Mike Paper once vowed never to open another retail bookstore.Instead, he planned to focus his business on selling publishers'overstock and returned books at wholesale and over the Internet.
Then the mighty Borders chain closed several small Pittsburgharea stores in January 2010. Mall owners eager to keep a bookmerchant on their store directories approached him about openingBradley's Books stores in the vacant spaces.
The result is that Bradley's expanded from four discountbookstores to eight last year. The Blawnox-based company plans toopen a ninth store in July at Southern Park Mall in Youngstown,Ohio, and Paper has ideas for a 10th location that could open byyear's end.
Bradley's Books has moved from competing with book superstoresfor customers in the early 1990s to carving out a niche among booklovers looking for deep discounts on printed volumes.
Large bookstores might generate most of their sales from 10percent of their stock, said Paper, vice president of the company heruns with his father, Lawrence, an attorney.
"We try to carry that 10 percent. We do try to carry what peoplecome in looking for," he said. "The rest of the store is kind oflike a treasure hunt."
Bradley's buys books for pennies on the dollar from a variety ofsources. These days, Paper mainly works to amass publishers'"remainders," or leftovers, to sell in stores or through otherchannels. Thousands of hardcover copies of a popular author's latestwork might gather dust because the book just came out in paperback,for example.
He buys "hurt" books -- volumes that stores returned topublishers, often with stickers still attached. The covers may bescuffed or edges dented, but they're still in good shape. Bradley'sstocks some items with Dewey decimal numbers, sold off by a businessthat rents books to libraries.
Best sellers on a wall at the Scott store were marked at 30percent off on Friday. Most items at a Bradley's are at least halfoff suggested retail prices.
Maria Hiras visits the Scott location frequently. "They have agood selection, and they're always getting in new books," theCollier resident said. The store is convenient, prices are low andthe staff is friendly, she said.
"I'm seeing some things here that I don't see in the big-boxbookstores," such as several large-print books and rarer titles,said Steve Rand of Auburn, N.Y., who said he seeks out bookstoreswherever he goes. Rand, whose wife was in Pittsburgh on business,planned to visit the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont thatafternoon.
Children's books and cookbooks tend to be the biggest sellers,Paper said. History, gardening and local interest titles -- any bookabout the Steelers, for instance -- are popular.
Bradley's sells around 2 million books each year in its stores,at wholesale to other retailers or online, and sales total around$10 million, he said. The business has about 80 employees at thestores and at warehouses in Blawnox and Homewood.
Paper got into the book business by accident.
Not long after he graduated from Syracuse University with acommunications degree, his father worked on a bankruptcy caseinvolving six Atlantic Books stores in the region. Creditors endedup taking the books and other assets, he said, but, "We scooped upall of the fixtures from five of the six stores. Then we ended upreopening what we thought was the most profitable one."
That was the Smithfield Street location, Downtown, which reopenedSept. 1, 1993. Paper put his middle name on the business, and thefirst Bradley's was "extremely successful" for about a year until aBarnes & Noble opened across the street in the former Gimbelsdepartment store.
Bradley's moved to a below-street space on lower Fifth Avenue forabout 10 years, until a redevelopment project targeted thatbuilding. Stores on Macy's ninth floor and in the Strip District,Station Square and Scott followed.
Bradley's book-selling method is a little unusual for theindustry, said G. Logan Jordan, associate dean at the KrannertGraduate School of Management at Purdue University. But like BigLots and Overstock.com, the company pays relatively little for itsstock, sells it at deep discounts and makes money because it spendslittle on marketing compared to other retailers, he said.
"It's an interesting business model. Whether you could roll thatout nationally, I don't know," Jordan said.
The glut of retail space that followed the recession helps abusiness like Bradley's, Jordan and retail expert C. Britt Beemersaid.
"A lot of shopping centers are almost giving away stores," saidBeemer, of America's Research Group in Charleston, S.C. Mall ownersare cutting typical rents to keep stores occupied, he said, andbookstore customers are desirable. Many are female, with higherincomes, for example.
The Borders Express at Washington Crown Center was closed foronly about two weeks last year before Bradley's opened. "WhenBorders left, I got a call from the Washington County LiteracyCouncil. They were very concerned," mall General Manager MichaelJoyce said. "When I told them Bradley's was moving in, they wereextremely happy they were filling that void."
Along with Washington Crown Center, Bradley's moved into formerBorders sites at Century III, Uniontown and Indiana malls last year.
"There will always be a place for books in people's lives, and wewill continue to support bookstores at our malls -- especially alocal Pittsburgh business like Bradley Books," said spokesman LesMorris of Simon Property Group, which owns Century III.
Paper said Bradley's has survived competition from biggerbookstores, online sellers such as Amazon.com -- and it now facesthe growth of electronic books.
Digital book sales in the United States will nearly triple to$2.8 billion by 2015, a report from Forrester Research Inc.projects. Total book sales have been growing at around 0.5 percent ayear on average since 2006 and are at $31.4 billion now.
Paper hasn't seen any effect yet. "People who are used to buying$5 novels are still doing that," he said. "I anticipate the e-readers will take a certain segment of the market, but we will workaround it."
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