Love of books leads to business

MOSES LAKE — Heidi Gales said she was thinking of buying stuff for her house with a gift card she’d received from her employer for Christmas. Instead, she bought books.

“I really enjoy books,” Gales said.

And when her daughter Emily expressed the desire to own and run a business, books seemed like a good choice. The two opened Sandbox Bookstore on East Third Avenue (in the Smith Martin Building) in Moses Lake in spring 2019.

“A book can help you escape to another world,” Gales said.

And for Sandbox Bookstore customers, books have been a refuge in a stressful year, she said.

“There are just so many advantages to a book.”

The conventional wisdom is that physical books are headed toward extinction, as people switch to reading on an electronic device — if they read at all.

“We don’t see that as being true at all,” Gales said.

Sandbox gets customers in their teens and early 20s, she said, “that want books. They want actual printed books.”

Teachers and homeschool parents also buy books, to fill up their classroom libraries.

“They’ll come in and just sit on the floor (considering book options) for two hours,” Gales said. “We have a lot of returning customers. And we get quite a range of customers.”

In some cases, such as homeschool parents, Sandbox provides an important resource.

“We have people who will drive a couple hours to shop here,” Gales said.

Along with books, Sandbox sells games and puzzles.

“We’ve been selling a lot of puzzles,” she said. “We’re all by consignment. So we never know what we’re going to get.”

And about 250 people have consigned books to the store.

“We even have people who ship us books from out of state for consignment,” Gales said. “We just got 80 boxes of fiction.”

As a result, Sandbox rarely has the same book twice.

”Our sections continually evolve,” she said.

She estimated about 75% of the bookstore’s business comes from walk-in traffic, but traffic from those customers died down during December. In addition, Sandbox was among the retail businesses required to close by state officials to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

But from the beginning, Sandbox had customers online. In fact, Gales said she was selling books online prior to opening the bookstore.

Some online customers are local, and some are hesitant to come into the store in the time of a pandemic. Other customers order from out of state. Sandbox staff can help customers shop via social media, she said.

“I love books. It’s fun to be able to share that love with people,” Gales said. “It’s been a fun business.”

The bookstore will change its hours in January and February: noon to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Gales said the change will give the staff more time to process online orders.