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| New owners Tom Flynn, Mandy Medley and Katharine Solheim. (photo: Steel Brooks) | |
On March 1, booksellers Katharine Solheim, Mandy Medley and Tom Flynn officially took over Pilsen Community Books in Chicago, Ill., from previous owners Mary Gibbons and Aaron Lippelt. While Pilsen will continue to be a general-interest bookstore offering a selection of new and used titles for all ages, Pilsen Community Books now runs on a worker-owned and -operated model and has a renewed focus on social justice.
"We really want our shop to be a space where workers feel empowered and dignified," said Solheim. "By and large, that's our goal."
With all three owners having long careers in retail, Flynn explained, it was especially important to them that the bookstore's workers have a clear ownership stake in the business. At present, Flynn, Medley and Solheim all have equal shares in the business, and as the store grows and they bring on more booksellers, there will be a path laid out for them eventually ro become equal partners.
"Booksellers matter, and they matter in an absolute sense," said Flynn. "We're sort of putting our politics where our money is."
Medley noted that in many retail businesses there is a tendency to squeeze margin and, with bookstores, sometimes the first thing to get squeezed is booksellers. She and her co-owners want to avoid that, and looking ahead they hope their ownership model becomes something other bookstores might draw inspiration from or even replicate.
"The big advantage that indies have is the people who run the stores," Medley said. "We want to honor that in a material way."
The new owners plan to make other kinds of changes at the store in the first few weeks. They're going to move the poetry section up toward the front of the store, where it will dovetail with a series of sections pertaining to things like social, environmental and reproductive justice as well as labor issues. And noting that the Pilsen neighborhood is primarily Latinx, they plan to bring in Spanish-language books as soon as they can.
"We're putting forward what our vision is and what our politices are, but we'll be taking into account what the community wants and needs," said Flynn. The store's message and convictions won't change, but how exactly that gets expressed through events and inventory will be part of an "ongoing conversation."
When asked about any renovations, they said the shop itself is already "immaculate," though they do want to make it ADA accessible sooner rather than later. At the same time, they plan to make some minor changes such as putting wheels on freestanding bookcases, so they can be rearranged for events.
The trio reported that their first event after taking over the store will be with Mark Nowak, author of Social Poetics, and the rest of the events that they've lined up for the spring will likewise reflect the store's new direction. Medley noted, too, that while many of the events will pertain to social justice, they won't all be lectures or nonfiction talks. Rather, many events will feature "social justice and the arts intertwined."
Prior to buying Pilsen Community Books, Solheim and Medley worked together at Unabridged Bookstore in Chicago for roughly four years, where they both dreamed of owning their own bookstore and often talked about having a labor-focused bookstore. Flynn, meanwhile, worked at Volumes Bookcafe and Seminary Co-op over the years, and also hoped to own his own store one day.
Last summer, when Lippelt and Gibbons put Pilsen Community Books up for sale, Solheim and Medley approached them about buying the store and found out that Flynn had also inquired about the store. As they began doing their due diligence on buying the store, they met with Flynn to see whether their visions for the store aligned and if would make sense to form a partnership. It didn't take long for them to realize that it made sense to pool their talents, efforts and capital and "make a go of it." --Alex Mutter