Forum Season Opener Held in Salt Lake City

'Tis the season to stash the wrapping paper, tally the sales figures, and begin planning for the future.

For a group of booksellers in the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association (MPBA) region, planning for the future began last Saturday, January 8, with the first ABA Booksellers Forum of 2005. Held in conjunction with MPBA, the ABA forum and education program took place at The King's English Bookstore's Fresco Restaurant in Salt Lake City. Several dozen members of ABA and MPBA attended, along with a few new, unaffiliated booksellers, four members of ABA's senior staff -- ABA COO Oren Teicher, Director of Marketing Jill Perlstein, Director of BookSense.com Len Vlahos, and Associate Director of Programming and Constituent Groups Liaison Kristen Gilligan -- and ABA Booksellers Advisory Council member Betsy Burton of The King's English.

Andrew Nettell, co-owner and manager of three-year-old Arches Book Company in Moab, Utah, told BTW that the meeting was a success even before it started. "I was so impressed that ABA would take time and resources to meet one-on-one with booksellers in a region of the country that doesn't get that much attention. Another great thing about the forum is the opportunity to meet other booksellers in Utah and places farther away. Things are very far apart here."

The enthusiasm of booksellers was apparent at both the MPBA opening forum and the ABA forum in the afternoon, according to Nancy Rutland, owner of Bookworks in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At the regional forum, "the great success of the MPBA Winter gift catalog" and the upcoming [MPBA] April and September meetings in Denver were topics of discussion, Rutland said.

ABA's "The Cost of Goods Sold, 101," the primary educational focus of the event, was an expansion of the Cost of Goods Sold component of "The Two Percent Solution" seminar presented by ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz at MPBA's fall trade show.

Rutland found the seminar "quite useful." She told BTW, "Len [Vlahos] did a great job explaining the worksheets and the importance of knowing exactly what percentage of the store's expenses the cost of goods actually is -- to try to nudge that percentage ... in the coming year to increase profits."

Catherine Weller of Sam Weller's Books in Salt Lake City applauded the presentation of information that, she said, "is hard for accountants to explain."

Nettell concurred, "Our accountant does the hands-on figuring, and I've been pretty clueless about the whole process. But after the seminar, the accountant will still handle it, but I'm less clueless now and I can better track inventory."

At the ABA forum, held after lunch, the wide range of topics included financial data-gathering for the 2005 ABACUS survey, ABA programs and initiatives, including Book Sense and sales tax initiatives, and an open Q & A opportunity with ABA's Teicher. Rutland commented, "Everybody was ecstatic about the Book Sense gift card program, there was interest in more educational programs, and a hearty 'three cheers for ABA' was unanimously voiced."

Nettell was so convinced by the introduction to the ABACUS survey that he told BTW, "This is the year I'll participate for sure. Before this I never really thought [the study] had any usefulness to me, but now I see how I can gauge our results compared to other stores like ours. This particularly helps since we opened a second store this year."

MPBA executive director Lisa Knudsen was very pleased with the forums and with the location. "Mountains & Plains hasn't had the funds to do a meeting in Salt Lake City for five years -- this was great. We were able to partner with ABA and share resources. We were all especially pleased that ABA signed up a new member and MPBA signed up two." --Nomi Schwartz