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More a dream than a business

Tattered Cover’s future owners settle into Colorado

DENVER – Len Vlahos and his wife, Kristen Gilligan, dreamed of having their own little bookstore.

The book-industry veterans met while working for the American Booksellers Association, a trade group that supports independent booksellers across the U.S.

“Many people who work in publishing and bookselling have a pipe dream of having their own bookstore. We both had that,” Gilligan said. “It has always been part of us and who we are and who we knew we wanted to be eventually.”

“Their” dream bookstore will not be little at all, but The Tattered Cover, one of the most respected indie booksellers in the nation.

“I feel like we have been in training for our entire careers for this moment,” she said. “Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve learned in the book industry for years has led up to this – let’s continue the Tattered Cover’s legend and tradition.

“What Tattered Cover is to Denver, in the world of books and publishing, it has that reputation nationally. It is iconic, and Joyce (Meskis) is iconic,” Vlahos said. “It just seemed like that could never possibly happen.”

The future owners of the Tattered Cover Book Store are now in the middle of an intensive orientation with longtime owner Joyce Meskis to learn the business, with its four retail locations in the Denver area and three licensed outposts at Denver International Airport.

The couple joined the stores’ senior management team July 1 – one short week after moving their young family cross-country from Stamford, Connecticut. After a two-year transition period, Meskis will turn over a controlling interest to Vlahos and Gilligan in 2017, remaining available as a consultant.

Vlahos said that although some change is inevitable, he and his wife are committed to maintaining the environment Meskis has built, book by book, store by store, since she bought the once-struggling bookshop in the Cherry Creek North neighborhood in 1974.

“Joyce is leaving shoes that we cannot fill. No one can come in and fill those shoes,” Vlahos said. “We’re just going to have to walk this in our own shoes and figure out how to do it right.

“What Joyce is leaving behind when she retires is the philosophy she’s put in place,” he said. “It’s customer centric – the customer is at the heart of everything we do – it’s about the protection of the First Amendment, and it’s about the community.”

All eyes will be on Vlahos and Gilligan as the transition unfolds, said Jon Schallert, a Longmont-based retail and marketing consultant. They are not only taking over a small chain of retail stores, he said.

“Unfair or not, accurate or not, consumers are going to walk in there with Len and Kristen being the new owners and they’re going to make judgments about how this is different once Joyce has left,” Schallert said. “Typically, a business doesn’t have the reputation, the expectations, as high as consumers have of this business.

“If they keep it absolutely the same, in my mind, they’re going to be falling short with some consumers,” Schallert said. “They’ve got to do something above and beyond that’s really going to put their own stamp on what memorable means.”



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