Teaching Customers More Than a Language

As the popularity of ABA's educational seminar "Creating Killer Events" at last month's BookExpo America demonstrated, successful independent booksellers are always looking for ways to strengthen their position as community centers through events with, and without, authors (see related story). At Manhattan's Rizzoli Bookstore, the challenge was recently met with a series of free Italian lessons that successfully reinforced the store's objective of serving as a cultural center for the neighborhood.

Inside Rizzoli Bookstore Photo:Linda Pricci

Rizzoli Bookstore, purveyor of art, architecture, and design books occupies three stories of a building built in 1900 in midtown Manhattan. The bookstore runs a successful author series, but staff wanted to expand into other types of events. Offering free Italian lessons was one idea that came out of a brainstorming session.

"Our customers are people who not only love art and architecture, but love learning about world culture," said Rizzoli publicist Meg Parsont. "Since the bookstore does have its roots in Italy, it made sense to branch out from the standard book signings and offer free Italian lessons. Our customers know us for our huge and wonderful inventory of books on architecture. This is a fun new direction for us to take into something cultural. We're broadening our scope."

The lessons are geared to those just beginning to learn Italian, and the overall emphasis in on enjoying the beauty of the language. "It's an opportunity to start learning Italian at a basic level. There's no anxiety or stress -- it's just fun," said Parsont. "The lessons are conversational, about food and wine. We've gotten such a great reaction."

Rizzoli began by offering, on four consecutive Sundays in April and May, a series of hour-long classes in Italian led by Elda Buonanno, an adjunct instructor of Italian at Columbia University and St. John's University. Soon another session was needed, and then two more sessions of an additional four-week series. Each class builds on previous lessons, but new customers can join at any time.

Parsont explained that arrangements for the class "all fell into place easily." Rizzoli found Buonanno through Edizioni Farinelli Books, publisher of the books Rizzoli is using for the classes: Diario Della Studentessa Jean, which features concise, easily readable stories, and the companion exercise workbook, Eserciziario. The publisher is also helping to sponsor the program.

Finding such an overwhelming interest in the lessons, Rizolli staff is planning to further expand on their authorless events. "We're already looking at our fall schedule," said Parsont. "We'll continue doing signings during the week, but we thought we'd do more interesting culturally oriented events on Sundays. We're trying to brand the idea of Sundays at Rizzoli. We'll probably offer sketching workshops, knitting workshops. We want to work as much as possible with our neighbors, so we're looking into getting a local art teacher for the sketching workshop. We also want to do more with our wine tasting and cheese tasting.... The bookstore is beautiful and it lends itself to events that are more interactive."

Parsont noted that the classes have resulted in a considerable uptick in Sunday sales, but the real boon, she said, was continuing to meet Rizzoli's objective of serving as a cultural center for the neighborhood. "Our customers are interested in so many different things," Parsont noted. "We've always been a cultural hub. Now we're trying to branch out and delve into subjects that we haven't explored as much in the past. We want to encourage the community feeling that has been building over the past few months." --Karen Schechner