In Seattle, Wash., Elliott Bay Book Company is limited to 25% capacity, reported general manager Tracy Taylor. For a store of Elliott Bay's size, that means a maximum of 56 people are allowed in at a time. In a normal year, at this point in December, the store would typically have 150-200 people in-store "at any given time"; Taylor noted that there are still long lines in the store, but that's because of social distancing.
The store hires around 10 seasonal workers each holiday season to help with things like gift wrapping, and normally they're "all packed into a tiny little room." Elliott Bay hired roughly the same number of seasonal workers this year, but the store's landlord has allowed Taylor and her team to use the empty retail space next door, which is about 12,000 square feet, for the month of December. That has become a gift-wrapping and shipping warehouse, and provides plenty of space for everyone to "distance out."
The bulk of the store's current business is online orders, which consume a "large portion of staff time." At the same time, they have to navigate customers calling in for curbside pickup or mail order, as well as customers browsing in-person. Remarked Taylor: "It's like juggling 10 balls in the air at once, and none of us are jugglers."
Elliott Bay Book Company encouraged customers to shop early, and Taylor noted that the same message was "going out across Seattle from all retailers." Shoppers were definitely receptive, with the store seeing much higher sales in early December than the same time last year. Taylor and her team have been watching stock levels very carefully, and though they haven't been able to get some titles back in stock, things haven't been too bad in that regard.
When it comes to popular titles, there haven't been too many surprises. Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz has been huge in cooking, and of course Barack Obama's A Promised Land has sold well. Megan Rapinoe's One Life has also moved very well, with Taylor noting that the author is local. On the subject of sidelines, Taylor said she bought similarly to past years, though they did beef up their selection of holiday cards, since they figured "people wouldn't be seeing each other as much." So far, they've sold a lot of boxed cards.
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| Elliott Bay's own jigsaw puzzle | |
Throughout the pandemic Elliott Bay has had a lot of success with its subscription boxes. While they've always had a first novel subscription, they've created poetry, true crime and graphic novel subscriptions, which have all "started to sell pretty well." The team also created themed book boxes that feature a selection of books and theme-appropriate sidelines. There is a Japanese Vacation Box, which features four Japanese books and three types of Japanese snacks, and the Whodunnit Box, which comes with four mystery novels, a canvas totebag and a mini magnifying glass, all wrapped in crime scene caution tape. Those have been doing really well, with people sometimes buying seven or eight at a time.
Jigsaw puzzles, Taylor added, have sold extremely well throughout the pandemic. Over the summer, after receiving so many e-mails from customers about how much they missed being in the store, Elliott Bay created a puzzle featuring the bookstore. That puzzle in particular has been "flying."
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Carolyn Hutton, manager of Mrs. Dalloway's Literary and Garden Arts in Berkeley, Calif., reported that things are "far from normal" at the store. The bookshop was closed for four months before reopening in the late summer, and Mrs. Dalloway's was open for just two weeks before one of the store's staff members tested positive. The store closed again for two weeks, and "coincidentally had a pipe leak in our ceiling."
Since reopening, Hutton and her team have allowed shopping by appointment only, as well as curbside sales and pickup, though the most recent round of restrictions in California has limited the store's appointment shopping even further.
The store revamped its online ordering system right before the pandemic hit, which put Hutton and her colleagues in a better place to handle the flood of web orders that has come in over the past nine months. Though things have been difficult, they've had remarkable support from the community, including the store's customers and its landlord.
Hutton praised the "incredible dedication" of the store's remaining staff, highlighting the way the team turned the store into an online fulfillment center on short notice. They've also become much more adept at online marketing, and they've had great success with online personal shopping forms for children and adults. The store's children's specialist, Hutton added, has developed an Instagram Saturday Storytime event that features appearances from bestselling authors and has been "widely watched."
The holiday rush began early, and the biggest sellers so far have included A Promised Land, Castle by David Macaulay, Ottolenghi Flavor by Ixta Belfrage and Yotam Ottolenghi, The 99% Invisible City by Kurt Kohlstedt and Roman Mars, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, The Searcher by Tana French and The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante. --Alex Mutter