Latest / Scaling Up with Fexingo: How Small Businesses Become Mid-Market Companies / How This Independent Bookstore Scaled to 20 Million via Events
Transcript
- Lucas: When was the last time you walked into a bookstore and there was a line out the door for something that wasn't a celebrity author or a new Harry Potter release? Luna: I mean, honestly? Not since the mid-2000s. But I feel like you're about to tell me that's happening somewhere right now. Lucas: It is. There's an independent bookstore in Portland — one location, no second store — that hit twenty million dollars in revenue last year. And the engine behind it isn't a bigger store or more inventory. It's events. They host over three hundred events a year in a space that seats maybe a hundred and fifty people. Luna: Three hundred events a year? That's almost one every single day. How do they fit that into a single store? Lucas: They repurpose every square foot. The cafe area becomes a workshop space after hours. The children's section becomes a storytime stage on Saturday mornings. And they do a ton of virtual events too — author talks on Zoom, cooking demonstrations tied to cookbook releases. The key is that events aren't a side thing for them. They're the core product. Luna: So the books themselves become almost secondary? That's a bold shift for a bookstore. Lucas: Not secondary — more like the gateway. The store actually sells more books per square foot than most independents. But about forty percent of their revenue comes directly from events: ticket sales, plus the concessions — wine, coffee, pastries — and the books people buy at the event. And here's the thing: the average event attendee spends about fifty-five dollars per visit, compared to about twenty-two dollars for a regular walk-in customer. Luna: That's more than double. And I bet they come back more often too. Lucas: Exactly. Repeat visit frequency is about four times higher for event attendees. They're not just buying a book — they're buying an evening. And that's a much stickier relationship. Luna: So what was the moment that pushed them to go all-in on events? Was it a specific person or a crisis? Lucas: It was actually a near-death experience. Around 2018, the owner realized that online retail was eating their margins on bestsellers. They couldn't compete on price. So they asked: what can we offer that Amazon can't? And the answer was community, a curated experience, and serendipity. Lucas: They started small — maybe one event a week. Local authors, book clubs. But they tracked the data religiously: which events drove the most sales, which days had the highest attendance, which types of events brought in new customers. And they doubled down on what worked. Luna: I love that they used data. It's easy to think of events as a creative or community thing, but the ones that scale are usually run like a science lab. Lucas: Totally. And that brings me to the operational side. To host three hundred events a year, you need a dedicated events manager — not a bookseller who also handles events. This store has a full-time events director and a part-time coordinator. Their job is to schedule, market, and execute every single event. They also built a network of local vendors: the wine comes from a nearby vineyard, the pastries from a local bakery. So the events create partnerships that cross-promote the store. Luna: And those partnerships probably bring in their own audiences. The bakery posts about the event, the vineyard does too. It's a multiplier. Lucas: Exactly. The store's marketing budget is actually pretty small — they rely on those partnerships plus an email list they've built over years. They have about twenty-five thousand subscribers, which is impressive for a single-location business. And they segment that list by event type. So if you've been to a mystery author event before, you get the mystery event announcements first. Luna: That's smart. It makes the emails feel personal, not spammy. So what's the biggest challenge they've faced scaling this model? Lucas: Staff burnout. Running events is exhausting, especially when you're doing one almost every day. The store had to rethink its staffing model. They created a rotating schedule where no one works more than two event nights a week. They also hired a pool of part-time event staff — mostly college students and retired teachers who want flexible hours. That way the core team doesn't get ground down. Luna: That's a good lesson for any business scaling through high-touch offerings. You have to protect the people who deliver the experience. Lucas: Right. And they also invested in systems. They use a ticketing platform that integrates with their point of sale, so they can track exactly how many books were sold at each event, which authors moved the most copies, what the per-attendee spend was. That data feeds back into their event planning. If a genre consistently underperforms, they cut it. Luna: So they're not afraid to kill their darlings. That's hard for a lot of independent businesses — they get attached to certain events or traditions. Lucas: Absolutely. And the results speak for themselves. Twenty million in revenue from one store, with margins that are actually better than the industry average for independent bookstores. Because the event revenue has higher margins than book sales. Books typically have a margin of around forty percent. Event tickets and concessions can be sixty to seventy percent. Luna: That's a huge difference. So the events aren't just a loss leader to sell books — they're the profit center. Lucas: Exactly. And they've been able to raise ticket prices gradually. A typical author event now runs around twenty-five dollars, and a workshop might be forty. People are willing to pay because they trust the curation. The store has built a reputation for high-quality programming. Luna: It reminds me of how some gyms or yoga studios operate — the product is the class, not just the space. But a bookstore doing that is unusual. Lucas: It is, and that's why it's such a great case study. The core lesson applies way beyond bookselling: if you have a physical space, you can turn it into a venue. It doesn't have to be a bookstore. It could be a coffee shop, a hardware store, a florist. The question is: what experience can you offer that people can't get online? Luna: And that's exactly what we try to do with this podcast. We don't run ads, we don't do sponsorships. The whole thing is listener-supported, because we think the conversations are more honest that way. A handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making this many of these. We keep it ad-free because of them. Lucas: Yeah, and we're grateful for that. It lets us dive deep on stories like this bookstore without worrying about commercial breaks or pleasing an advertiser. If these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, that's what keeps us going. Luna: Alright, back to the bookstore. So they scaled to twenty million with one location. Is there a ceiling to this model? Could they go to thirty or forty million without expanding? Lucas: That's the big question. The owner told me they think they can get to maybe twenty-five million with the current space, just by optimizing event frequency and ticket prices. But beyond that, they'd need either a bigger venue or a second location. And they're actually considering a second location — but not as a traditional bookstore. They're looking at a space that's more event-focused, with a smaller retail footprint. Luna: So the events become the brand, and the books become the merchandise. That's a complete inversion of the traditional bookstore model. Lucas: Exactly. And they're also experimenting with digital events that aren't tied to a physical location. They've done virtual author talks that draw attendees from across the country. Those have lower revenue per person — maybe fifteen dollars a ticket — but the audience is limitless. They sold fifteen hundred tickets to one event last month with a bestselling novelist. Luna: That's interesting. So they're not just a local bookstore anymore. They're becoming a national event producer with a physical anchor. Lucas: Right. And that's the trajectory. They're now thinking about licensing their event model to other independent bookstores — a kind of franchise for programming. They'd provide the playbook, the vendor relationships, the ticketing system. Other stores would execute it locally. Luna: That's a whole new revenue stream. It's like they're becoming a software company that happens to sell books. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the kind of thinking that turns a twenty-million-dollar business into a fifty- or hundred million dollar one. Not by selling more of the same thing, but by packaging the system that made you successful. Luna: So what's the one takeaway for a small business owner listening right now? If they have a retail space, what should they do tomorrow? Lucas: Look at your calendar. How many days this month is your space sitting empty after 6 p.m.? That's wasted square footage. Start with one event — something low-risk, like a local author reading or a workshop with a complementary business. Track everything: attendance, sales, costs. And then decide whether to do it again. The bookstore started with one event a week. It took them five years to get to three hundred a year. Luna: Start small, measure everything, and double down on what works. That's a plan anyone can execute. Lucas: And if you want to hear more about how to build a business around experiences rather than products, we've got other episodes in the archive. But for now, I think the bookstore story shows that sometimes the best growth strategy isn't doing something new — it's doing something you already do, but turning it into a show. Luna: Well said. Thanks for listening.