Was just thinking about the economics of those "spirit of halloween" stores being a short term tenant of last resort for REITs and other property management firms, and if there were a way to do it for used and returned books, it could improve street life and sustain or raise the property value of the locations. Instead of promoting them as garbage outlets like discount book stores do, it could be somewhere welcoming.
The term for these is "pop up shops". Books sound like an intriguing idea as the cap ex may be low (some shelves, plus of course the stock). It would be a way to feel out the local market as well.
So if your shop kit was a stack of shelved books sorted in categories that you could do in a single warehouse, in modular tall shelves full of a category, which fit on dollies, can get shipped to the location and loaded through a standard sized door, maybe some shelf-top warm lighting, some basic furniture (that would also be for sale as floor models), an integrated pos and inventory system, it could be a thing. The only hitch is that the magic of bookshops is the staff, so you may need to source them from acting and theatre programs where people train and specialize at being interesting, so it wouldn't fly with basic cashiers, they would need to be booksellers. Customer and local market data collection might be one of the main sources of margin as well. Can do that easily with wifi and NFC tag recievers and other sensors as part of the external signage.
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Was just thinking about the economics of those "spirit of halloween" stores being a short term tenant of last resort for REITs and other property management firms, and if there were a way to do it for used and returned books, it could improve street life and sustain or raise the property value of the locations. Instead of promoting them as garbage outlets like discount book stores do, it could be somewhere welcoming.
The term for these is "pop up shops". Books sound like an intriguing idea as the cap ex may be low (some shelves, plus of course the stock). It would be a way to feel out the local market as well.
So if your shop kit was a stack of shelved books sorted in categories that you could do in a single warehouse, in modular tall shelves full of a category, which fit on dollies, can get shipped to the location and loaded through a standard sized door, maybe some shelf-top warm lighting, some basic furniture (that would also be for sale as floor models), an integrated pos and inventory system, it could be a thing. The only hitch is that the magic of bookshops is the staff, so you may need to source them from acting and theatre programs where people train and specialize at being interesting, so it wouldn't fly with basic cashiers, they would need to be booksellers. Customer and local market data collection might be one of the main sources of margin as well. Can do that easily with wifi and NFC tag recievers and other sensors as part of the external signage.