Bookseller's Vision Realized

Bookseller Angela Roach

Bookseller Angela Roach admits that it's hard to top her new bookstore's location --Philadelphia's Independence Square, where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the public. Voices & Visions: Books, Arts, Community opened this past July in the Bourse Building, which was built in 1895 and housed the first commodities exchange in the U.S. Voices & Visions celebrated its grand opening by inviting several local publishers and authors for a signing and to meet customers who were "thrilled to have a new independent bookstore in the neighborhood again," said Roach.

Roach first seriously thought about opening a bookstore in late 1970s. "In my fourth or fifth year of college, I'd visited the Bodhi Tree in L.A," she said. "It was new age before the term even existed. I fell in love with it, and the seed was planted that that was the type of business I wanted to own. I loved books and loved reading, of course, but I also loved to possess books, so I started working toward that goal."

After working in television advertising to get seed money for the future store, she segued into the book business at Books Are Fun, a Readers Digest company, through which she sold books on commission at venues such as hospitals and corporate offices.

When she accumulated enough capital and experience, she and her life partner, Jim Catte, began touring the East Coast to find the right city in which to set up shop. "We decided on Philadelphia," the new bookseller said. "The store emphasizes all facets of the arts, and we felt Philly had a lot to offer in that regard. There are the museums -- The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rodin Museum, the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art. Then there are the art schools -- University of the Arts, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Moore College of Art, and Tyler School of Art at Temple. There's so much art, theater, and a great music scene, and it all continues to grow. The arts are really celebrated here in Philly."

Once the city was chosen, Roach took two and a half years to write a business plan, do a marketing and feasibility study, and find the exact location. The result is a beautifully designed 2,900-square-foot space with a blend of light and dark wood fixtures, hand-built furniture, and a brick facade with curved-glass display windows.

"My favorite art genre is the Arts and Crafts Movement," Roach said, "the Albert Hubbard Roycrofters Movement -- with its emphasis on crafts, furniture, bookmaking, and textiles. So it was my goal to have an arts and crafts flavor in the store, which Jim put together. We used all the colors of Frank Lloyd Wright and most of furniture pieces are Stickley. For the fixtures we used a mix of grand cherry and amber wood tones, which you would also see in arts and crafts furniture -- dark wood mixed with blond."

In its inventory of 15,000 and "growing" number of titles, Roach said, Voices & Visions has a "really good selection of general books ... a good fiction section, a very good children's section, and home and hearth.... [The store] specializes in visual arts, and we handpick all our titles and try to find books that are different."

Roach wanted Voices & Visions to do more than just stock books on the arts and always envisioned it as playing a more active role in the community. To help fulfill this vision, she included a gallery space in the store. The current exhibit is on bookmaking and was coordinated by the nonprofit Pennsylvania Center for the Book. "It's been very well received by the community," Roach said. "The [Center's] mission is to promote the book as an art form."

The store's events are listed on their BookSense.com site, vandvx3.booksense.com, which Roach noted is simple to use and update. "I love it because the interface templates are easy to work with in terms of getting the store's bestsellers and photos of local authors on the site. And I also like to post our store picks."

Roach hopes that her years of careful planning have made Voices & Visions into more than a traditional business. "It's not just a bookstore," she said. "We're trying to create a community center, something over and above what a bookstore is, a meeting place, and events place where people will collaborate on great ideas."

After four months, Roach said she has seen consistent response and growth. "We're not where we'd like to be yet, but I know it takes time getting there. Meanwhile, the community is thrilled, tourists are thrilled. Everybody thinks the store is just beautiful. I often hear comments on our selection and how different and refreshing it is to see. It's really gratifying to hear customers say, 'We needed a place like this in Philly.'" --Karen Schechner