Effective with the New Year, Marshall Smith, bookseller entrepreneur and co-owner of Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, Mass., has retired from "active participation in the operations of Brookline Booksmith."
In a letter to staff, he wrote, in part, that he is making the move "with a touch of sadness, lots of nostalgia, and a tremendous pride in what our hundreds of booksellers have accomplished over the past fifty-seven years and two months."
He recalled that the original store, called Paperback Booksmith and with Evelyn Vigo as manager, was 2,000 square feet, compared to its current 9,000, and that "shortly after we opened, a woman came up to me and said: 'Thank you so much for opening this store. My teenage son and his friends used to hang out in the pizza shop around the corner. Now they hang out in a bookstore!' "
He added: "We were always socially active, eager to learn and change. With Dana Brigham, who joined us as store manager over 30 years ago, we became Brookline Booksmith, a cultural center for the Town of Brookline and eventually the entire Greater Boston area. We knocked out Barnes & Noble, who opened a larger store less than two blocks from us; we faced up to Amazon who helped close 50% of the independent bookstores in the country--but not us.
"The world will still change; challenges will always be with us, e.g., I believe technology is going to keep revolutionizing the way we live and learn. But I feel confident that with our new management team (Jed Smith, Dana Brigham, Lisa Gozashti, Peter Win, Tim Huggins, Alie Hess, and Nick Petrulakis) and an extraordinary group of booksellers (Did I tell you about the woman who came up to me and said she couldn't find the books she was looking for and the staff was so helpful, and knowledgeable, and friendly that I just had to stop and tell you?), you will face up to those challenges and have a great time doing it.
"I'll see you all in the aisles."
The Paperback Booksmith in Brookline, opened in 1961, became the first of a chain in the Northeast that had 75 stores at its height. Smith also founded Videosmith, a chain of video rental stores that he sold in 1989, and Learningsmith, founded in 1991, an educational multimedia company that had 87 stores at one point, many of which were affiliated with public radio stations (it closed in 1999).