Blushing Books, which launched last June as a romance-focused mobile bookshop, hosted a grand opening celebration for its first bricks & mortar store last Saturday, May 9, at 101 Clinton Ave E, Suite 101 in Huntsville, Ala. Co-founders Anne Bagwell and Kayla Huebner "opened their doors on Saturday to many excited customers. A line formed around the block to be able to peruse the romance book selection," AL.com reported.
"I couldn't stop smiling," Bagwell said. "I was grinning ear to ear, because it was so fun to see all the people that we know and love, our family, our friends, and all the customers that are now our friends coming and supporting us. It was absolutely bonkers that day. It was just so much fun, and I just felt so grateful the entire day."
For the past year, Bagwell and Huebner have been traveling market to market with their pink bus. "They were so successful that they knew that they wanted to open a bookstore that wasn't on wheels. They thought it would be a dream that would take years, but they took the plunge within months," AL.com noted.
When a storefront on Clinton Row became available, they decided to expand to a bricks-and-mortar location. "The space just fell into our laps," Bagwell said. "Even though we wanted to wait until our kids were a little bit older, we decided we couldn't pass on this opportunity, so we just jumped right in, and we knew, based on the comments from all of our customers and everything like that, that it would be successful. So we just decided, there's no point in waiting, and we got to do it.
"I think people are realizing that these new, more contemporary romance books are written just as a good love story," Bagwell added. "We're not here to judge anybody. We will accept everybody and all their tastes. We will support whoever and whatever they want to read.... Romance is one of the biggest-selling genres in all of books, and the people who like romance books are super into it, so they will be reading more books than other genres as well, so the turnover with that is incredible, and it's also what we read."