For a small space, we can do that for our customers. “A customer will come in and one of us will be chatting with the customer and we can order anything. “We also had some input from customers,” McClure said. Books are a great thing to just bring people together.” “And people sometimes just come in to browse and say, ‘I just discovered you.’ And we have really interesting conversations. “New people are discovering us all the time now, it’s wonderful,” Crowley said. So this way we really thought in perpetuity, we have this cooperative organization that potentially could become a real vital part of Roslindale.”įrom the community response, it’s clear that Rozzie Bound is already vital to the neighborhood. “Especially in a city like Boston, where real estate is very high, having a sustainable retail business without owning the building or deep pockets, it's a complicated endeavor,” Crowley said. Now, the store has built up to having approximately 200 consumer-owners.Ĭrowley said being a community supported business is both key to the ethos of the business and its survival. “The community support from the consumer-owners has been very, very important and has really made this possible,” McClure said. Consumer-owners also get discounts on branded merchandise - but their biggest benefit, McClure said, is that they are part of the Rozzie Bound community. When the business begins making more in profits, they can receive dividends from the store, likely in the form of store credit. Once a share is bought, consumer-owners get a vote at the yearly shareholder meeting. They also are always encouraging more people to buy a share for $100 and get to say they own a bookstore - or at least part of one. “I'm starting to see a lot of interest in that business model, so it's really exciting to be kind of on the forefront of that and be able to advise people on things that we found worked or didn't work and help other people start businesses,” Crowley said.Īpart from the business model, another distinguishing characteristic of Rozzie Bound, says Whyte, is that the worker-owners are all women.Ĭrowley, Whyte, McClure and Patch operate every aspect of the store - from running the register, paying the bills, cleaning the store and picking out the approximately 700 books shelved in the space. “At least once or twice a day, somebody comes in here and they say, I'm so glad that there's a bookstore in Roslindale, this is such a great thing,” Whyte said.Ĭrowley said that the store being a hybrid co-op - worker and consumer-owned - allows for deeper connection with the public. When the storefront became available it seemed like the perfect size to upgrade from their pop-up space. In January the four founders, Ana Crowley, Talia Whyte, Judy McClure and Kim Patch, opened up their official store in Roslindale Square. It turns out the book lovers of Roslindale passed the test. It all started at the beginning of the pandemic when four women launched a pop-up in a co-working space as a way to find out if Roslindale would support a small bookstore. Rozzie Bound, now located in Roslindale Square, began as an experiment. This month we are featuring Rozzie Bound Co-op, an indie bookstore in Roslindale and a multi-stakeholder cooperative owned by its workers and customers. Every month, our series Shelf Life will profile a business in Greater Boston that’s part of the region's thriving independent bookstore community.
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