Tulsa Landmark Still Thriving After All These Years

Someday soon, Steve Stephenson will hand over the keys to his 55-year-old store, Steve's Books & Magazines, to his daughter-in-law, Joanie Stephenson. When he does, it will mark an end of sorts, and a new beginning, for a store that has become a Tulsa, Oklahoma, landmark -- a store that opened soon after World War II and is still thriving today.

While the 85-year-old Stephenson may be selling the store to his daughter-in-law, he told BTW, that doesn't mean he's retiring. He currently keeps a schedule of 50 hours a week, and he shrugs off the idea of working any less. "I enjoy it," he explained. "Choose a vocation you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life."

Before it became Steve's Books & Magazines, Stephenson's store was called Steve's Sundries. First opened in 1947, the store sold non-prescription drugs, along with cosmetics, candy, cigarettes, malted milkshakes from a soda fountain (which is still there today), and a few books and magazines.

Steve's Sundries had a reputation for selling everything, including all the new-fangled items that became available in a booming post-war economy: from electric lawn mowers to fishing tackle to pantyhose. The store became popular, and Stephenson often heard customers say, "If Steve don't have it, he can get it, and if he can't get it, they don't make it."

Fifteen years later, discount houses started opening in Tulsa, Stephenson explained, and those drugstore chains could sell aspirin and other items for a lot less than he could. He quickly learned that he needed to diversify or those chains would wipe him out. "We had a few magazines and a few other books, and we knew the [book] wholesaler in Tulsa," Stephenson said. "So, we just decided to go whole-hog and change over to a bookstore."

In 1963, Steven's Books & Magazines was born. The store's new format was a hit, and has remained so with each new generation of customers. The 3,000-square-foot store stocks well over 50,000 books and carries 3,000 magazine titles. A minute amount of the inventory from Steve's Sundries carries over to this day, however. "We still sell candy bars, racing forms, gifts, and calendars," Stephenson said. "We serve soup and sandwiches, and old-fashioned malts, from the fountain."

And what would a bookstore be without jars of low-calorie specialty items, such as Hendrickson's Fat Free Salad Oil and Buttermist Spray, which are displayed prominently at the register? "The [local supermarket] tried to sell them, but it didn't work there," he said. "We buy 25 cases of the Buttermist Spray a month, and 10 cases of the Hendrickson's a month."

Stephenson added that, just recently, the store began offering a podiatry product line from New York. "We'll be the only ones in Tulsa who offer these [particular] products," he said.

In many ways, Stephenson's longevity and enthusiasm for his work embody the spirit of what it means to be an independent bookseller. He stressed that the bookstore owes its success to loyalty: from his staff -- one of whom has worked at Steve's for 25 years and another for 17 -- and from his customers, many of whom have been coming to his store since they were children. "People come in now with their grandchildren and they'll show them where they used to sit at the soda fountain," he said. "One said, 'My gum's probably still under the counter here!'"

Of course, Stephenson's success did not come without its challenges. Some 30 years after changing from a sundries store to a bookstore, Stephenson once again found himself faced with an onslaught of chains, this time giants like Barnes & Noble and Borders, one of which opened only a mile-and-a-half away from his store.

This time, however, Stephenson didn't blink. "I was low-key about their presence. We have two Borders and two Barnes & Noble [in Tulsa]," he explained. "They have not bothered us, because we just went on our own way and we didn't discount…. We had loyal customers."

Stephenson stressed that, in fact, he always maintained a very good relationship with the nearest Borders. "We get calls almost everyday from Borders asking if we have a certain book, and then [they] send us their customers!" he said.

Today, a key part of the bookstore's marketing program is Book Sense, and the store maintains a BookSense.com Web site, Stephenson noted. "It gives us a sense of being able to compete with the bigger stores," he said. "And we want to support the ABA."

So, after 55 years of running Steve's, Stephenson is getting ready to let his daughter-in-law take over. Over the years, Tulsa has grown. When he opened, the store was in the geographical center of the city; now, "I'm in the east part of town," Stephenson said. The neighborhood has grown older, and the retail landscape is as competitive as ever, if not more, with online booksellers. But throughout it all, some things have remained constant: the bookstore's success and those loyal customers who hold fast to the knowledge that -- whatever book or magazine it is they want -- they can get it at Steve's. --David Grogan