Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian & Ellen Cheli.
Hi Brian & Ellen, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I have always been something of a salvager, in high school I received the nickname “penny kid” because I always stopped to pick up change off the floor. By the time I was a senior I’d created a side-hustle shopping the clearance rack at various record stores and reselling my finds to other stores. I was buying CDs for a quarter, sorting them by genre, and taking the curated stacks to different stores where I knew they would be more in demand; jazz goes to Euclid Records, metal goes to CD Warehouse, etc. On average I was turning quarter CDs into $2-$4 each.
When I met Ellen in 2014, I had moved on from bargain bins to the biggest bargain bin of all, The Goodwill Outlet on Market St. and I had begun reselling my goods on Amazon. At this point I was still only selling disc media; CDs, DVDs, video games. Books still seemed too daunting a challenge, and I knew nothing about the resale market.
Ellen saw what I was doing and made it her mission to attempt to crack into the book market. She dreamed of having her own store called “Rainboot Books” and she began selling online under the same name. At this time I was working as a police officer in St. Louis City and Amazon was still my side hustle. Ellen was pursuing Amazon full time but struggling with the isolating nature of the work. I had grown disillusioned with my own career and had begun looking for a way out.
I was working at a protest over the removal of the Confederate Monument in Forest Park in 2017 when I saw someone in the crowd shouting “read a book, read a fucking book!” Something about this moment struck me and I began searching for answers in books. I read about abolition, the prison industrial complex, conflict resolution, restorative justice, and mutual aid. The disillusion I’d been feeling had grown into a chasm I felt between me and work I was being asked to do. I quit my job in early 2018 with no plans but to pursue reselling salvaged books and media. Ellen had retired the Rainboot Books store, and I absorbed her inventory into my own. We got by for the first few years largely relying on the thrift economy.
With a home warehouse filled with books, we were some of the lucky few during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sales were at an all-time high and my job satisfaction as a self-employed person was reaching record lows. I had surrounded myself in the things I love and I had no one to share them with except faceless customers on the internet. I was as disaffected with the shipping warehouse I’d built as Ellen felt in years prior.
In 2022 Ellen’s brother Andrew asked if I would be interested in renting a storefront in the building his wife and he owned on Meramec St. I jumped at the opportunity, but I didn’t know the first thing about running a business. My plan was to make as little monetary investment as possible. I’d been acquiring my inventory for next to nothing, for a decade and I figured I would do the same thing furnishing the store. I began building and collecting bookshelves from the free section of craigslist and shopping the back alleys during bulk pickup weekends. Our biggest concern was working within the confines of what is already plentiful and available. Everything we need is already around us, it’s just not been properly organized and allocated. I was fully committed to the belief that “if we build it, they will come.”
We opened the store in October 2023 as Ellen was in the process of completing a bachelor’s in psychology at UMSL, and then she joined me at the store full time, filling in all the gaps and complementing my own weaknesses. Ellen handles much of the administrative work as well as store design, signage and communications.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The journey has certainly been the struggle for us. Every day is a new problem to solve, and our achievements are what we build despite the stumbling blocks.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are Read A Book STL, a bookstore in Dutchtown. Our specialty is salvaging used books, but we also have a small selection of new titles and we do special orders. When we first opened, we weren’t expecting to take donations, but as soon as we plugged in the phone, it became clear that’s what people were looking for, so we quickly pivoted. We are a mission driven store dedicated to the community we serve and strive to make literacy accessible to all. By largely sourcing our books through individual donations, we have the freedom to be selective in what we curate for the store and whatever we don’t need is given away for free. We have a free cart in front of the store daily and we fill Little Free Libraries all over the city. If you know a retirement home or community center that needs books to fill their own, don’t hesitate to send us an email or message on social media. We always have more than we need. On average we end up giving away 50% of what gets donated to our store.
We operate our store as if it were part of the hospitality industry. We have free coffee, water and snacks. Guests are welcome just to come browse and read, but in truth most people end up buying something. We have neighbors come in to pay us for books they took from the free cart just because they want to support what we are doing.
We have several active book clubs including Decolonial Dialogues led by our third ward chairperson, Maxi Glamour, one led by the political education committee of our local DSA chapter, Black Women in STL Book Club, and the Existenentialist Cafe.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
Mentors come in many forms. Some advice that has resonated with me since I heard it nearly a decade ago is “find something in abundance that everyone else seems to ignore, then figure out how to market it.” Opportunities don’t have price tags. Every stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://readabookstl.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/readabookstl/#
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Read-A-Book-STL-100085224122530/
