Builders Booksource -- 25 Years of Inspiration and Technical Know-How

George and Sally Kiskaddon, owners of Berkeley, California's Builders Booksource, haven't decided precisely how they will be celebrating their store's silver anniversary, but they plan to "make a big deal of it," said George Kiskaddon. "We're going to have a yearlong exclamation of joy."

The 2,000-square-foot store -- which sells books, reference material, and software for contractors, designers, architects, do-it-yourselfers, and others -- opened on April 3, 1982, as a direct result of George Kiskaddon's own building projects, successful and otherwise. After completing his Bachelors in Invertebrate Physiology and Ecology at the University of California -- Berkeley, he began working on a series of remodels with family friends. "I was overly confident and sort of jumped into home remodeling," he recently told BTW. "I did foolish things and got into trouble and went to bookstores to bail myself out." On his information forays, Kiskaddon often couldn't find the resources that he and Sally needed to complete their projects, so the husband-and-wife team created Builders Booksource, a community resource for books on building, design, and more.

The store's Fourth Street neighborhood was originally filled with "quasi-industrial" buildings bought and remodeled by a developer who named the area the Building Design Center. "That was one of the reasons we opened here," said Kiskaddon. "When we moved in, there was a plumbing fixture company, a wood-working supply store, an organization called the Owner Builder Center, and tub makers. We were a bunch of interesting, hippy, entrepreneurial businesses."

Now things have "gone kind of upscale," said Kiskaddon. What used to be an inexpensive place to rent retail space is almost prohibitively expensive, but the neighborhood is still unusual and entrepreneurial. And there remain other area stalwarts, including Bette's Oceanview Diner, which opened several days after Builders Booksource in 1982 and still serves "the best breakfast in the western world," opined Kiskaddon. Another constant, he noted, was the concentration of loyal book buyers. "Berkeley and Fourth Street continue to be an amazing mecca of wonderfully overeducated consumers who love books."

Customers so appreciated the bookstore, many begged to have another branch across the bridge in San Francisco. That location in Ghirardelli Square did "okay" for about 15 years, said Kiskaddon. When the building needed to be retrofitted for earthquakes, however, the landlords decided against renewing Builders Booksource's lease, and instead reopened the building as a hotel. The Kiskaddons' business partner in the San Francisco location opted out, and the couple decided to focus their efforts on the main store in Berkeley.

Kiskaddon was involved in the Northern California Independent Booksellers committee that originated the idea of Book Sense, and Builders Booksource has been a Book Sense store since the program launched nationally in 1999. The store was an early adopter of the Book Sense Gift Card Program, and Kiskaddon described the cards as a wonderful tool. "We've basically created our own customized card presenter with our logo," he explained. "We capitalized on the idea of a gift card and presenter as a really cool and fun gift. We designed a new presenter for this past holiday season, and we'll do another with our 25th anniversary logo."

The Builders Booksource list of top-sellers differs somewhat from other Book Sense bookstores. "When you get a bunch of booksellers around a table, they'll talk about what they're reading and what's hot, and I would mention that the Uniformed Building Code (Uniform Building Code Commission) was doing great." Currently, books about building green are selling very well, especially Good Green Kitchens by Jennifer Roberts (Gibbs Smith). Kiskaddon also noted that the store has "never had something as hot as Concrete Countertops" by local writer Fu-Tung Cheng and Eric Olsen (Taunton Press), which he encouraged a reluctant Taunton Press to publish. Builders Booksource alone has sold more than 2,000 copies, he said.

Credit for the store's success is largely owed to Sally, according to Kiskaddon, along with the "huge number of very well educated contractors, builders, home owners, and do-it-yourselfers" in the Bay Area.

When he and Sally named the store, their intention was that the word "builders" would be inclusive. "We use builders in the broadest possible context," he explained. "A builder is anyone who is interested in their built environment, anyone -- homeowners, architects, engineers, landscapers, interior designers. We've played with a billion different catchphrases to show what we're about. My fallback, and favorite, is 'Builders Booksource is about inspiration and technical know-how.' That's how I see us. That gives almost anybody the impetus to visit." --Karen Schechner