Open and bright, with sunlight streaming through windows onto stairs winding between levels of floors. The welcoming bookstore is warm and comfy. Colorful books line every shelf and table in sight, and despite the sprawling amount of space present, it somehow manages to feel close and secluded, with reading nooks and lounging corners tucked away in different spots throughout the store.
People stream in and out all day. It’s busy. Any bookworm would be happy to spend time lost in their reading amid a place like this. It’s clearly a hotspot for readers and writers alike. The Tattered Cover has the atmosphere anyone would want in any classic old bookstore.
Denver’s Tattered Cover Bookstore, one of the nation’s largest independent bookstore chains, celebrated its 50th year anniversary this year. And yet, it seems like it’s just the beginning due to new ownership and new surprising areas of growth.
The bookstore has persevered through the competition from digital expansion and online media, and now it’s expanding beyond Denver. Yet despite being rivaled by the world of online expansion, it is growing in business, and excitedly enough, it may be partially thanks to a new growth from flourishing youthful interest in the establishment.
In fact, just this past June, the Tattered Cover opened its first official location outside of Denver in Colorado Springs. For a bookstore that has deep roots here, this is exciting, and raises the question of how an independent chain is doing so well even after a global pandemic and a transition in ownership.
According to a recent article from The Denver Post, this blossoming expansion is mainly due to local support. CEO Kwame Spearman said that the Tattered Cover’s growth is thanks to the pleasant experiences of customers and the love of supporting local businesses that Coloradans possess.
This is undoubtedly important and appears to be true if we go by the independent culture craze in Colorado’s city hubs. However, a deeper look at the support of Tattered Cover may reveal to us another possible perspective on why it’s been so successful in recent years.
It has to do with young people’s passion for nostalgia.
A recent article from Business Insider on the bookstore’s expansion, cited the ever-increasing statistics of book sales in the US, and how it appeared to be the youth of today driving the growth.
Bookstore chains are becoming fashionably cool again, thanks to the nostalgia-obsessed Millennials and Gen Z trendsetters online. This romanticization of the times that preceded the digital age and offered a more simplistic lifestyle is giving life to old school entertainment attractions such as enjoying physical bookstores like the Tattered Cover.
Upon visiting one of the bookstore’s locations, to find out if the frequent visitors felt that this was the case, it was clear that the general crowd regularly passing through the store was comprised of younger people.
One regular said, "I think it's a good mix of children and maybe some middle-aged, some older people..." This was coming from Brinda, a long-term customer of the Tattered Cover, and a member of an older generation. Her observations were the result of frequenting the store she described as having "a bright atmosphere."
So, perhaps the demographic has more often been mixed? Consisting of people of all ages? Have families and the elderly also been drawn to the warm, homey feel of Tattered Cover? It would be likely.
However, another key bit of insight came from two high school students, Adella and Sylvia, absorbed in their studies tucked into a sequestered corner of the store.
“I come here like every single day for lunch and get a tea while I do homework or whatever,” one of the students said. “It’s really nice here. I like it,” the other student added.
Both students thought they observed more people their age coming to the store.
It was interesting thing to note, just after these comments were made, a flock of college and high school students flew in to settle on different perches around the store. Instead of populating their campus libraries and studying at home, they had chosen to meet up for homework and reading sessions at the Tattered Cover instead.
In fact, more than one Tattered Cover bookstore location was seen to host youths who had taken up their spots in the in-store corners to study and enjoy their reading.
Whether they are the driving force behind the Tattered Cover’s expansion or not, it was something pleasant to see, especially when taking into consideration how dramatically large the impact of the Internet and online reading have been on bookstores.
But if the observations made by Business Insider and other sources are accurate, and if there truly is a correlation between escalating book sales and the nostalgia-inspired trends that have overtaken the younger generations today, then it would only make sense for the Tattered Cover to become a hotspot.
Though in the end, what matters most is that there are still bookstores being populated by people from newer generations. It matters that bookstores like the Tattered Cover are still growing, because in the wake of the new digital era, not every independent company that prioritizes the relevance of physical media will remain as strong as they used to.
If it’s nostalgia keeping places like this alive, then we can hope the trend continues. And in the mean time, cheers to the lively expansion of Colorado’s iconic bookstore!
