media in the public interest
Fiscal, Physical Changes at Crazy Ladies Bookstore Haven't Helped Bottom Line
When a woman questions society's values, she's often deemed crazy
---- from the Crazy Ladies' manifesto
By John Zeh
© 2000 Capital Coverage News Service
--from www.CincyRing.com
Community-based "owners" of Crazy Ladies Bookstore have urgently upgraded their investment in the lesbian-feminist shop's convenient Northside space, enhancing it physically for comfort and appeal.
Faced with escalating net losses, workers, Board members, and volunteers implemented important internal changes and consulted financial investors. Volunteer storekeepers serve coffee, tea, and cookies.
The store, established in 1978, was required to register as a for-profit business against founders' wishes, its' officials say. To cope, Crazy Ladies' current small Board and smaller paid staff say they have have diligently written, implemented, re-written, and re-visited various new business plans, they insist. With other volunteers, they streamlined, examined, and analyzed all inventories to scope out sales attraction.
In addition, all financial records were computerized, and a website added for information - but not sales. The books-to-gifts ratio was changed to reflect the latter's higher profits. Participation in off-site events was multiplied and neighborhood-wide "First Friday" events, created in Northside. The store is credited with helping establish a renaissance in the neighborhood, where many gays and lesbians (GL's) call home and several GL and GL-friendly bars and businesses operate.
Despite the store's struggle to improve operations, the 22-year-old institution's debt continues to increase at a frightening rate, some supporters worry. "The only reason why I bought property in Northside was because of Crazy Ladies," supporter Kelly Gorth e-mailed her friends and political allies. "I consider them to be the foundation of our community (that) we have built upon. If they fall, so will the rest of us. They are in dire need of help in (bringing) business into their store. If they don't drum up more business they will CLOSE!"
Contacted back by e-mail, she confirmed her concern. "I feel that it is an emergency in regard to (the store's) present situation. I true heartily feel that if they do close their doors it would be a devastating blow to Northside and the GLBT community."
After income gains of $5,619 in 1995 and $5,049 in '96, losses resumed in '97 ($19,392) but were cut to $8,984 in 1998 thanks to a rent reduction by building-owner/sister operation Crazy Ladies Center and other savings. The next year, however, the store's deficit rose again, to $12,837.
Contacted by this reporter, bookstore manager Laura Smith said the situation is not an emergency per se, but an opportunity to look at the store's future - "just a chance for folks to get together and help plan." Board member Lisa Huebner also stressed that store is "not closing."
Crazy Ladies is unique among feminist bookstores in America, Smith stressed, because it is "owned by the community." With that in mind, Crazy Ladies (CL) called out the troops for a special town meeting to help fix the admitted "financial crisis." The store "is not going anywhere," the bulk-mailed appeal assured 2700 people. "But it's time to insure that we collectively preserve our strengths and essence, as well as begin to imagine how we will best serve lesbians, feminists, and our allies in the years to come."
Despite years of strong community support, officials conceded that the store is in "big trouble" and that "creditors are pushing (our doors) closed. "We're doing mores with less people but making less money," conceded Smith.
She pleaded for help to create and enact a new "vision" of the store's ongoing operation as a safe place for newly out lesbians while the upstairs sister-Center. It's a separate, non-profit entity that makes space available for CL educational activities and meetings of local gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (GLBT-Q) citizens.
Superstores, on-line heavy-weights threaten smaller shops
Crazy Ladies' financial crisis should not come as a surprise, officials say, noting that 35 percent of feminist bookstores and 40 percent of independent booksellers across the country have closed. Declining customer bases became really visible five years ago, says manager Smith, who went to a 1995 meeting in Chicago of the Feminist Bookstore Network, now shut down because not enough stores exist to pay dues. "Everybody agreed," she said. The amount of people coming in (stores) was declining."
Big-box retailers with oversized stores brimming with merchandise
and amenities have put many local shops in America out of business
and threaten to swallow up small start-ups such as the Chipotle
Mexican Grill chain (which recently opened in Clifton Heights),
51 percent of which is now owned by McDonalds. Quality Paperbook
Book Club has a new "LGBT" website targetting GLBT-Q
readers that lists readings by authors at GLBT bookstores as
well as selling tomes.
"The Amazon-dot-coms, Barnes & Nobles, and Joseph-Beth
Booksellers have made it a very difficult time," said Pat
Van Voorhis, a past CL Board member who credited Crazy Ladies
in her personal development. Big chains and online companies
"are simply often easier, cheaper, and more convenient for
the general book customer," she cautioned.
Crazy Ladies began life in 1978 as a private venture in the first of three Northside locations. "Through the tenacity of owner-founder Carolyn Virginia and the enthusiasm of loyal customers, the store bravely served the feminist community as a private entity until 1982," past CL president Tommie Birdsall wrote about CL's history on its website: http://www.crazyladies.org/.
"At that point, spurred by Virginia's decision to move out of town, loyal supporters organized and formed a "collective" to keep the store in operation."
The bookstore serves as a handy resource for getting concert tickets, dropping off fliers, or hearing feminist/lesbian/transgendered authors read their works. It is regarded highly for its community activism and progressive approach to family life, race relations, environmental issues, global society and life at large, notes writer Pat Morris on http://cincinnati.citysearch.com. While it caters to a decidedly feminist crowd, children's books, female-focused best sellers, and plenty of political works are also stocked.
Upstairs, Crazy Ladies Center, Inc. exists to provide a non-sexist environment that fosters women's productivity, creativity, spirituality and health. It promotes feminist consciousness in all of its diversity, opposing sexism, racism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination, according to the website. As a center for the lesbian community and all feminists, it offers a safe space where diverse groups of women come together for discussion, work and education.
Supporters gather to plan store's solvency
Answering the bulk- and e-mailed alarm Aug. 17 at neighboring Off the Avenue Studios were over 105 people, including about three men. They heard reports from bookstore officials, asked questions, and brainstormed plans to boost revenues, up $16,232 for the first six months of 2000 compared to last year's.
Creating a dream plan with key priorities is crucial, Voorhis told the crowd. CL's limited leadership and over-worked staff "have no strong sense of what's important to the community (so) we can direct fundraising toward some of those visions."
Board member Karen Carter, a woman-of-color, told participants that the store and Center would be joined offically as one not-for-profit entity with more "leeway and less restrictions" to keep both the store viable and the Center's mission met.
With that status, one woman at the town meeting demanded support from United Way, which gives some $1 million to Boy Scouts of America chapters here. And added Van Voorhis, "Non-profit status opens us up to Community Shares" (a progressive workplace-giving alternative that supports Stonewall Cincinnati, a pioneering GLBT-Q group.
Youthful Huebner, a professional grant-writer who was asked to join the Board last year, noted fundraising's pitfalls. "Grants are limited," she explained. "Likewise events, which bring people together, recruit new people, but raise very little money. Organizations cannot survive on (them) alone."
Examples of CL's moneymaking tactics she mentioned include:
· 1999's appeal letter raised $7,000, this year's, $11,000.
· "Birthday Week celebrations don't gross much money
-$1,500 this time."
· A yard sale brought in $1,000.
· 3000 copies of CL's excellent newsletter are printed,
probably 2700 of which are mailed to subscribers who pay $6 a
year to supplement advertising revenue.
· A well-planned fashion show at Southgate House and a
hastily-organized screening of "But I'm a Cheerleader"
at The Esquire Theater were fun but not very profitable. (Procees
figures were not available.)
· The annual CL Golf Scramble with $60 entry fees will
happen Sept. 24 at Avon Field Golf Course.
"We must activate people who are most invested in what we
do" to find others who agree and will help, Huebner urged.
But, she cautioned, "We are a really small community with
limited resources. We must reach out to thrive, thinking about
how we can best serve (various constituencies) such as young
people - what do they want?"
One participant at the unique town hall-for-an-evening just off Hamilton Avenue asked about how best to reach past patrons who have left the Queen City to join the ever-growing populations in Greater Cincinnati's suburban-rural hinterland.
"We'll have focus groups, interviews with leaders of other groups, and strategies you suggest to separate the wheat from the chaff. And we will communicate this process to the community," Huebner said. "We promise to do that. Now is the time for you to articulate your vision."
(When the 104 participants were divided into groups according to differently colored handouts to reported back suggestions, this reporter departed to help keep the process private.)
Store manager Smith said she and helpers will "hone" the meeting's productive ideas, and call another gathering in three months to report back results. An extensive strategic planning period that will include additional need-assessments and goal setting to help guide the process will be implemented, she said.
Van Voorhis, who facilitated the session, agreed that planning
fundraising and outreach are huge challenges. "We can't
fix this by selling books and holding bake sales. We must structure
a vision with priorities. We have to dream and say this is where
we want to go."
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
To offer input on Crazy Ladies planning process, call 513/ 541-4906
or email crazyladiescenter@chickmail.com
Crazy Ladies Center may be reached at 513/ 541-4906.
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The author, who edits RainbowNews for GayCincinnati.com and writes for the Ohio-wide weekly Gay
People's Chronicle, carries a rainbow wallet bought at Crazy
Ladies. He's at JohnZeh@aol.com
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