On Koen's Demise: A Bookseller Shares His Thoughts

By Kenny Brechner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers

The business practices that made so many profitable independent bookstores love Koen Book Distributors are not, I emphatically believe, related to Koen's demise. These business practices were excellent, and it is vitally important to the northeastern independent bookselling community that they find a new home.

One could -- in fact, one does -- speculate about the causes of Koen's bankruptcy, about the reasons unprofitable bookstores loved Koen, and about other factors negatively impacting the business' cash flow. Truth to say, I'm as morbidly depressed about the loss of Koen as any of its bereaved accounts.

My task here, however, is to acknowledge that Koen's approach to doing business with independent bookstores was truly collaborative and financially beneficial for both parties, that these policies should be clearly identified, and that independent booksellers should advocate for their reappearance at least somewhere in the wholesaling circle with which we do business.

Koen was a wholesaler whose style, philosophy, and methodology, whose emphasis on knowledge, selection, and personal service, mirrored our own. Let me start with Koen's appreciation that the importance of the telephone did not die out with the advent of electronic ordering and e-mail. One thing to say about Bob Koen is that he had a knack for hiring smart, funny, savvy book people to be his phone reps.

I was a Koen customer for 14 years, and I always had a rep whom I both liked and valued. For the last seven years, my rep was Ken Abramson, an absolutely exceptional rep. The importance of having a wholesaling contact with a longtime independent bookselling background cannot be overstated. My entire staff misses Ken from Koen, as we always called him, and as he always identified himself on the phone.

When the "Koen First" slogan first appeared, I questioned Ken as to whether it represented a fervent hope or a policy. Ken reported that it was more of a "one hand washes the other" situation: If you put Koen first, we'll put you first. The information sharing, genuine expertise, accountability, and, yes, professional friendship that the direct-person relationship between Koen reps and their accounts maintained really did induce Koen's customers to put them first on their cascades.

Bertand Russell once observed, "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." And indeed, five minutes spent together deducing what the current phantom Oprah ISBN was, based on imprint and price point, was not wasted time. Ken was unquestionably an asset and an advocate for my business, and in return his excellent work, and his camaraderie, increased the volume of my business with Koen.

Consider Koen's late and lamented backordering policy. To backorder a title at Koen one simply called it in to the rep. The rep would then call back when the backorder came in. There was no obligation to take the backorder. Backordering high-turn titles has, of course, become increasingly necessary, as publishers manage their production more tightly. The in-flow of titles to wholesalers is often entirely absorbed by backorders so that, last December, one could have electronically ordered The Polar Express 24 hours a day seven days a week and never picked it up.

The need to backorder, along with the dangers of getting double and triple shipments via electronic backordering, made Koen's policy a superb means of navigating the acquisition of high-turn titles. It was also good for Koen. When Ken called to say that I had a backorder in of three Acts of Faith -- not quite enough to ship -- it was the work of a moment to tack on five Kite Runners, five Bookseller of Kabuls, and, perhaps, after inquiry, quite a bit more.

The all-important matters of fulfillment and margin were also areas in which Koen's policies excelled. They couldn't, of course, match the largest wholesalers' fill rates, particularly on special orders, but its emphasis on filling high-turn store restocking, along with great speed and good margin, made Koen invaluable.

Speed, for those of us who strive to provide outstanding service, is of paramount importance. Throughout the Northeast, Koen was a one-day shipment with a one o'clock cut off. Koen's free freight policy was that if you met minimum you got free freight. That, along with a 2% net 10 discount off the statement, I found, made it a certainty that books purchased from Koen had a better margin than those purchased from another wholesaler.

For me, and, I believe, for many other booksellers, the loss of Koen, the need to avoid excessive freight charges, and the need for speedy fulfillment, weighed against the current terms available from other wholesalers, has made cascading a laborious and unsatisfactory process at best.

What's to be done then? Are we to spend our time segregating titles we have to have in one day from those we can live with in two to three, coming back to those which we can at least put on order with the hope they'll arrive some time? Let's hope not. Indeed, let's do more than hope: We should advocate that the personalized service, the emphasis on knowledge, selection, accountability, and professional courtesy and friendship that we offer to our own customers should make its way back to us from somewhere in the wholesaling community.