Thursday, July 16
dear powell community,
You are reading: Powell’s city of books closing
I hope this message finds you healthy and finds your way through these difficult times. I’m afraid neither is probably true for many of us. we are in an exhausting moment, and every day is often a new challenge. We all send our wishes for peace, safety, and well-being to our powell community around the world.
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I want to update you on the state of business here at powell’s. Simply put, we continue to take everything one day at a time. we received a loan through the ppp legislation in early may and have applied those funds exclusively to payroll, payroll related expenses such as health care, rent only for our smaller stores (beaverton, hawthorne and our home and garden), and utilities. we still do not pay rent for the vast majority of our spaces. Recent changes to the PPP law have allowed us to extend our loan for a longer period of time and use the entire loan on the critical costs I mentioned. we are grateful for the support of this legislation; Without it, Powell’s would already look dramatically different. we know that when we have exhausted our loan, we will have to face painful choices.
our stores remain closed. we desperately want to reopen. keeping them closed feels counter to our instincts as booksellers. Unfortunately, safety, for our employees and our community at large, remains a serious concern. However, beyond the not insignificant security issue is the financial risk to Powell’s future created by reopening too soon. reopening our stores is not a simple matter. doing so would require major spending (returning staff to work, bringing in additional inventory, acquiring safety equipment, redesigning store operations) long before we opened our doors. and we hear from our friends and peers in the book and independent retail industries that in-person shopping is still almost non-existent. we cannot assume additional expenses at this dire time without the sales guarantee that will allow us to pay those expenses. and so, we find ourselves in the difficult position of having to wait for physical purchases to return, or for some other lucky break that allows us to reopen.
In the meantime, we remain grateful for your online orders. After an initial burst of support in mid-March after we closed our stores, sales have continued to drop, but we are doing everything we can to reverse that trend and find ways to keep our operations going. I continue to have faith in all of our team members and in our ability to face new challenges, and in all of you who believe in us and support us. Thank you for your continued kindness and loyalty.
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Like many companies, we too have spent the last several months engaged in deep internal soul-searching within our management team regarding our past work, or lack thereof, in the fight for racial justice in this country. . Although we have engaged in this fight over the years, it was never enough. we should have done more and we should have done better. we allow ourselves to be distracted by making our way through the difficult landscape of independent book sales. that will no longer be the case. I have written to everyone at Powell’s many times on this matter over the past few weeks, welcoming them and engaging in conversations with the staff, and you will continue to hear from me as our work evolves.
We have chosen to focus our efforts on four areas: our community partnerships, internal education opportunities, the evolution of our daily work, and recruitment. For example, we have initiated several conversations with current and potentially future local partners to educate ourselves on the ways Powell’s can support the nuanced and intersectional work of creating positive change in our highly segregated business community. we are exploring the many possibilities of using our voice to advance the fight for justice without causing additional harm or simply performing for an audience. we are looking at the many components of our hiring process, examining our options and looking for new ways forward. we are working to understand our internal way of being and where we need to generate changes. As we look forward to entering our second 50-year stretch of Powell’s life, we are committed to racial justice work in our community. We are a bookstore, in part, because we believe that knowledge leads to truth and truth leads to justice.
none of what I have described above will be easy. honestly, I don’t know how we will get to the end of this stretch of road ahead of us. every day the mountain we are climbing seems to get steeper, and every time we reach the top of a slope, we find ourselves with a much more daunting step ahead. I am honored, in spite of everything, to do this work every day with my esteemed colleagues and co-workers here at Powell’s (as much as we would also be delighted if the existential crisis of a global pandemic were to magically disappear). and I know I speak for all of us when I say that we feel enormous gratitude for the faith and support you place in us. Thank you for staying with us, thank you for buying us your books, thank you for your love of reading and writing, and thank you for all the kindness you have shared with us over the past few weeks and months. We hope to continue hearing from you, we hope to continue sending you books, and we hope to see you again soon in the stacks.
emily
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