St. Helens Book Shop Hits "Home" Run With Open House

St. Helens Book Shop in St. Helens, Oregon, added a new twist to its authorless events series. In mid-November, the bookstore partnered with a neighboring cafe to hold an open house for reps of home businesses, including Tupperware and Pampered Chef, and their customers. Owner Luanne Kreutzer said the event was "a hit! It gave us a chance to share our Holiday Catalog... and we did gangbusters for three hours!"

Kreutzer hadn't previously held this type of open house, but plans to offer similar events in the future. The bookstore and cafe provided a central convenient meeting place for the eight home businesses, which also included reps from Mary Kay cosmetics and a local photographer. "It was very festive," said Kreutzer. "A local cafe brought a cheese tray and information about their catering services. Displays were sent from a local florist."

Response was high to the bookstore's snail-mail and e-mail invitations, Kreutzer said. "We had 58 transactions during the three hours. For a store like ours, that's great. People were very receptive." She added that about a quarter of the attendees were carrying the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association holiday catalog, which was inserted into the local newspaper that day. "We had a lot of people come in with the catalog in hand."

Kreutzer noted that she also saw an immediate response to a coupon distributed via the store e-newsletter for a 20 percent discount off calendars. "I was inspired by a similar coupon that Bookshop Santa Cruz had in its e-mail, so I owe them a thank-you. We have too many calendars, and we've already seen several people in using the coupons." --Karen Schechner