Congratulations to Righton Books, St. Simons Island, Ga., which celebrated its fifth anniversary on Friday with a 20% discount on everything in the store.
In an amusing, inspiring announcement about the milestone, the store wrote:
"This week we will celebrate our fifth birthday! Wow. Where did the time go? Well, let's see...
"We opened on June 7, 2019 just a few weeks before a mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Dorian over the Labor Day weekend. That hurricane led indirectly to the capsizing of the Golden Ray, a 750-foot long ship just a few hundred yards off the St. Simons pier, a sight we became used to over the following two years.
"Then, just as we were recovering from that, well, we all know what happened in March of 2020. Despite not being eligible for much government assistance due to our having just opened, we were able to find our way through and came out stronger and better.
"At the end of March 2021 we added on to our space and opened the Jittery Joe's coffee shop. In December 2022 we took an additional space and expanded the coffee shop with three times more seating.
"Along the way we built not one, or two, or three, but four entirely new websites. We plan to stay with our current platform for the foreseeable future. No, really. We do. Last fall we undertook a massive (six-month) project to change our POS system, which allows us much greater insight into our inventory and demand and integrates in real-time with our website.
"With over 16,000 books and gifts on our shelves, we now have more than twice as many titles in stock than when we opened.
"Our revenue has grown 57 of the past 60 months, a record we are most proud of. And, most importantly, we are serving customer number 111,000 this week. Holy smokes, Batman! I guess that's where the time went...."