Half Off Books Air Conditioning
Donation protected
Half Off Books is looking to strengthen our headquarters!
We buy and sell new and used books, movies, and music! After having to move our previous store to Fullerton, we are now planning on strengthening our headquarters in Fullerton to help with future endeavors.
GoFundMe Campaign
We've turned to GoFundMe to assist in our continued development of a better serviceable environment because we cannot currently afford to do it completely on our own. We've been operational in Fullerton Since November of 2017 and since then have worked on a number of projects from demoing the store to building a website to even fine-tuning our distribution to work faster. With this campaign that was originally planned on opening another store in Whittier, we'd like to shift the momentum into having Air Conditioning in our store to ease our consumers experience in the future.
When we moved in, the units that are currently in the store had broken down on us within that first few months. These older 1970 models that were left in our store were brought up to the landlord and lo and behold, they don't believe in taking up the bill. We requested a quote from a local vendor for two units with the intention of removing and installing two new units. We plan on raising enough money to ask if the landlord could meet us half way on the expense so that it will be a win win situation
Opening our store in Pasadena took all our savings, and even though our current daily numbers are beyond what they were in Whittier after 6.5 years, it will still be at least another year before we'd have enough to even consider opening another store.
We have the formula, we have the brainpower and work ethic, the only thing we're waiting on now are the funds! Opening expenses include building all new shelving, tables, counters, and other fixtures, not to mention buying an initial stock of at least 40,000 books and 15,000 vinyls, CDs, and movies. We also need to fund the initial 3-6 months it will take for the entire reading community to find out we've opened; we still have people coming into our Fullerton store that didn't know we moved to Fullerton in October 2017!
Communities Need Bookstores
The Uptown Specific Plan from pre-2010 stated the absolute vital importance of a bookstore to any local community. Look at the effects on Uptown since we've left:
1. Increase in homelessness and possibly crime
2. Decrease in local foot traffic
3. Decrease in local sales
We've already applied to lease several different places in Uptown, and building owners are choosing more restaurants and retail and rejecting us. Look at what happens in an area when there are no solid large major retailers, and a heavy supply of bars and restaurants?!
Bibliofuturus
We have always had the intent of becoming a chain of bookstores with a heart for books and human evolution! We WILL be opening other locations, and we've ALWAYS wanted our very first flagship store to be 6708 Greenleaf Ave. That future has faded, but it doesn't mean we won't some day get that building back!
For now, we have to regroup and look to other spots in the area. And regardless of whether something Whittier local becomes available, we will be opening other stores in the future, and we need your support to make it an easy choice to open in Whittier!
Background
I’ve been a reader for my entire life, as has everyone in my family—it’s always been a really important thing to us. But beyond that, I think that book stores are important to human evolution. They are vital, and self-education is critical. You have a certain relationship with technology, and there’s a different relationship that you have with the printed word—the held, paper word. It involves learning in a different way than you do when you’re using a smart phone—mapping your next destination or texting somebody or Facebooking. It’s just a different pathway in the brain. Also, we have a really unique business model. We’re almost like an Amazon location, but with a curation and a soul that an algorithm cannot have.
Our bookstore started in the 1970s, when a guy named Chuck opened a small book store in uptown Whittier called the Little Old Bookshop. He was there until around 2005, and then another guy took it over and he moved the store to a bigger location, but after four years, he went out of business. We took over in 2011 and we were there for six years, before moving here, to downtown Fullerton. We were the last major bookstore in the Whittier area. There is a small store called The Dharma Center that specializes in new age and eastern philosophy books. But, aside from them, there are no other bookstores anywhere nearby. The closest Barnes and Noble was in Hacienda Heights and they closed several years ago.
I’m one of the owners, along with my mom and brother. We’ve had other entrepreneurial endeavors before, and we really wanted to do something together, and something that we were actually really going to love. When we saw that the Little Old Bookshop was for sale, we thought: That’s brilliant. That’s perfect. And we’ve just been on this roller coaster ever since.
We cover every section of books—we have every section a library has and then some. We also sell vinyl records, CDs, Blu-ray, DVDs, comics, graphic novels, manga, anime. We try to go in every direction.
Digital can’t compare with print or vinyl. The spectrum of audio that comes out of a vinyl record is wider than the spectrum of human hearing—so there’s more sound than we can hear. The digital spectrum is thinner—it’s smaller and compressed. There’s a resonance that people talk about when they listen to vinyl, or there’s a resonance that people talk about when they read books. It’s not the same experience when they go digital—physical things resonate more with you than digital things.
There are many neuroscience studies that show that memory retention is so much higher when you have a physical experience with a book. You’ll have moments where you’ll remember a certain quote from a certain page—because you have the muscle memory as well as the visual memory. That doesn’t happen in the digital landscape. The scientific way to express that is to say that it has more of an impact, more memory retention. But I really think it’s just that you’re more connected with that object. You connect with the energy of that object more when it’s nondigital.
We took over the book store the same year Borders books went bankrupt, and the public consciousness at that time was that book stores are a fading thing. But we’ve been in the black every day since we opened. We’ve never had trouble making sales. So I think it’s just a different breed of book store that has to be born and exist, and I think that can actually do really well in today’s world. Not to be too J.M. Barrie about it, but if people would just say to themselves: “I do believe in book stores, I do, I do!” We can exist and have no trouble existing. We’re a modern business! We’re not a relic!
After the initial up jump of the modern technological age, humanity will discover the tangible nontechnological is vital and more important to our evolution and thereby our joy. We do our small part to align with that future, and we commit to it every day. And it’s actually the easiest thing in the world to do, because books are awesome, and spending every day with them and those who love them is a gift every moment!
Pricing:
$$ WE PAY CASH $$ for books, Blu-Rays, DVDs, Manga, comics, CDs, records, textbooks, collectible texts and media, and anything else printed or recorded, and always sell them at half off the publisher’s price or less!! We also host open-mic poetry readings every other week, and Fire Sales every quarter!!!
Fire Sale! $1-$3 75,000 Used Books every 3 months; Memorial Day, Labor Day, Black Friday, Presidents’ Day
Used & New books, Comics, Records, CDs, BluRays, DVDs
$8 Hardback, $7 Paperback, <$5 Pockebooks, <$5 Children’s Books for Used
We buy and sell new and used books, movies, and music! After having to move our previous store to Fullerton, we are now planning on strengthening our headquarters in Fullerton to help with future endeavors.
GoFundMe Campaign
We've turned to GoFundMe to assist in our continued development of a better serviceable environment because we cannot currently afford to do it completely on our own. We've been operational in Fullerton Since November of 2017 and since then have worked on a number of projects from demoing the store to building a website to even fine-tuning our distribution to work faster. With this campaign that was originally planned on opening another store in Whittier, we'd like to shift the momentum into having Air Conditioning in our store to ease our consumers experience in the future.
When we moved in, the units that are currently in the store had broken down on us within that first few months. These older 1970 models that were left in our store were brought up to the landlord and lo and behold, they don't believe in taking up the bill. We requested a quote from a local vendor for two units with the intention of removing and installing two new units. We plan on raising enough money to ask if the landlord could meet us half way on the expense so that it will be a win win situation
Opening our store in Pasadena took all our savings, and even though our current daily numbers are beyond what they were in Whittier after 6.5 years, it will still be at least another year before we'd have enough to even consider opening another store.
We have the formula, we have the brainpower and work ethic, the only thing we're waiting on now are the funds! Opening expenses include building all new shelving, tables, counters, and other fixtures, not to mention buying an initial stock of at least 40,000 books and 15,000 vinyls, CDs, and movies. We also need to fund the initial 3-6 months it will take for the entire reading community to find out we've opened; we still have people coming into our Fullerton store that didn't know we moved to Fullerton in October 2017!
Communities Need Bookstores
The Uptown Specific Plan from pre-2010 stated the absolute vital importance of a bookstore to any local community. Look at the effects on Uptown since we've left:
1. Increase in homelessness and possibly crime
2. Decrease in local foot traffic
3. Decrease in local sales
We've already applied to lease several different places in Uptown, and building owners are choosing more restaurants and retail and rejecting us. Look at what happens in an area when there are no solid large major retailers, and a heavy supply of bars and restaurants?!
Bibliofuturus
We have always had the intent of becoming a chain of bookstores with a heart for books and human evolution! We WILL be opening other locations, and we've ALWAYS wanted our very first flagship store to be 6708 Greenleaf Ave. That future has faded, but it doesn't mean we won't some day get that building back!
For now, we have to regroup and look to other spots in the area. And regardless of whether something Whittier local becomes available, we will be opening other stores in the future, and we need your support to make it an easy choice to open in Whittier!
Background
I’ve been a reader for my entire life, as has everyone in my family—it’s always been a really important thing to us. But beyond that, I think that book stores are important to human evolution. They are vital, and self-education is critical. You have a certain relationship with technology, and there’s a different relationship that you have with the printed word—the held, paper word. It involves learning in a different way than you do when you’re using a smart phone—mapping your next destination or texting somebody or Facebooking. It’s just a different pathway in the brain. Also, we have a really unique business model. We’re almost like an Amazon location, but with a curation and a soul that an algorithm cannot have.
Our bookstore started in the 1970s, when a guy named Chuck opened a small book store in uptown Whittier called the Little Old Bookshop. He was there until around 2005, and then another guy took it over and he moved the store to a bigger location, but after four years, he went out of business. We took over in 2011 and we were there for six years, before moving here, to downtown Fullerton. We were the last major bookstore in the Whittier area. There is a small store called The Dharma Center that specializes in new age and eastern philosophy books. But, aside from them, there are no other bookstores anywhere nearby. The closest Barnes and Noble was in Hacienda Heights and they closed several years ago.
I’m one of the owners, along with my mom and brother. We’ve had other entrepreneurial endeavors before, and we really wanted to do something together, and something that we were actually really going to love. When we saw that the Little Old Bookshop was for sale, we thought: That’s brilliant. That’s perfect. And we’ve just been on this roller coaster ever since.
We cover every section of books—we have every section a library has and then some. We also sell vinyl records, CDs, Blu-ray, DVDs, comics, graphic novels, manga, anime. We try to go in every direction.
Digital can’t compare with print or vinyl. The spectrum of audio that comes out of a vinyl record is wider than the spectrum of human hearing—so there’s more sound than we can hear. The digital spectrum is thinner—it’s smaller and compressed. There’s a resonance that people talk about when they listen to vinyl, or there’s a resonance that people talk about when they read books. It’s not the same experience when they go digital—physical things resonate more with you than digital things.
There are many neuroscience studies that show that memory retention is so much higher when you have a physical experience with a book. You’ll have moments where you’ll remember a certain quote from a certain page—because you have the muscle memory as well as the visual memory. That doesn’t happen in the digital landscape. The scientific way to express that is to say that it has more of an impact, more memory retention. But I really think it’s just that you’re more connected with that object. You connect with the energy of that object more when it’s nondigital.
We took over the book store the same year Borders books went bankrupt, and the public consciousness at that time was that book stores are a fading thing. But we’ve been in the black every day since we opened. We’ve never had trouble making sales. So I think it’s just a different breed of book store that has to be born and exist, and I think that can actually do really well in today’s world. Not to be too J.M. Barrie about it, but if people would just say to themselves: “I do believe in book stores, I do, I do!” We can exist and have no trouble existing. We’re a modern business! We’re not a relic!
After the initial up jump of the modern technological age, humanity will discover the tangible nontechnological is vital and more important to our evolution and thereby our joy. We do our small part to align with that future, and we commit to it every day. And it’s actually the easiest thing in the world to do, because books are awesome, and spending every day with them and those who love them is a gift every moment!
Pricing:
$$ WE PAY CASH $$ for books, Blu-Rays, DVDs, Manga, comics, CDs, records, textbooks, collectible texts and media, and anything else printed or recorded, and always sell them at half off the publisher’s price or less!! We also host open-mic poetry readings every other week, and Fire Sales every quarter!!!
Fire Sale! $1-$3 75,000 Used Books every 3 months; Memorial Day, Labor Day, Black Friday, Presidents’ Day
Used & New books, Comics, Records, CDs, BluRays, DVDs
$8 Hardback, $7 Paperback, <$5 Pockebooks, <$5 Children’s Books for Used
Organizer
Brad T Cox
Organizer
Fullerton, CA
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