The Bookstore is Alive & Well in Downtown Mobile

What Makes for a Successful Downtown Bookstore in 2024?

The Haunted Book Shop is a place where the customer experience is priority number one. This is obvious from the minute you walk into the shop. Alex greets every visitor with a hearty “Welcome!” Make no doubt about it; he means it. The books in this charming shop are thoughtfully displayed by genre and by a delicate balance of front-cover display versus the quantity of selections on each shelf. There is seating for adults and little ones, and even a special place for the shop kitty, “Mr. Bingley!” All of this adds up to a successful retail business of the type that was left for dead on the side of the road when Amazon was ascending in the late 1990s. Do not tell shop owner Angela Trigg that indie bookstores are passé!

Angela is not a neophyte when it comes to the book business. In addition to being a published author, Angela has the bookstore business in her blood. Her grandmother, Adelaide Trigg, founded, with Cameron Plummer, The Haunted Book Shop in 1941. That shop operated in several different locations downtown until 1991, when it closed. Most thought it was closed for good. Happily, we were wrong. The Haunted Book Shop opened at 109 Dauphin Street in October 2018! Just four years later, it was expanded in a move to its present location at 9 S Joachim Street.

During my conversation with Angela, she revealed how savvy she is about the retail business in general and the book business in particular. She is upfront about the fact that her shop’s differentiating factor is the EXPERIENCE she and her seven (7) teammates give the customer. Every aspect of the store, from the lighting to the shelf design and layout to the atmospheric music and the changing monthly displays, is designed to give the shop’s customers the best possible experience. Angela and her teammates relish giving their customers a place that is “welcoming, non-intimidating, and comfortable.” The team is putting into practice an approach retail strategists have been emphasizing for years: Successful retailers are no longer simply selling merchandise. They are selling tickets to their attractions.

Angela and Alex know their customers. Who those customers are was a bit of a surprise to me. Their top-buying age demographic is primarily comprised of Gen Z and Millennials. As Angela noted, people in these age groups are “building their libraries.” In the age of Instagram and TikTok, books are “shelf trophies.” Angela introduced me to the term “Shelfies.” It makes sense. My shelves are full, and now I have stacks on the floor beside the bookcase, as if an opening on a shelf is going to appear overnight!

Alex is the sole full-time employee of the seven-person team of Haints, as the shop’s teammates are called. Each contributes special expertise in the shop’s different sections. Alex is perfect for the role of chief Haint. I asked him what motivated him to be the full-time face of The Haunted Book Shop. He said enthusiastically, “Helping a customer find the right book!” He then told the story of introducing a customer to a specific genre of writing. The next time she came into the store, she specifically brought up what he did for her and thanked him.

Providing a great experience to a customer takes one’s vocation from a “job” to a “calling.” Inspired employees make the business in which they work feel differently. When employees achieve this level of inspiration at their work, the customer feels it in every interaction.

The Haunted Book Shop is the winner of Main Street Mobile’s “Downtown Inspiration Award” for 2024. The Awards Committee members selected this quaint shop at 9 S Joachim Street for this year’s inspiration award because of The Haunted Book Shop team’s many efforts to enhance the consumer ecosystem that exists downtown. Like many bookstores, they host author events. Unlike many bookstores, The Haunted Book Shop’s author events grow into block parties that draw fans from out-of-town and involve neighboring businesses. Recently, Penton’s Bistro held a pop-up Sangria stand as a part of the Christina Lauren/The Paradise Problem block party. The Haints also came up with themed cocktails for purchase at Alchemy. Ticket buyers, as always, received “The Haints’ Guide to Downtown Mobile,” as created by the shop’s event-planning haint and Mobile-based author Jodie Cain Smith.

It is not just for the block parties that The Haunted Book Shop team, led by Angela Trigg, is being recognized with the 2024 Downtown Inspiration Award.

Every year since 2019, Angela has applied and been approved to participate in the national “Find Waldo” scavenger hunt organized by Candlewick Press, the publisher of the beloved Where’s Waldo book series. This year, 23 downtown businesses signed up to participate. Throughout July, Waldo is hidden inside the 23 businesses. Fun-seekers pick up at The Haunted Book Shop a “passport” listing the participating businesses. Passport holders then fan out across downtown to find Waldo and get their passports stamped. Passports with 20 or more distinct stamps may be turned in by July 31^st to get the holder entered for a grand prize drawing and a concluding party at The Haunted Book Shop. Yes, this is good for the bookshop, but it also generates fun, exposure, and commerce for the participating businesses.

Downtowns, with their diversity of office, retail, service, religious, and residential uses, are complex ecosystems. In a successful ecosystem, each member contributes to the success of the other members. Angela Trigg and her team know this, and they live it every day. Downtown Mobile is a better place for their efforts.

Elizabeth P. Stevens
President & CEO Emeritus