Chicago's Women and Children First bookstore "has always had a clear mission: to promote women writers and serve women readers," Forbes wrote in an article featuring "a few strategies" that co-owners Sarah Hollenbeck and Lynn Mooney use to serve their customers and to remain open for almost 40 years:
They stay mission driven: "Oftentimes people think the more general you become, the more fish you can catch," said Hollenbeck. "I think the opposite is true for us. The reason we survived even when there was a Borders down the street from us, within walking distance of us, was because [the founders] Anne and Linda decided to stay niche and stay mission driven."
Mooney added: "We had in so many ways this wonderful legacy we were building on. The store we bought was one that always made one of their points of difference representation of all people.... It was engrained in me from the beginning that we want to have the most diverse representation, especially of LGBTQ materials, in the store. We wanted to support the writers who were writing those materials, the publishers who in those early days had the courage to publish those materials."
Mooney also seeks titles from small presses and nonprofits: "It's a much more time consuming process, but it's an investment we've always thought was well worth making. It was core to our mission and it also becomes a point of difference. If someone walks in our store, you will see books you won't see anywhere else."
Other keys to Women and Children First's success include:
- They acknowledge their weaknesses--and hire people to make up for them.
- They include staff in important conversations.
- They allow their mission to evolve.
- They go above and beyond to consider the customers' needs.