Variety & Customer Service Key to Pages for All Ages' Success

Pages for All Ages Books, Music, Cafe & DVDs has been serving the Illinois communities of Champaign-Urbana-Savoy since June 1988. Brandon and Susan Griffing founded the store, but in a different location, with far less floor space and fewer titles, and certainly no DVDs.

The 22,000-square-foot store opened at its current location at Savoy Plaza in Savoy, five years ago, when the Griffings moved their business from a more residential area and expanded enough for a cafe and large music collection.

Steven Bentz, Pages for All Ages events and marketing coordinator and a 14-year veteran of the store, explained that the store offers a selection that residents of the eclectic area respond to. "We definitely have a large college population [Champaign-Urbana is the home of the University of Illinois], but this is not just an academic community -- it's a real mix. We have all the big chain bookstores nearby, but people come here for our excellent service that is both personalized and thorough. We keep our inventory fresh by having our ears to the ground, knowing what's being talked about on our NPR affiliate."

Bentz told BTW that Book Sense Picks are another successful way that staff informs themselves and customers about exciting, less hyped titles. "We have a large display of Book Sense Picks, from this month and some from past months. It's the first thing that customers see when they enter the store. We took it away for our holiday display, and we got so many complaints, we had to put it back right away. We also feature the lists on our website."

July 16 is writ large on Bentz's calendar. As events coordinator, he looks ahead to the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with a mixture of trepidation and delight. "We had a thousand people in the store for the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," he noted. "We'll have to think of some new things for this one." --Nomi Schwartz