5 minute read
Binding Community Through Books
Q&A with Sarah Timmcke and Chuck Blair, owners of Bound Books
BY JJ SHEFFER | DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
We spoke with Sarah Timmcke and Chuck Blair, owners of Bound Books, Downtown York’s newest bookshop. Sarah and Chuck are relative newcomers to York; Sarah relocated here six years ago from Parkton, Maryland, and Chuck moved in with Sarah after 30 years in Lancaster. Their collective love of books and reading, plants, and community presented them with an opportunity to leave their office jobs, and when the perfect storefront came available in Downtown York, they took the leap together. Bound has quickly become a hot spot for meeting, reading, discovering new books, and connecting.
Q: Tell us about the shop!
SARAH: Bound Books is an independent bookstore with a curated selection of new books, plants, gift items, and a small selection of pastries and beverages. Our goal is to bind the community together through a love of reading.
“Our goal is to bind the community together through a love of reading.” - Sarah Timmcke, Bound Books
Q: What led you to open a bookshop?
CHUCK: Several things came together that brought us to this point. We were both in careers that didn’t allow for much creativity. I was looking for a challenge outside of the 9-5 IT career that I have been in for more than 25 years. We both share a love of books and I had considered working in a bookstore or library as a pre-retirement plan. Eventually that morphed into the idea: “What if I owned a bookstore?”
SARAH: I was mostly looking for a career that got me outside of an office environment, but I also wanted a job with some form of artistic expression, which I was lacking in past positions. Once Chuck shared his idea of owning a bookstore, I was sold but I had one stipulation – we had to have plants.
Q: Why did you choose to be located in Downtown York?
CHUCK: Well, first we live in York and it was easy to imagine opening a location that would keep our lives in York. We honestly looked at several small towns and kept on coming back to the fact that this was our home base. We also noticed a need in Downtown York for more retail shopping options, especially a bookshop.
SARAH: Truthfully, the exact location found us! We were not at all prepared to open a store, but the space presented itself and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. The way things came together seemed very serendipitous.
Q: Tell us about the plants!
SARAH: We get our plants from Hueter’s Greenhouses. One of our goals early on was to try and partner with as many local businesses as we could, so we feel like we really lucked out when we were able to work with Hueter’s. While selecting our plants for the store we focus on finding a variety of easy-to-care-for small to medium houseplantsnothing too large or too needy. We also have a selection of pots that people can mix and match with their plant.
CHUCK: We also have a variety of gift items that are in some way related to plants, writing, or reading. We try to be selective about the items we sell to be sure that they fit the overall feel of the store. I have to admit I break that rule sometimes when picking funny cards or corny stickers.
Q: What about food and beverages?
SARAH: Since we are both originally from other areas, we wanted to bring a bit of our hometowns to our customers, so we chose vendors from those areas. Our coffee is from Square One in Lancaster, our tea is from Wight Tea Co. in Baltimore, and our pastries are from The Contented Rooster, in Parkton, MD. We wanted our customers to be able to sit down with a cup of coffee or tea and a pastry while they read. We offer three types of drip coffees, more than 10 varieties of teas, and our baked goods include cookies, scones, muffins, and the very popular lavender shortbread.
Q: What kind of programming do you host?
CHUCK: We’ve already had a couple of book clubs meet in our space which is something that we definitely want to do more of in the future. We’ve had an evening with live music which went very well. We are currently scheduling a children’s story time with a local author, and plan to continue with regular story times. Also, once we get better established with the publishing community, we plan to host author events.
Q: Has anything about opening your new business in Downtown York surprised you?
CHUCK: We were very pleased to get such a warm welcome from the downtown community and the book-loving residents of York! We have had so many people come in and say things like “York needed this!,” and it was a much more enthusiastic response than we expected.
Q: What is your favorite part about operating your business?
CHUCK: We love meeting our customers and finding out what they are reading, what they enjoy, and what they are looking for from us. We said early on that we want to build a sense of community, which the name “Bound” plays into. It’s so much fun when we can recommend a great read to someone and have them come back and talk about it with us.
SARAH: As the person who is in the store the most (Chuck is still working his day job) I have to say that I am really enjoying getting to know the “regular” customers. It’s always nice to see familiar faces.
