TRAVERSE CITY — Brilliant Books in Traverse city is asking for the public’s help as they are facing a hardship.
The owner of the bookstore Peter Makin said that they have been in a crunch ever since the pandemic hit.
“Well, we found ourselves in the at the beginning of the year with a bit of a cash crunch. It really stems way back from from the pandemic when we we invested in a lot of infrastructure to better keep going. We also invested in our staff to keep them going. And we took on a lot of debt, thinking that as things go back to normal, that would be fine,” said Makin.
The store has been in downtown Traverse City for more than a decade
“Things did not go back to normal. There was inflation. We had to give the world reserve pay rises to all of our staff. We paid them fairly well. So in other words, to be an excellent bookstore is expensive. And we invested that and went into a lot of debt. And as of now, we just have problems with the immediate post-Christmas bills,” said Makin.
They say that they put money towards infrastructure and their staff near the pandemic to help support them.
“We’ve got a whole bunch of school book fairs that are coming in March and April. We do book fairs for nearly all of the different camp schools, and that turns out to be very well, very, very nice for them, too, because we give them back 20% of the earnings that we get from the books, from the book fairs,” he said.
He said they though that they would be able to recover, but have not since with the inflation and costs going up. He said the community has been a big help so far.
“What we’re hoping for is that our that we we hit our goal and a GoFundMe, because that will make a huge difference. That will mean that we we will be able to be on an even keel from here on. And that that will make a big difference to us,” he said.
