Noelle Santos’ Lit. Bar Hits $100,000 Fundraising Goal

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Aspiring bookstore owner Noelle Santos recently surpassed her $100,000 fundraising goal on Indiegogo to open The Lit. Bar, a bookstore/wine bar in her native South Bronx.

Noelle SantosIn an interview on Monday with New York news station NY1, Santos said that despite reaching her fundraising goal on Friday, February 24, she’s still trying to raise as much money as possible. As of Wednesday, March 1, her campaign to fundraise for a POS system and starting inventory has collected about $110,000 from 1,522 backers, with 18 days left.

Hue-Man Online founder Marva Allen, who was a co-owner of Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem, recently met with Santos and was greatly impressed. Following the meeting, Allen encouraged Hue-Man’s e-mail subscribers to donate to the campaign.

“As an entrepreneur my entire life, I know dreamers and I know doers. Noelle spent two years getting her feet wet in the book business and doing trial events. She understood a lot more than I did when I landed at Hue-Man,” Allen wrote. “Like Noelle, [the Hue-Man family] all know how essential reading is to community engagement. After meeting Noelle, I got the distinct feeling that someone has finally come along for me to hand over the baton of passionate community bookstore owner.”

Since Santos announced her plans to open a bookstore in June 2016, she has received a lot of positive press, including a feature in Forbes last month and a mention in Ebony magazine’s March 2017 issue.

The Lit. Bar is slated to open in the Hunts Point or Mott Haven neighborhood this summer, or at least by the end of the year. Once it does, it will be the only bookstore in the Bronx; the borough’s last bookstore, a Barnes and Noble in the northeast Bronx, closed in December.