Powell's City of Books
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|
| Industry | Specialty retail |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1971 |
| Founder | Walter Powell |
| Headquarters | Portland, Oregon, United States |
|
Number of locations
|
Five (four full-service locations and one specialty bookstore) |
|
Area served
|
Portland metropolitan area |
|
Key people
|
Miriam Sontz (CEO) Emily Powell |
| Products | New, used and rare books; eBooks and Google eBooks; magazines, cards, and sidelines |
| Revenue | $45 million (as of 2009) |
| Owner | Walter Powell (1971–1982), Michael Powell (1982–) |
|
Number of employees
|
about 500 |
| Website | http://www.powells.com/ |
Powell's Books is a chain of bookstores in Portland, Oregon, and its surrounding metropolitan area. Powell's headquarters, dubbed Powell's City of Books, claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. Powell's City of Books is located in the Pearl District on the edge of downtown and occupies a full city block between NW 10th and 11th Avenues and between W. Burnside and NW Couch Streets. It contains over 68,000 square feet (6,300 m2), about 1.6 acres of retail floor space. CNN rates it one of the ten "coolest" bookstores in the world.
The City of Books, has nine color-coded rooms and over 3,500 different sections.
The inventory for its retail and online sales is over four million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books. Powell's buys around 3,000 used books a day.
Powell's was founded by Walter Powell in 1971. His son, Michael Powell, had started a bookstore in Chicago, Illinois, in 1970 which specialized in used, rare, and discounted books, primarily of an academic and scholarly nature. In 1979, Michael Powell joined his father in Portland, right after his father's store had lost its lease; within a year, they found the location that became its current headquarters. Michael bought the bookstore from his father in 1982.
In 1984, Powell's opened its first branch store, in a suburban shopping center named Loehmann's Plaza (later renamed Cascade Plaza), near Washington Square. The new branch was not a replica of its City of Books location; Powell was concerned that the "edgy" neighborhood of its headquarters location was limiting its customer base, so the new store was "fairly fancy" with white shelving, a tile floor, and banners over the aisles. It was also four times the size of the typical chain bookstore.
A travel bookstore was established in 1985 on Pioneer Courthouse Square, and other stores followed, one a year for the next few years. By the early 1990s, Powell's bookstores were part of the resurgence of the independent bookstore, which collectively made 32 percent of book sales in the U.S. The travel store closed in 2005.
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Wikipedia