Inside the Pivot That Helped This Family Business Hit Nearly $1 Million in Revenue

0:00The book fair market is at least a half a billion dollar market. the book fair market in California, I would estimate to be$50 million. So we can get up to$10 or$20 million in revenue without even taking over more than 50 % of our market. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. I'm your host, Serena Smith. When Stephanie and Mumar Reid couldn't find children's books that reflected their daughter's multicultural world, they decided to write their own next chapter. In 2020, they launched Miha Books, a company bringing diverse stories and authors to the forefront.

0:34What started as a blog has grown into pop-ups, a brick-and-mortar store, and now a thriving school book fair model. I grew up with school book fairs, but I never made the connection that, oh, we can do that too. And so we did that at their school. Along the way, Miha Books has sold over 60 ,000 books, hosted nearly 200 school book fairs, and is on track to reach close to a million dollars in annual revenue this year. We made more in those two hours than we did in an entire week at the store. Here to share how they're rewriting the story of what a modern book business can be, Stephanie and Mo Reid.

1:02Welcome to the show, you guys. Hey. Thanks for having us. Business, co-owners, husband and wife duo, you are enmeshed in all the ways which we will talk about. But I want to go back a little bit because neither of you are booksellers by trade. Mo, you're a lawyer. And Stephanie, you were working with seniors for many years. So why, especially in a moment when it feels like books in so many ways can feel sort of quaint and antiquated, why make the pivot to books? Yes. So for us, it was kind of built out of a necessity during the pandemic. My senior business, you mentioned that was my first business.

1:44I was greatly affected by the pandemic. As you all might remember, you know, senior facilities and working with seniors, it was almost like completely off guard unless you were staff. Even family couldn't visit seniors in a retirement home. So at the height of the pandemic, that business came to a halt. And at the time, our daughter was turning one. And as you mentioned, she's multicultural. You know, my husband's black, I'm Latina. And just out of a hobby, we started building a home library for her. Even before she was born, I started collecting books, knowing that they were going to be for my future children.

2:18So we were building a home library. And during that time, we just struggled to find books that were in Spanish, books that were representative of the world around her, you know, multicultural stories, books that had characters that looked like her. And we found it really frustrating that we had to struggle to find those books, you know, even online, searching through endless page after page before we found something that we resonated with. And so when I realized that my senior business was most likely not going to ever reach the same level that I was before the pandemic, I realized that I needed to pivot to something else that would be financially feasible for me.

2:56And so this hobby that we developed building her home library turned into what is now Mija Books. So that's where the pivot came. And like you said, we weren't booksellers before, but it was a passion of ours that turned into business. Yeah. And your business has followed, I mean, in the founder startup world, I don't know if there is a conventional trajectory. But yours is unconventional in that you've pivoted several times. started out as a review website, making recommendations. Then you went into e-commerce. Then you started doing pop-ups, right? Then you had the opportunity to have brick and mortar retail.

3:33And now, which we'll talk all about, you're primarily focused on book fairs. Can you talk a little bit about why you made each of those shifts? Yeah. I mean, so during the pandemic, we couldn't go anywhere, right? So we were kind of forced to try to build something during the shut down. And so the easy place to start was putting up a website. So that's what we built initially. We built a brand logo and an image around our name, which is really special to us since it's our daughter's initials. And it also means my daughter in Spanish, right? The colloquial word for my daughter. And then, as I said, when I realized my first business, I wasn't able to make money from that.

4:13We had to turn the book idea into something that was financially viable. So with the next easy place to go when you have a website is to make it an e-commerce website. And so I opened up accounts with publishers and made connections with local authors at indie pubs just through social media and started selling some of the books that we recommended. And then from there, you know, once the COVID restrictions started lifting and people were getting out more, we noticed a lot of small business markets that were happening in and around Los Angeles. So we got connected with some organizations that were putting those on a few times a month and started doing those markets.

4:50And we did pretty well at some of them. You know, living the pop-up market life is another beast. We realized really quickly that you have to be very careful about how you choose which markets to attend, you know, the audience size, the location, all matters. So we did that for a couple of years as just like the primary way of us selling books. But it's grueling. You can make money on some, but oftentimes times you're breaking even or even losing money on those markets. So that was rough. And then from there, this opportunity to have a brick and mortar came about. We just walking the mall and seeing a lot of empty storefronts and the opportunity for one that said having a pop up.

5:29And we realized, you know, we started growing a following on social media. So, you know, we gained some traction for our brand and what we were doing at the time. And we signed a three month pop up lease in the mall. And it was November, December, January. Of what year? So November 2021 through the three months. So January 2022. But then that turned into another 12 months at that mall. So in total, we did 15 months for brick and mortar from November 21 through January 23. And that is a whole other beast in and of itself. We definitely, yeah. I would say that that was our biggest mistake because that was probably a six-figure mistake.

6:12We should have just stayed for three months and then went back to our e-commerce model or whatnot. But unless you have a high AOV product store, I just don't think brick and mortar works for anyone. You better be selling Louis Vuitton bags, jewelry, something where each item you're selling at a clip of$1 ,000,$2 ,000, or you need extremely high volume to make brick and mortar work nowadays. Yeah, and that's the reason why people are walking into malls, right? They want the anchor stores, you know, the Macy's, the stores that have 3 ,000, 4 ,000 square feet. So it's really hard to be a mom and pop store inside of a mall in particular.

6:52The three months of the pop-up lease is a much more viable option because you're getting holiday foot traffic. We did really, really well in those three months. We were like, oh, this is great. Let's do a full year, right? But we realized really quickly how much of a difference the holiday traffic is compared to just the rest of the year. And so that's a model that we don't want to go back to. And not having ever experienced that prior, you didn't really have any frame of reference to understand, oh, our sales may tank after these three months. And then you're locked into a full year that you can't get out of.

7:27So can you take me into the texture and the specifics of that year a little bit more and what was going on? Yes. In the brick and mortar of it all? Right. Yeah. And I also do want to say, though, that he said, you know, having a brick and mortar was a mistake. I think he meant having that long term brick and mortar because the one positive thing that came out of that was the exposure. So we received press from the Los Angeles Times. We were voted one of the 65 best bookstores in LA. And a lot of customers came in because of that article. We were featured in Spectrum News, KTLA 5, NBC4. They all did spots at our store.

8:03And that brought in some foot traffic, not enough throughout the year for it to make sense financially. But we now have all of those markers that we can put on our website, as seen on the social proof. Now we have that because of the brick and mortar. So essentially, it was a huge billboard that we paid for. So that was the positive. But yes, throughout the year, sales will tank almost literally the day after Christmas. You see the numbers go way down, and it's not enough to reach rent and payroll at that point, to keep the lights on. So for bookstores in particular, the one thing that we do have is the ability to put on events because of our connections with authors.

8:43You know, story times are a big deal. Kids events, they attract a lot of people. The thing with events is there are a lot of work. A lot of bookstores that you see, indie bookstores, you'll see they have a huge calendar of events because those are the money-making days. So essentially, you'd have to have an event every single day for the financials to make sense. The reason why I call it a mistake, though, is because from a tactical standpoint, from a small business, If you're getting a brick and mortar or a brick and mortar at a mall, I almost think it needs to be a marketing line item rather than it being like something that you're intending to make money from.

9:23If it is a billboard, you need to put it on your balance sheet as like a billboard cost. So, for instance, we are actually going back to the Lakewood Mall this holiday season for just about a month or so. And yes, we want to make money there. But the main reason for us doing that is because we want to sign up more book fairs and we know it is a billboard. So it's not just like a way to make more money versus like it's more of an advertising and marketing cost. because our AOV, the average order we would get was between like 25 and 30 bucks. And to acquire a customer that's only paying 25 to 30 bucks, like you might just break even.

10:08But if you are anticipating that, that's one thing. If you are using that for growth or thinking that this is going to be the thing that pushes your business into the stratosphere, from a profit standpoint, unless you have massive volume, that's just not going to be the case. And then number three, a lot of small business owners need to know that a lot of these mall contracts, once you hit a certain number, they actually want to participate in your revenue. So percentage of sales after a certain amount. Yeah. If you hit 20 ,000 or 30 ,000 or whatever that number is in your contract, then the mall wants 20 to 30 percent of that on top of your monthly costs.

10:51Yeah. And that number is negotiable, but they're going to then increase your monthly rent. They can increase or decrease your monthly rent, and then they'll increase or decrease the amount percentage that they'll take and then the threshold number as well. So there's a lot of figuring out what makes sense, which is difficult if you've never had a brick and mortar. Is there something specific about the mall model that is particularly problematic here versus just brick and mortar generally? We haven't really checked out standard brick and mortar to see if they have similar contracts. But the mall traffic, that's the reason why we're there.

11:32There's just more people going to a mall that you didn't necessarily need to advertise for versus a standard shopping center. you need to drag them there. If you're not dragging people there, if you're ads, then no one's showing up to your shopping center location. So I would assume that that's the difference. You really need to be heavily marketing your store consistently to bring people in. Or for me, it's just not worth it. I just don't think the juice is worth the squeeze unless you're selling something where your average order is like hundreds of dollars to a thousand dollars some more. Right.

12:09Yeah. Yeah. When your average order is that low, you have to do so much volume for it to make sense. Okay. And so you learned some very important, it sounds like quite expensive lessons from that period of time. And now you're going back this year, but just for the holiday season, because you know that the juice is worth the squeeze there. How did book fairs come into your purview? So we had a lot of teachers, principals, parents, obviously, that came through the door. But it was one parent in particular who was a PTA parent at an elementary school that was near our store. And, you know, she loved what we were doing.

12:47And she came up to me, approached me and said, have you all ever thought about coming to schools or do you come to schools? And that was never in my realm of possibilities for us. I grew up with school book fairs, but I never made the connection that, oh, we can do that too, right? And so after she, you know, planted that idea, I said, you know what, why not? We've done mobile bookstores before, right? When we were doing the small markets, sort of the same thing, just in a private setting. And so we did that at their school. It was for, I think, a fall festival and it was two hours of sales. We made more in those two hours than we did in an entire week at the store.

13:26And so that was the entire, you know, that was the light bulb moment, so to speak. And so it was the customer in our brick and mortar that inspired us to now, you know, pivot again and do what we're doing now is essentially the scholastic alternative and offering week long school book fairs. Serendipity. Right. Yeah. That was your eureka moment. And it's like, you know, if you hadn't had that brick and mortar, would that moment have occurred for you guys, you know? Yes. Or would we be trying to scale our online e-commerce versus the book fairs at school. And I think more than anything else, it's like having a starving audience.

14:06So when people are going into a mall, they're not there for you. They're there to eat. They're there for the big chain stores, and they might happen to happen by you. When people are going to a book fair at their kid's school, we're not competing with anyone. We're the only ones they're selling. Every teacher is saying, hey, little Johnny probably needs some books. You know, if you see little Johnny's friends getting two or three books, you're like, you know, it's a competitive thing between parents. Like, well, you know, they're not going to read better than my kid. It's a better environment to capture almost the entire market rather than people not being there for you.

14:46I remember being so stoked for book fairs when I was a kid. It's like an event in your life, you know, as a child. We've noticed that promotion at schools varies a lot. And some schools do a really good job of promoting. And I mean, the whole point of a book fair should be promoting the love of literacy, right? You know, you get kids excited about books and getting to choose their own books, getting to look at through the books and pick what they want to read and what they want to own, right? And a lot of the time during that week, they also have authors come and visit the school and just have this whole environment of literacy.

15:21So like my husband said, it's just the perfect place to capture our target market, right? All of our avatars, which is children, parents, teachers, and other school staff. How much of your mix is book fairs at this point? 90, 95 percent. Yeah, I'd say it's at least 95 percent. We promote our e-commerce through the school book fairs as well. So a lot of the online orders that we're currently getting are because we're hosting school book fairs. We recently transitioned over to Shopify from WooCommerce and we haven't even announced that we have a new website to just the general public. So we have a lot of growth there on that side just for D2C e-commerce.

16:04But right now we're so in the thick of our school book fairs and trying to get that down as a well-oiled machine because there's still a lot to improve on that end as far as the operations and logistics go. So there's a lot of growth still for D2C on our e-commerce side, for sure. And I kind of look at that as like our superpower. So we see some of our competitors. The only ones that's focused is Scholastic. Or I like to call them the old guys, right? Like they're the only ones that are focused primarily on just book fairs. They have a couple of other verticals as well. But we see some of the smaller competitors that may do something somewhat similar to us.

16:45They can't scale because they don't realize that their brick and mortar bookstore and the book fair business and the e-commerce business are all three completely separate businesses. They require completely separate skill sets for all three. And if you're focused on three and one company is focused on one, it's going to be hard for you to beat them in that particular space. And from the e-commerce side, that once again, if our average order value is 25 to 30 bucks, that means I need to acquire a customer on Facebook ads or Google ads for less than that. When our AOV for a fare is five to six thousand dollars.

17:30so acquiring a fare we can spend more money to acquire a fare than we can acquiring a book order or book purchase customer at least just one so i almost look at book fairs it's like a big bundle for us that ends up being a five to six thousand dollar order book fairs is big business who knew it and we had another big unlock specifically with the book fairs i would say after year one, we realized that schools with more students end up making more money. So we target schools, elementary schools with higher student populations because we get more transactions, which tends to make sense. And then at first we were allowing people to book fairs for three days.

18:17Then it was a minimum of four days. And then it was a minimum of five days. And we were able to increased revenue by making schools have fairs for longer, that increased our revenue by 20 to 25 % and increased our margins. So yeah, just some things that we were figuring out. These three avatars, how did you land on what the three of them are? And how do you approach your marketing to each of them? So there were two ladies that walked into our brick and mortar that loved what we were doing and decided to start giving away$200 worth of books every month? No. So that's not how it happened. So they walked in.

19:00They walked in. And actually, those ladies came from our LA Times article. So they were on a crawl to visit as many of the 65 bookstores that LA Times highlighted as possible. And we were one of the stores on the stop. and they came in and were like, man, this is so amazing. You know, we were so glad that we came to the store and, you know, they made a purchase and I believe it was on a return purchase. It wasn't that first time. They came back to support again during the holidays and she was like, we just love what you're doing and we don't have any kids. And so the books that they bought, they were just going to donate them, but they're like, we just want to support you.

19:42And she handed me an envelope with$200 inside. And actually, the first time it was$1 ,000. It was$1 ,000. And she said, we just want to support you. You can use this however is best for you and your store. And we were doing a lot of giveaways on our social media to gain followers. And so I said, why don't we use this money to create book bundles and give those away to parents and teachers that follow us? And so with that money, I created bundles. And then the ladies that initially gave us that donation, follow us on social media, saw that we were doing that and gave us another thousand dollars.

20:22And so they're like, we love that you're doing this every month. That's so amazing. Right. They saw where their money was going directly. And so they kept supporting us that way. And through all of these giveaways we were doing every month, we had a newsletter that we were growing. And so part of the criteria was to enter our newsletter and follow us on social media. And we saw that that was working to increase newsletter subscribers and to increase social media followers. And so that's where we kept going. Yeah, that was a huge unlock. Yeah. Right. So if I had a tactical piece of business advice for new business owners, give away something for free if you can.

21:01And it doesn't need to be to everyone, but a chance to win something free. It's worked so well that I started doing it for my law firm as well. If you give away something for free, people will give you information. And from a lot of that information, figuring out who was submitting, doing different giveaways, and then getting book fair submissions, what we found were those three avatars were the ones that were booking fairs the most. And so that's how we dialed that in. We've been running giveaways for about two years now. And if you go look at the thousands of people who have submitted for fairs, you see three things consistently.

21:42You see PTA members, you see principals, vice principals, assistant principals, and you see librarians, librarian aides, librarian assistants, and then even teachers. Teachers are like a connector. So Stephanie was talking to me the other day about a principal called us and just looking at her customer journey for Booking Affair. it was a teacher who entered our giveaway from our newsletter, and then she forwarded that information to the principal, and then the principal got one of our ads and decided to book a fair from there. So teacher is more of a connector to our avatar rather than our direct avatar.

22:25And what are the programs or the steps that you're utilizing to take somebody from the giveaway step to the booking the book fair step oh lord a lot of subscriptions a lot of subscriptions so zapier i don't work for zapier or anything we're keeping them in business zapier or make which is their biggest competitor they pretty much do the same thing i have friends that use one or the other right pretty much the same thing if you ask me let's start from the giveaway. Someone will get an ad or a post on our Instagram page that indicates, hey, this is our monthly giveaway. They go to our landing page.

23:07From our landing page, they fill out information related to who they are, what's their school, that sort of thing. Then once they submit, they get a text message with a link to Book Affair. They get an email and they start our email journey through, We use MailChimp, a lot of other platforms out there, but they get an email saying, thank you for entering our giveaway. Hey, we book book fairs. Here's a link to our book fair submission page. Also, do you know anyone that might be interested in book fairs or forward this to someone that might be interested in book fairs? And then from there, we do about three to five emails a week.

23:49I even break it down on Mondays. We do teacher parent tips or events in the area. On Tuesday, it's our PTA giveaway. On Wednesday, it's our teacher giveaway. On Thursday, it's our Title I newsletter to give people information about how to use their Title I for schools. And on Friday, it's like pure, hey, book our book fair. But there are links and CTAs throughout every single email to get people to our book fair landing page. So that's generally how we take people from giveaway to trying to get them to book a fair. Okay, so you are not just relying on word of mouth. You've got a full funnel going on here.

24:35And it sounds like the automation piece of this is also pretty critical for you. Absolutely. Or we would need to hire a bunch of people to have all of those touch points. Was there a period in the beginning where you were sort of doing it all by hand? You were the elves behind it all? Yes. And that was a challenge because I'm also wearing all the other hats in the business. So we soon realized, like, wait a minute. In order to hit people right away, you know, once a lead comes through, this needs to be automatic. And with everything else I had going on, yeah, I told my husband, we need to solve this.

25:12It's not working. And so he's the one that installed all of those, the automation side of it so that I didn't have to think about it because I was doing everything manually. You know, it was a lot. you also it sounds like have a pretty robust content engine that's going on you're sending out three newsletters a week that's not an insignificant amount of work that could be a full-time job in and of itself how are you making that work alongside actually running the book fairs and mo you also being a lawyer who shoots music videos in your spare time and you're parenting children so i have a great marketing assistant that works for a few of my businesses and so for us a tactical tip for business owners that are like i don't have time to film or do content or newsletters you gotta batch your content number one so find a time on the weekend Don't shoot one video, shoot 20, which means there's a lot of prep that goes into that.

26:20So me and my marketing assistant, who's also my little cousin, shout out to DeVorea. We have days and mornings where we will spend a couple of hours planning our content, even if we're going to shoot it and it might take two or three hours to shoot. But if you plan it out before shooting, shooting content is easier. It doesn't take five hours if you know what all your hooks are, what social proof you're going to put in the video, what the content's going to be, and then what your CTA is going to be. And then we shoot them modularly so that we can mix and match videos with content, with different CTAs, with different hooks, and that sort of thing.