Today5 Questions: Whistlestop Bookshop owner Jeff Wood remembers 20 years of selling books in Carlisle
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During Downtown Carlisle Association’s final First Friday event of the year Friday, the Whistlestop Bookshop celebrated its 20th anniversary.
It was 20 years ago that Jeff Wood found a place for his small-town book store in downtown Carlisle. Wood began his business in Gettysburg in 1985 and decided to build another store in Carlisle in 1988, across the street from its current location at 129 W. High St.
When Wood faced with the decision to buy more property to keep his Gettysburg store alive, he decided to close it in 2004 and concentrate all his efforts on the Carlisle store.
Since then, he hasn’t looked back, and from holding events at his store to merely listening to his mailman play in a band during First Friday, Wood enjoys the personal feeling he gets from working in downtown Carlisle.
Wood took some time out of restocking books to answer a few questions about how the book business and the area has changed.
Question: How has your business changed over the past 20 years?
Jeff Wood: “What has changed is how we acquire our books and how our customers acquire books, but what hasn’t changed is the content of those books. They’re still high content and varied types of books. The essence of the books is the same. We started out with history, biography and fiction being the best-sellers and they still are now.
“The means is what has changed. We now use wonderful technology to get things faster. We have easier access to far more books than before. Now we can get a lot more books more quickly. The supply has changed, and that’s wonderful. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with microfiche anymore, and it was just so much paperwork.”
Question: How has it been competing with online and chain bookstores?
Wood: “It’s been interesting. When we started in Gettysburg 23 years ago and in Carlisle 20 years ago, there wasn’t that online factor. You can see that it is very competitive now, though. Just look at Borders and Barnes & Noble. Borders is up for sale and Barnes & Noble couldn’t buy it. Even though they have an online presence, they’re still affected by the online sales.
“For us, we’re just a small town, humble book shop, and we’re under the radar of chain bookstores. We’re just trying to keep doing what we do here, and just be able to talk to our customers and add that personal touch. So far, it seems to be working. Last year was our best year.
“I think growth is overrated, though, and even the Wall Street Journal will tell you that. Stability and control for a business is really what you’re after. You see lots of chains that grow too fast and can’t handle it.”
Question: How would you describe downtown Carlisle back then compared to now?
Wood: “It’s gotten more interesting. When we first moved in, there were big chains downtown, like Bon Ton and JC Penny. It took a while for Carlisle to catch up with the demographics here. Right now, I wouldn’t want to be in any other place downtown. I love this property so much. All of my immediate neighbors have a genuine, personal stake in their business. It’s not like a mall where you go to work, do your job and then go home when the store closes. You have Bill Seras, the Clothesvine, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, now Miss Ruth’s and you can just go down the street and name them. I have a neighborhood to both work and live in. I enjoy the personal small town feel, whatever it’s little tweaks may be. There are some people want to change it only a little and others who want to change everything. I tend to be somewhere in between. I don’t want to fix things that aren’t broken, but I’m open to fixing other things to make it work better.”
Question: Were there any points in time where you felt that business was going to be tough?
Wood: “We started off as a small business with humble expectations, so there really wasn’t a time that we had to worry about anything. We opened up in January, which any retail consultant can tell you is nuts, but I was a Carlisle High School graduate and my wife and I still knew people in the area, so we had some connections. It was more like a build over a long-term time than having a lot of business all at once. Me personally, I’m just concerned with crisis management on a daily basis and being able to get everything stocked and out of the boxes before we open the store. I’m sort of unable to get too worked up about the larger issues.”
Question: Do you remember the first book you sold?
Wood: “I should be able to tell you, I keep records in the back. I remember for our Gettysburg store, the first Whistlestop book we sold was ‘The Scarlett Letter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne. [Pulls out records from a back room] The first one we sold in Carlisle was ‘Beneath the Wheel’ by Hermann Hesse. He’s one of my favorite authors, and we still have ‘Beneath the Wheel’ on our shelves, even after 20 years of selling that copy. We try not to run our business on fads. We still have the classic books that we keep on selling to customers.”
