Every month, our series Shelf Life will profile a business in Greater Boston that’s part of the region's thriving independent bookstore community. This month we are featuring Rozzie Bound Co-op, an indie bookstore in Roslindale and a multi-stakeholder cooperative owned by its workers and customers.
Rozzie Bound, now located in Roslindale Square, began as an experiment. It all started at the beginning of the pandemic when four women launched a pop-up in a co-working space as a way to find out if Roslindale would support a small bookstore.
It turns out the book lovers of Roslindale passed the test.
In January the four founders, Ana Crowley, Talia Whyte, Judy McClure and Kim Patch, opened up their official store in Roslindale Square. When the storefront became available it seemed like the perfect size to upgrade from their pop-up space.
“At least once or twice a day, somebody comes in here and they say, I'm so glad that there's a bookstore in Roslindale, this is such a great thing,” Whyte said.
Crowley said that the store being a hybrid co-op — worker and consumer-owned — allows for deeper connection with the public.
“I'm starting to see a lot of interest in that business model, so it's really exciting to be kind of on the forefront of that and be able to advise people on things that we found worked or didn't work and help other people start businesses,” Crowley said.
Apart from the business model, another distinguishing characteristic of Rozzie Bound, says Whyte, is that the worker-owners are all women.
Crowley, Whyte, McClure and Patch operate every aspect of the store — from running the register, paying the bills, cleaning the store and picking out the approximately 700 books shelved in the space.
They also are always encouraging more people to buy a share for $100 and get to say they own a bookstore — or at least part of one.
Once a share is bought, consumer-owners get a vote at the yearly shareholder meeting. When the business begins making more in profits, they can receive dividends from the store, likely in the form of store credit. Consumer-owners also get discounts on branded merchandise — but their biggest benefit, McClure said, is that they are part of the Rozzie Bound community.
“The community support from the consumer-owners has been very, very important and has really made this possible,” McClure said.
Now, the store has built up to having approximately 200 consumer-owners.
Crowley said being a community supported business is both key to the ethos of the business and its survival.
“Especially in a city like Boston, where real estate is very high, having a sustainable retail business without owning the building or deep pockets, it's a complicated endeavor,” Crowley said. “A lot of them fail. So this way we really thought in perpetuity, we have this cooperative organization that potentially could become a real vital part of Roslindale.”
From the community response, it’s clear that Rozzie Bound is already vital to the neighborhood.
“New people are discovering us all the time now, it’s wonderful,” Crowley said. “And people sometimes just come in to browse and say, ‘I just discovered you.’ And we have really interesting conversations. People love to talk about books. Books are a great thing to just bring people together.”
“We also had some input from customers,” McClure said. “A customer will come in and one of us will be chatting with the customer and we can order anything. For a small space, we can do that for our customers. So there's input from the community and there's input from all of us.”
They all have their own expertise that helps them select books. McClure is a writer and knows a lot of others in the community, Crowley has expertise in food, business and kids books. Patch is a technology expert and environmentalist, so she helps pick out the science books.
“I think our tastes in books are a really good variety that helps make a diverse input of our selections,” Crowley said.
“I like the satisfaction of a book that I ordered and it's on the shelf and then a customer buys it — I’m like, “Okay, that was great. It was a good pick.’ It’s exciting. It kind of gives you the feeling that you're in tune,” Whyte said.
Adding to their inventory, the store also has a partnership with the Roslindale branch of the Boston Public Library called the Book Ambassador Program, where local authors hold talks at the library and their signed books are kept in stock at Rozzie Bound.
Nina Selvaggio is a consumer-owner and board member at Rozzie Bound. She said having a local independent bookstore in Roslindale unites the community.
“Folks like myself and all the other hundreds of folks who've become consumer-owners are putting their money where their mouth is and saying ‘We believe in independent bookstores,’” Selvaggio said.
She said she hopes the store grows as a gathering place and local resource.
“I think we are trying to represent the diversity of the communities of Roslindale, Hyde Park, West Roxbury and trying to figure out how to best meet the needs of those communities. And so we're very different than an online store. We are trying to do what's in the best interests of the organization of the community.”
This article is part of the ongoing series "Shelf Life," where GBH News' Haley Lerner will profile local, independent bookstores. Up next: All She Wrote Books.
