![]() “So to be under this dramatic situation at work and have to pull 3 to 4 hours a day of my time in order to teach, it’s just a crazy balance.” “As a business owner, you work a lot generally, 40 to 50 hours a week,” she said. Magistro is also figuring out a new work/life balance - she and her husband trade off teaching their 8-year-old son he takes the mornings while she homeschools in the afternoons. “It’s really helping to both keep the cash flow going and keep people working,” she said. Online book sales have remained healthy, and her employees, who range in age from 18 to 72, are still offering “staff picks,” a beloved staple of local bookstores. “It helps people bring a little bit of The Bookworm home.”Īnd people seem to want to escape through literature. “We are also selling groceries out of our kitchen and have amazing coffee beans and teas and all the alternative milks,” Magistro continued. “It is what is allowing us to keep our operation going,” she said, adding that weekly “soup subscription” sales have quadrupled over the last week, and that companies are underwriting bulk food sales to healthcare workers and teachers. Her business has been deemed essential because of it, and she has leveraged the kitchen for soup and other food orders. While the shelves in the brick-and-mortar store are stocked with inventory for one of the busiest months - in time for Easter, with Mother’s Day and school graduations around the corner - Magistro has had to move 99% of her operations online.īut the bookstore cafe, which forced her to close her doors earlier than other retail outlets, on March 16, has been a saving grace. Magistro is using the donations to pay about half of her 25-member staff, make rent and maintain partnerships and programming with nonprofits and schools. The store has currently raised $65,255 of its $75,000 goal to keep operations somewhat running. People just connect with the idea of the bookstore and what it means in their lives.” “It was totally overwhelming,” said Magistro, who bought the store in 2005 from founder Kathy Westover. She received $50,000 in the first 48 hours of posting on the crowdfunding website. The Bookworm of Edwards is still paying employees to fulfill book and food orders. My customers were thanking me for asking for help, and donating large and small amounts.” “It’s been fantastic in the sense that I was totally buried in emails right away. “We’ve survived it all, so why can’t we survive this?” Magistro said from her home in Wolcott, Colorado. Judging by the outpouring of support on the GoFundMe page for The Bookworm of Edwards, located in the picturesque ski resort community of Edwards, Colorado, owner Nicole Magistro hopes the answer is yes. Her bookstore survived the rise of Amazon - can it survive coronavirus? Nicole Magistro is trying to lead her bookstore into a new age and hoping to survive coronavirus.
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