Inside This Black-Owned Bookstore’s Massive Organic Growth

0:00I was like, okay, if I sign this lease for a year, I know what the rent is. if nobody walks in this space and buys anything, how much do I stand to lose? And so that was my business plan. I was prepared to lose it all. Hey, what's going on? Benjamin Gottlieb here, and you are listening to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. There's an old saying, not sure how old exactly, but it goes something like this. Every successful business starts with an idea. Well, for Jazzy McGilbert, that idea was to create a space, not products. The bookstore and the creative community that came afterward was just icing on the cake.

0:42Reparations Club, as it's called, is based in Los Angeles. And that's where Jazzy showcases books from authors of color and other products from black brands. She started her business with just 20K. And three years later, it's a seven-figure business. Jazzy is here today with me. And thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Super excited to talk to you. I'm excited too. So happy to get into this. We have business owners from all different experiences on this program, and normally they start with a product. Why did you want to start your business with a space? I think, you know, maybe unlike some entrepreneurs, I consider myself like an artist first.

1:22I have called myself an artist without a medium. So I'm not a painter. Don't ask me to draw, but I am deeply creative. And so a lot of the things that I do, I think I approach my business like an artist in that I am thinking about color and texture and how people are going to resonate with the work before there is a product. So it's like blank canvas is like a good place for me to start and just project some art onto that. You're an artist at heart and you probably also saw, like many artists do, a void or something lacking in your community or perhaps a place where you like to spend a lot of time.

2:02We're here in Los Angeles. What was it that you saw was missing in your part of town? The real answer is that my mom passed away. So that was. I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you. But that left me just feeling kind of isolated, alone. and so I knew I needed community first. And so that was sort of what I set out to build. I was like, where are people going to come? I don't know if I was consciously doing this at the time, but in hindsight, that's exactly what I wanted was just a space for people to gather because I felt alone, I felt isolated and I think a lot of other people did as well.

2:42Even beyond the loss of my mom, I was just like a creative, bookish, introvert, Black girl growing up and always needed spaces to just feel safe. And I lacked those. And so I think I went out and built one. I was also going into a lot of stores looking specifically for Black-owned products, things that I knew would work for me, things that I knew were made for me. And very frequently in the stores that I was going in, I would ask like, hey, do you have any Black-owned brands here? The answer was so often no. I had to go way too far out of my way to find those products. And so I was like, what if this space existed that I could do all of those things and we could just have Black products, a space for Black people to feel seen, feel prioritized, feel centered, and just feel safe.

3:28And so that's what I built first.

3:35That's what you built first, and you chose to build in a physical location first as well, which in this current age of digital first, That's not always the approach. But again, it's been successful for you. So I'm interested. Can you walk us through what it was like to find that retail space that you now occupy? Yeah. I think there's a level of naivete that led me to doing that rather than starting Web First. I'm a very like online person. And so that's interesting to me even. But I do think I wanted to be in physical proximity to people. I think being in Los Angeles, which is just rapidly gentrifying those spaces, those physical spaces are harder and harder to find.

4:20And they kind of prioritize this transactional nature. And so I wanted a place that you could just kind of sit for a while. The way that I got to that was I had the idea. I just started saying it out loud more. And that led me to a. You manifested it. That's very L.A. of you. But yes, I manifested it. Yes. I just started talking about it. And then a friend of a friend's boyfriend was like, oh, I know of a space. I think he is a creative director. But he was like, oh, I think my landlord has some other buildings if you want me to put you in touch. Here's his website. And I saw another space. And a couple days later, I was signing a lease for a year at that point.

5:07And it became real. Well, it's such simple advice, but when you put something out there, not to be too woo-woo or too LA, but when you put something - I'll take it. I grew up here. When you put it out there to your friends, to your family, to your network that, hey, I'm interested in doing this, sometimes that's all it takes to get that connection with someone to make it a reality. But I'm curious, did you have a business plan before you signed the lease for this retail space? What was your approach with that? I wish I could say I had a business plan. I had a whole lot of vision. I don't think I lacked clarity on what I wanted this space to function as and look like, smell like, feel like who my customer was.

5:48I didn't have a lack of clarity. So I just want to be clear about that. But I absolutely did not have a business plan. I don't know if I knew how to make one. So I didn't lack intention, but I did lack a business plan. And I just didn't really have any models in my life of people who owned businesses at all. and definitely nothing that kind of resembled what I wanted to do with Rep Club. And I didn't want to get bogged down in the details of it, because it probably would not have made sense on paper. I just wanted to trust my gut. And so I'd say, like, the financial plan of it was my mom left a small life insurance policy.

6:25It wasn't enough to, you know, retire and buy a big house and leave the world behind. but it was enough to just try something out. And so I, my business plan was, I'm not an optimist. I think I sound like an optimist. I'm actually quite pessimistic. I plan for the worst case scenario in my life all the time, which is absolutely a trauma response. But I was like, okay, if I sign this lease for a year, I know what the rent is. If nobody walks in this space and buys anything, how much do I stand to lose? And so that was my business plan. I was prepared to lose it all. and I didn't, so. Wow, I mean, what courage it took to do something like that.

7:08And I think this is really inspiring for folks who are listening who, you know, maybe are bogged down, like you said, in the details. They don't have exactly what they're going to sell and how they're going to sell it. But like you said, you had a vision. You had no shortage of vision. You knew what you wanted your store to look like, your space to look like, to feel like. I mean, these are important things. And hopefully for folks that are listening, it's encouragement that you don't have to have every single thing planned out before you start. My guest today, Jazzy McGilbert, she is the founder of Reparations Club or Rep Club, as you called it a few moments ago.

7:43If we can get back to what the store looks like and feels like, describe the space to us if you can for folks who haven't been there.

7:55so rep club is a little 70s inspired it definitely doesn't look like your average bookstore it is very colorful and very warm so like picture kind of the opposite of an apple store it's got these like dark wood tones um greens colors that were deeply inspired by my childhood so my dad had this green shag carpet in the 70s. So that color is kind of around. There's like sweet potato pie was a point of inspiration. And so you'll see that color around. And then all the books themselves are really colorful and it's a very eclectic space, but really beautiful one. We've got like a big TV monitor in there.

8:36Some really like, we've got plastic on the pillows. Gives this 70s mixed textures. It's kind of, look up photos. I would recommend that. That's the best way to explain it. But it's definitely very warm and feels a lot like someone's living room. It feels like someone's living room, which is exactly where you want to be, I think, if you want to curl up with a nice, interesting book, which is what you have on your shelves in there, right? Yeah. Or just have great conversations. A lot of the best conversations I have happen just like sitting in someone's living room. This space you've described, which I need to go check out.

9:09I haven't been there yet. This is the second location. You had a initial location where you had your first lease. Can you tell us a little bit about that first location and the challenges of kind of running this business in that space? So our first location was not necessarily the best location. It's what I could afford. And it's kind of the first thing that presented itself to me. I learned a lot from that space. I think it was just an opportunity cost, but we ended up, so many things were happening that I don't even know if I have the timeline quite correct, but it was something between COVID.

9:45Oh yeah, that little thing. That little thing. But there was a leak and that leak turned into like flooding, which water and books do not go together at all. And so in that first space, toward the end of our lease, we lost almost all of our inventory. And I've never really talked about that, but we lost a lot and then COVID hit and then we had to shut down and that was rough. And so we had wet books that we just had to throw away. And that was a hard lesson to learn that I did learn it, though. And I looked, made sure the roof was intact at our next location, which is where we're still at today.

10:27Jazzy, I know we just met and you described yourself a little bit earlier as more of a pessimist. But I got to be honest with you, from the things you've been telling me, I have to push back on that. I mean, the optimism it takes after your books are soggy and wet to keep going. Where did you find the strength to go again and to open a new space? Yeah, I got it from my mama. That's really all I can say. I think I watched her work really hard throughout my life, throughout her life. And that is just instilled in me. I also think you would be hard pressed to find a black woman who isn't resilient.

11:04I think that is par for the course of being black in America. And so I think that resilience is absolutely something that I walk through this world with for better or worse. And yeah, you can't really beat me down too much. Well, it's certainly inspiring for, I hope, all of our audience listening right now, what you overcame with that moment. So the books get wet. You close down the space. The world is shutting down and I'm taking myself back to the summer of 2020. It's also the racial justice movement here in the United States and also across the world. What happened in that moment and did that have any impact on what you did with the business?

11:47Absolutely. That moment, I think we're all still recovering from that. I don't know that we've collectively fully processed that, but businesses were shut down. George Floyd was murdered. Breonna Taylor was murdered. All of these things are happening. And I sat right at this intersection of being like an indie bookstore when people were really looking for these resources. This was the summer of anti-racist reading. People really seeking out education that they were now realizing they lacked. So we also closed down the space, moved everything that we had into my living room, got new inventory in.

12:26The world was pretty shut down at that point, but people were reading for a lot of reasons. So, yes, this re-education, but also people were just stuck in the house with not much to do. And so people were turning to books in a way that I think a lot of us hadn't in recent years. And then being an independent bookstore, people supporting Black-owned businesses. So we were really at the intersection of a lot of a lot of things and a lot of conversations. And I really think we rose to the occasion and helped get those books out for I joke that for almost a year I was a pizza delivery person, not even a bookseller.

13:00We were this was when people were like, you know, sanitizing their grocery bags era. So we were like flinging books on doorsteps and driving. We had nothing else to do either. So we were just driving all over the city. that's actually when we turned on our Shopify store. We didn't have a website our whole first year. We always ran on Shopify at the brick and mortar as our POS, but we didn't have our website on. And that was the moment that we were like, okay, we got to turn this thing on. And luckily there were really good looking templates. I sound like a Shopify evangelist right now. And I honestly might be, but you're not paying me to say this, but I, that was very simple to do and really helped us meet the demand that was unprecedented.

13:46Our business has never hit numbers like June of 2020 again, but that moment was something for sure. It sounds like it was something and I can't wait to talk a little bit more about that. My guest today, Jazzy McGilbert, founder of Reparations Club. Before we get back to the interview, I wanna take a moment to talk to you. Yes, you listening. Thank you so much for being a part of our community here on Shopify Masters. If you have not already, please click that subscribe button wherever you're listening to our program. Leave us a review. Let us know what you think about what we're doing. We are here for you, and thank you so much.

14:26Jazzy, I want to ask you about how you curate the books that you have in your store, in your space. For many folks that have not just bookstores, but similar types of businesses, sometimes it's hard to know what to buy, what to collect, What do people want? You have to make a lot of upfront capital investment to get those items. And I'm sorry to go back to this, but they could get ruined, wet, soggy, right? So how did you choose and how do you continue to choose what goes in your store? It is a collective effort for sure. And I think every bookstore is ultimately in some way a reflection of its owner.

15:02And ours is no different in that sense in that I do think I view the world through this Black queer lens. And so even if we have a book about mushrooms, it might be from a queer Black author in our space. And so I think that's what's really unique about indie bookstores in general. And we also curate titles based on our staff's interests that sometimes are not mine. Our general manager, Tamika, is a huge romance reader. That was like a blind spot that I think we had at our bookstore until she joined our team. And so we also listen a lot to our customers is we just want to know what they want to see and what they're interested in.

15:41And so like any bookstore, we can special order books. We do that every day. And so that's how we get put on to some new stuff from time to time. But also just going through the catalogs, you have sales reps, you meet with the publishers, you meet authors, authors walk in the store and literally hand you a copy of their book. So there's a lot of ways that it happens, but I do think it's a lot based on instinct. It is based on my own interests and it's based on the interests of the community around us. I'm getting like gardening metaphors where you're constantly tending to this space that keeps growing.

16:12Sometimes things fly in from somewhere else and sprout. They're beautiful. Sometimes someone walks in with their book. It's not beautiful. You got to get rid of it, right? So would you say you're constantly tending to this space? It's not set in stone, so to speak. I like that analogy a lot. And I come from a family of like kind of botany people. So that resonates for sure. I do feel like it is a garden. Well, I'm gonna have to invite you over to my space then because my house, there's one place where we just can't grow anything. So maybe I need your help with that. I'll invite my grandmother over.

16:45She's good at that, but I might kill everything. But I do think my gardening tendencies are absolutely at Rep Club in this business. And like you said, there are definitely some weeds that you got to pull out. And it does require this kind of constant maintenance and paying attention to what's going on. And so I think it's like a, just a form of deep listening. Well, not to be too on the nose, but we at Shopify try to do as much deep listening as we can to our customers, which are you, our merchants. Same thing that you're doing with your customers that walk into the store. I'm curious to ask you about this process.

17:21Take me back now to 2020 when you're setting up your digital space on Shopify. Why did you choose us? There are so many options out there. What was it about Shopify that helped you build the site and the experience that you want? I think to date, this also goes back to those like artist tendencies. I needed it to look good. A lot of bookstore POS software is very antiquated. That wasn't going to work for me. It needed to look good. You mentioned our website earlier. I'm a very digitally native person. And so that I just know how much that means to me in my shopping experience. Like UX, there were a lot of tools that were native to Shopify that I would have had to spend a ton of money to build myself and did not have those resources.

18:14And so I think it was just the most economical, best looking solution. And I think, like you said, Shopify does listen. I feel like I'm able to get people on the phone when I have a problem. So I don't think that was the wrong choice. I will say it's not the most bookstore friendly choice. And so we have to do a lot of upkeep to make it work for our specific use. But I think it's still, I just wanted to bet that Shopify would become book friendly sooner than the book industry would modernize. modernize. And so far that's been an okay enough bet. So yeah. And by the way, if you want to check out the website, it's rep rep.club.

18:55If you look at it right now, it is incredibly vibrant. There's a scrolling marquee on here and it does very much look like not your grandmother's book club. Let's just put it that way. Absolutely not. Your grandmother's bookstore. Yeah. My favorite feature of our site is our index that just has like a ton of different categories of topics. And I feel like that's the slept on part of our site that makes me really happy. Yeah. So clicking on the index, if you do want to check out Jazzy's site, it's all by, we have things by the year, by type, by title. There's all sorts of stuff here. I see I'm scrolling down.

19:33Madagascar is a item in the index. I'd love to click on that. So yeah, Lots of great things and all possible if you do it on Shopify. You mentioned advertising there and it's interesting. You told our producers offline that you've never spent a dollar on ads. I'm curious, how did you get the word out about your store without paying for ads? I believe that constraint breeds creativity. And so the constraint was money. We didn't have money to advertise. I would love to, you know, I dream of doing a wheat paste campaign. I like this guerrilla marketing. And I think that's sort of what we've done.

20:11I do have experience. So I came from the fashion industry. I managed like social media accounts for large brands prior to rep club. And so I do think I have good instincts there and some experience, but we just haven't had to. I think we could scale up the business should we decide to do that at some point. But I do, in these earlier years of the business, I just wanted to focus on people having such a good experience that they told somebody else about it that they couldn't help themselves. And I think that is also a form of marketing and advertising that is really valuable.

20:50I knew if we were doing it right and if we were meeting the need that I wanted to meet, that people would share it with somebody else. So whether you're connecting with the colors on the website, the branding, the books themselves, the experience people have in the store, which is really important. I want people to want to tell someone and they just become evangelists for what we do.

21:15It's reminding me what you just said about an interview we had last year with Neil Hoyne from Google. And it sounds like you're focused more on the quality of customer versus the quantity of customers. Absolutely. Yes. And that is important. Why? Why should, if someone is listening, why should they focus on the quality of their customers versus the quantity? I think it depends on your goals. My goals are not deeply financial. I don't want to scale a business I don't love. I want people to feel passionate about these works. Like that's why I'm in it. So I think people really just need to ask themselves what they're doing it for.

21:54If your goal is to be everywhere and have that product in everyone's hands, maybe this isn't the best solution for you. My goal is to make an impact. My goal is for people to feel seen. My goal is to get these works. I mean, I would love to get these books into as many hands as possible, but I want people to have a good experience and that's important to me. It's important to you and it's very important to many of our merchants here at Shopify and us as well. Back to this issue of impact. You also have in-person events at your store, at your space. It's a big part of what you're doing too. Let's talk about that.

22:29And have they been successful? How do you measure success of those events at your space? Yeah, I think most bookstores will tell you some. Like there's another bookstore owner and listening to this, I don't want to lie. Events are a hard part of the book business. We don't get paid to do them. And so I, some weeks it feels like I'm throwing a birthday party every night of the week, and it's very difficult to maintain. But we do want to be a space where these authors can celebrate these releases. But it's hard. Running a brick and mortar is very high overhead, and books alone just don't always pay the bills.

23:03So we're always looking at how to reinvent the book event, but I do think these conversations are hugely important to have. And so we do those, and then sometimes we do events outside of our space too, larger off-site events, those we're able to make a little bit of a profit on. But the books that happen in store, we are happy if we break even for the most part. And, you know, just getting new people into the space, those people become customers. And I do think there is a long-term return on investment there, but it's really about facilitating these conversations. It's so much work, the cleanup, the prep, the setting up the invitations.

23:39Are you coming? Who's coming, right? That's not easy, but you still believe that it's an important part of what you're doing, even if there's not a big return. I do. Even if there's not a big return, I think it's important to what we do. I think the return happens in ways that are incremental that I might not see now. But even in terms of building relationships with these authors, I love this story that Esawan, which is one of the like historic black bookstores of LA, they closed last year. But they tell this story. Actually, they don't tell it. Barack Obama tells it of where nobody knew who he was.

24:09He had put out his like first memoir and no one was coming to his events, but they took a chance on him. When I came out with Dreams from My Father back in 1993 or 4, and I went on a little mini book tour like a lot of first-time authors, one of the only places that took me was S.O.M. Books, back when nobody knew who I was and couldn't pronounce my name and didn't sell any books. And when Barack Obama became the president of the United States, Esauan was still his bookstore that he is married to. And like that absolutely had a return for them there. And so I think we've had little moments like that too.