Shawnee’s Young Entrepreneur

from Shawnee Magazine Spring/Summer 2024

Setting the Stage

Halley Vincent, with help from her mother, Alisha, opened Seven Stories bookstore at age 12. Two years later, she’s still the youngest bookseller in the US.

article by Jill Dutton

photos by Katie Lewis

It started with a school bake sale. Nothing out of the ordinary, unless you take into consideration that the visionary behind the fundraiser was 8-year-old Halley Vincent. Still, Halley couldn’t imagine at the time that the bake sale would eventually lead her to open a bookstore at age 12.

In her bookstore, Seven Stories, Halley Vincent holds a photo of her traveling library from a few years ago. She donated books to everyone in her neighborhood.

“Sometimes people assume that I just woke up and said, ‘I want to have a bookstore.’ But it started when I was 8 years old, and I wanted to hold a bake sale. When I came home with all the money I had earned from selling all of our baked goods—and there was quite a bit because I’d sold out of everything—my mom asked me who I was going to donate it to. I love animals, so I decided to donate it to the pet shelter where we had gotten our dog from at the time, Great Plains SPCA.”

Halley, now 14, feels the steps from a bake sale at age 8, to reading to animals at the shelter, to a tiny library and to a mobile bookstore led her at long-last to a physical store where many of her passions—books, animals, diversity, philanthropy—meld together in a community space.

“I was a shy kid, but I liked fundraising,” Halley says. “So I held another bake sale. And another. Every time I did another fundraiser, it just got bigger and better. After a while, I created Paws Up KC, a nonprofit organization.”

Through Paws Up KC, Halley raises funds for pet shelters and literacy organizations. Her main fundraising vehicle, after the bake sales, is a free community bookmobile. In 2023, Halley says she donated 800 books at 52 events. She can be found at Moonlight Markets and every Saturday at the Shawnee Famers Market, directly across the street from her bookstore, Seven Stories.

During the pandemic, and unable to do fundraising or work at the shelter in person, she opened a tiny free library in front of her home. When her supply of donated books grew to more than the tiny library—and her garage—could contain, Halley converted a riding lawn mower into a traveling library and started riding around her neighborhood donating books to anyone interested.

Seven Stories

“I don’t know that I’d necessarily say (I had) a specific idea for a bookstore. Instead, everything just fell into place to get here. Everything truly just happened, one step at a time, and here I am,” Halley says.

Their first physical bookstore opened because of Alisha’s desire to find an artist’s studio for herself. In 2022, they transformed a small, irregularly shaped space behind the current Mother Clucker! location into an artist’s studio and bookstore.

“We worked together to create a cozy and inviting space,” Alisha says. “We featured seven books on a natural ledge each month, creating the ‘Seven Stories’ moniker for the space.”

In 2023, the store moved to its current home on Johnson Drive. With such a small space, Halley says it’s important to hand-select books she finds of interest and to ask customers their reading preferences.

A Diverse Selection

The book selection is often as simple as Halley choosing topics she finds interesting. She also special orders books based on requests and uses customer feedback to help her tailor book purchases. Being the only bookseller in the area, Halley has tapped into a nostalgia market: those who enjoy perusing a bookstore, holding a book in their hands, and speaking with a bookseller in person.

Halley specializes in diverse children’s and young adult titles and keeps the stock rotating so there’s something new each time anyone visits.

“Every 30 days, Halley will evaluate what is selling, and what is still sitting on the shelves, and order new items based on her inventory. That means that each month there’s a 35% flip of what’s in stock so there’s always something new for return visitors,” Alisha says.

While the book selections are as diverse as the authors Halley features, she says she specializes in one topic: diverse children’s books.

“We also carry Mandarin- and Spanish-language books, which is not common in most bookstores,” Halley says.

Forty percent of the store is dedicated to nonfiction titles, and local author events are popular at Seven Stories.

In addition to the books, visitors find local artwork as well as local honey, women’s safety devices, glassware, and other items that Halley thinks will interest customers. The store has a handicapped-accessible bathroom with a baby-changing table.

With so much media coverage, Halley says she has visitors who come from as far as Wichita, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Nebraska to purchase books. One customer even brought a news clipping for Halley to sign.

Tiny Shop, Big Heart

Where did this gift for philanthropy, community involvement, and a love of books come from? Most likely, she inherited a bit of creativity and vision from her artist mother.

When she was younger, Halley began painting rocks to leave in spots for others to find. She liked the creative aspect of painting, but even more so the thought of bringing unexpected joy to others.

That gift for bringing joy continues, and Halley says her mission is rooted in a natural ability for sales, and a love of community, philanthropy, and helping others.

“It’s important for me to make sure my community feels represented,” Halley says.

Alisha says of her daughter’s mature vision at such a young age: “I’m not surprised by the direction that Halley has taken at such a young age, and many people who knew her even as young as 2 or 3 often come into the store and say the same. It feels like she was born to do this, and naturally, as her mom, I want to help facilitate her doing more of what she loves and what she’s good at.

“It’s a magical thing to be able to step back and see your kid at any age doing the thing that they were maybe meant to do. And while I understand she’s doing these things at a younger age than most of us, I also really value the fact that she’s not satisfied to just try the one thing. She’s always pushing the envelope and taking herself out of her comfort zone to make things bigger and better.”