra Alter
About a decade ago, Heather Reisman,
the chief executive of Canada’s largest bookstore
chain, was having tea with the novelist Margaret
Atwood when Ms. Atwood inadvertently gave her
an idea for a new product. Ms. Atwood announced
that she planned to go home, put on a pair of cozy
socks and curl up with a book. Ms. Reisman
thought about how appealing that sounded. Not
long after, her company, Indigo, developed its own
brand of plush “reading socks.” They quickly
became one of Indigo’s signature gift items.
“Last year, all my friends got reading
socks,” said Arianna Huffington, the HuffPost cofounder and a friend of Ms. Reisman’s, who also
gave the socks as gifts to employees at her
organization Thrive. “Most people don’t have
reading socks — not like Heather’s reading socks.”
Over the last few years, Indigo has
designed dozens of other products, including
beach mats, scented candles, inspirational wall
art, Mason jars, crystal pillars, bento lunchboxes,
herb growing kits, copper cheese knife sets,
stemless champagne flutes, throw pillows and
scarves.
It may seem strange for a bookstore
chain to be developing and selling artisanal soup
bowls and organic cotton baby onesies. But
Indigo’s approach seems not only novel but crucial
to its success and longevity. The superstore
concept, with hulking retail spaces stocking
100,000 titles, has become increasingly hard to
sustain in the era of online retail, when it’s
impossible to match Amazon’s vast selection.
Indigo is experimenting with a new
model, positioning itself as a “cultural department
store” where customers who wander in to browse
through books often end up lingering as they
impulsively shop for cashmere slippers and crystal
facial rollers, or a knife set to go with a new Paleo
cookbook. Over the past few years, Ms. Reisman
has reinvented Indigo as a Goop-like, curated
lifestyle brand, with sections devoted to food,
health and wellness, and home décor.
Ms. Reisman is now importing Indigo’s
approach to the United States. Last year, Indigo
opened its first American outpost, at a luxury mall
in Millburn, N.J., and she eventually plans to open
a cluster of Indigos in the Northeast. Indigo’s
ascendance is all the more notable given the
challenges that big bookstore chains have faced in
the United States. Borders, which once had more
than 650 locations, filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
Barnes & Noble now operates 627 stores, down
from 720 in 2010, and the company put itself up
for sale last year. Lately, it has been opening
smaller stores, including an 8,300-square-foot
outlet in Fairfax County, Va.
“Cross-merchandising is Retail 101, and
it’s hard to do in a typical bookstore,” said Peter
Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group,
which analyzes the book industry. “Indigo found a
way to create an extra aura around the bookbuying experience, by creating a physical
extension of what you’re reading about.”
The atmosphere is unabashedly intimate,
cozy and feminine — an aesthetic choice that also
makes commercial sense, given that women
account for some 60 percent of book buyers. A
section called “The Joy of the Table” stocks Indigobrand ceramics, glassware and acacia wood
serving platters with the cookbooks. The home
décor section has pillows and throws, woven
baskets, vases and scented candles. There’s a
subsection called “In Her Words,” which features
idea-driven books and memoirs by women. An
area labeled “A Room of Her Own” looks like a lush dressing room, with vegan leather purses, soft
gray shawls, a velvet chair, scarves and journals
alongside art, design and fashion books.
Books still account for just over 50
percent of Indigo’s sales and remain the central
draw; the New Jersey store stocks around 55,000
titles. But they also serve another purpose:
providing a window into consumers’ interests,
hobbies, desires and anxieties, which makes it
easier to develop and sell related products.
Publishing executives, who have watched
with growing alarm as Barnes & Noble has
struggled, have responded enthusiastically to Ms.
Reisman’s strategy. “Heather pioneered and
perfected the art of integrating books and nonbook
products,” Markus Dohle, the chief executive of
Penguin Random House, said in an email.
Ms. Reisman has made herself and her
own tastes and interests central to the brand. The
front of the New Jersey store features a section
labeled “Heather’s Picks,” with a display table
covered with dozens of titles. A sign identifies her
as the chain’s “founder, C.E.O., Chief Booklover
and the Heather in Heather’s Picks.” She appears
regularly at author signings and store events, and
has interviewed prominent authors like Malcolm
Gladwell, James Comey, Sally Field, Bill Clinton
and Nora Ephron.
When Ms. Reisman opened the first
Indigo store in Burlington, Ontario, in 1997, she
had already run her own consulting firm and later
served as president of a soft drink and beverage
company, Cott. Still, bookselling is an idiosyncratic
industry, and many questioned whether Indigo
could compete with Canada’s biggest bookseller,
Chapters. Skepticism dissolved a few years later
when Indigo merged with Chapters, inheriting its
fleet of national stores. The company now has
more than 200 outlets across Canada, including 89
“superstores.” Indigo opened its first revamped
concept store in 2016.
The new approach has proved lucrative:
In its 2017 fiscal year, the company’s revenue
exceeded $1 billion Canadian for the first time. In
its 2018 fiscal year, Indigo reported a revenue
increase of nearly $60 million Canadian over the
previous year, making it the most profitable year
in the chain’s history.
The company’s dominance in Canada
doesn’t guarantee it will thrive in the United
States, where it has to compete not only with
Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but with a resurgent
wave of independent booksellers. After years of
decline, independent stores have rebounded, with
some 2,470 locations, up from 1,651 a decade
ago, according to the American Booksellers
Association. And Amazon has expanded into the
physical retail market, with around 20 bookstores
across the United States.
Ms. Reisman acknowledges that the
company faces challenges as it expands
southward. Still, she’s optimistic, and is already
scouting locations for a second store near New
York.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01
Indigo has established itself as a successful
bookseller, a fact evidenced by the merging with
