What's Hot Pink, Apple Green, and Has Polka Dots All Over?

September 12, 2007

Deb Hunter wasn't planning on opening a third bookstore, especially one that had a selling space of nearly 10,000 square feet ... it just sort of happened.

Back in August, Hunter, the owner of Chicklet Books in Hillsborough, New Jersey, Glen Echo Books in Princeton, New Jersey, and Unique & Novel (a wholesaling business), was thinking of putting the Chicklet stamp on Princeton. Initially, the idea was to revamp the Glen Echo store in hot pink, apple green, and polka dots. But, in a somewhat surprising turn of events, barely two weeks after Princeton's Chestnut Tree Books closed, Chicklet ended up leasing its former space.

Now, Princeton Township has a new bookstore with a style that is a little less reserved -- to put it mildly -- than is usually expected by residents and students in the Ivy League town.

"It's open, we're here -- it's craziness," said Deb Hunter with a laugh.

Hunter told BTW that, when Chestnut's former landlord contacted her in early August in regards to Chestnut's closing, it had nothing to do with taking over the space. The landlord was looking to sell the inventory and thought Chicklet might be interested in some books or shelves. So she sent her daughter and son-in-law over to evaluate the fixtures and the store's Teen Section.

"Two days before, I'd made arrangements to open a temporary bookstore in the town nearby [as a storefront for Unique & Novel overstock], and I needed inexpensive shelving," Hunter said. Meanwhile, she was mulling over the idea of changing Glen Echo, a store near Princeton University that catered to a highbrow clientele, into a second Chicklet Books.

But then the situation changed quickly. Hunter's daughter and son-in-law put a nix on the shelving, but gave a big thumbs-up to the space. "They thought it would make a better [Chicklet] location than Glen Echo," she reported.

Chestnut's former landlord agreed. He asked Hunter for a proposal. "After four days of number crunching, I wrote a proposal," she said. "And about 20 minutes [after giving the landlord the proposal], he said, 'This works for us.' And we all screamed, Ahhhhh!" The store opened August 14, and an official grand opening is scheduled for Saturday, October 27.

Hunter explained that Chicklet doesn't limit its inventory to Chick Lit, but its brash, bold, and decidedly feminine style is meant to attract women with young families. And usually that means a more intimate store size that has a clean, safe environment where women feel comfortable. Referring to mega stores with massive parking lots that seem miles long, Hunter said, "Moms don't like to park their car, where they have to drag their kids in from across the lot and it takes like an hour."

The Hillsborough Chicklet is 1,300 square feet, and when Hunter was envisioning a second location, she was thinking in terms of 1,700 square feet. The new Chicklet far exceeds that target: it has 3,000 square feet of selling space upstairs and 6,000 square feet downstairs. However, Hunter felt the new store's location in a shopping commons with a pediatrics office and other amenities geared to families mitigated what some Moms might perceive as its intimidating size.

For Hunter, it's not so much the size that's daunting right now, it's a number of other things. For one, the store houses a Post Office and a cafe. "Welcome to my world," she said. "The U.S. Post Office has a contract unit here that is run by store personnel. It's a real post office with blue and gray, and we provide the staff. [The USPS] will train us for 30 hours -- they haven't done that yet -- and we will get a percentage of sales." As for the cafe -- "it will change, we're going to Chicklefy it up."

Another issue that Hunter needs to address: in two weeks, the store will have no inventory. She wanted to sell off Chestnut's stock -- she just didn't expect one of her wholesaling customers to buy it so fast. "I'll have an empty store echoing in two weeks," Hunter reported. Overall, it's for the best, she added: "We wanted to start afresh."

Upstairs will house new inventory, while the store will sell "Awesome Cheap Books" downstairs. "And we don't call our cash wrap a 'cash wrap,'" she stressed. "It's 'Ka-Ching.'"

Also on Hunter's to-do list is creating a "manly" bag to go along with the store's "girly" bag, as she describes Chicklet's hot pink, apple green, and polka-dotted bag. This way, men might feel more comfortable buying a book there, even though she pointed out: "We have no problems embarrassing people." --David Grogan

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