Grant Hofer pauses in the middle of the interview to say, “It’s been far more fulfilling than I anticipated. The fact that the business has been as successful as it’s been is just icing on the cake.” That, in a nutshell, describes Grant’s mandate for opening Four Points Books: have a business that pays the bills, gives back to the community, and fills his bucket every day.

The idea

Grant Hofer and his wife, Thiloma, relocated to the mountain town of Invermere, B.C. after successful careers — Grant in finance and Thiloma as a chartered accountant — and looked around for a way to serve their new community. After a trip to another town Grant commented to a friend how much he’d enjoyed visiting the bookstore. The friend said, “Why don’t you open one here?”

They both loved books and reading was a central part of their lives. Invermere didn’t have a new titles bookstore. Their deliberations didn’t take very long. One glance out their kitchen window at Four Points Mountain and they had the store’s name.

Starting out

Grant had never worked in retail, but from the start he approached the venture with a business mindset. He talked with other bookstore owners in the region and received tremendous support, encouragement and business wisdom. He approached Franklin Fixtures, a company dedicated to setting up the best bookstores, to help with the store’s design and shelving. When he crafted a business plan to take to the banks, he went conservative. 

“How many books would we sell on a Wednesday in February? I figured six,” Grant says.

Like every startup, he and Thiloma encountered challenges along the way. But their joy at being bookstore owners carried them through the difficult moments, and in May of 2022, Four Points Books opened its doors.

The first year

Grant spent the first year in the store, at the till, talking with the customers. 

“I honestly believe it’s the best place to learn about the people in your community,” he says. “You learn about their new hobby. Or you learn about the trip they’re going to take, because they’re ordering a guidebook. Or they’re delving into their family history. Or sometimes they just need a light read because it’s been a rough week.” 

He learned volumes about what customers wanted and what made his community work. He also learned that he needed staff.

Finding the right staff isn’t an easy fill, he says. Bookstore people aren’t regular retail workers. They need to know the book business, be widely read, and have a broad base of knowledge so they can talk to customers on a range of topics. Once he found the right people, he needed to keep them. He works hard to make his staff feel valued, and are compensated adequately and fairly. They have fun in the store and get a few perks along the way. He wants his employees to see a future for themselves at Four Points Books, a place where they can stay for the long-term.

The store design, staff, and Grant’s attention to listening and learning paid off. In 2023, one year after opening, Four Points Books won the People’s Choice Business of the Year award.

By the numbers

From the start, Grant approached the bookstore with a slightly different mindset than most booksellers.

“Both Thiloma and I come at this with a love of books, but also a very strong grounding in business fundamentals,” he says.

His previous career leaned heavily into data analytics, and he put those skills to use. He started gathering and analyzing data, and applying it to every aspect of the store. He knows which shelves turn over the most, how different books fare if they are spine-out or face-out, how to control margins and shipping costs, how to optimize his experiences with vendors.

He is careful and thoughtful about which books to bring into the store. He loves books, and has his own personal preferences, but tries to keep emotion and bias away from decisions of what goes on the shelves. Instead he looks at the data, and then the data below that. He can see, for example, how many copies of a book are ordered by stores across the province. Then he analyzes further — is the book part of a school curriculum, which would exaggerate the numbers? Is the data skewed because of an ethnic theme that is more popular in the Lower Mainland? Or would it do well in his store, in the British Columbia Rockies? Above all, he listens to his customers to find out what they want. If three people come in asking for a book, it’s definitely time to bring a few copies in. The result: a 3- to 4-per-cent returns rate, compared to the industry average of 16 per cent.

“But at the end of the day, I need happy customers, and that’s more important than making a buck,” he says. “It’s a bookstore; we’re not getting rich. It’s always going to be a labour of love.”

All about community

Giving back to the community is a strong part of the store’s mandate, and very important to Grant and Thiloma. Even before they opened, other booksellers warned him that special events and book signings were not always profitable. They put a strain on staff, and incurred costs such as advertising and catering. Four Points Books hosts them anyway. The store strongly supports local authors, hosts an Indigenous Speaker series in conjunction with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and holds fun events like the Vinyl Bookstore in December, an evening featuring Stuart McLean’s classic, Dave Cooks The Turkey. They collaborate with other local businesses on community projects, and also contribute behind the scenes to community enhancements where the bookstore’s name is never mentioned.

“This community has given us so much,” Grant says. “The network of people that we have around us as a family and, more broadly, as a bookstore has been far better and more genuine than anything that we’ve ever experienced in our life.” 

They make a point of paying forward the tremendous goodwill and support they’ve received.

A second store

When the bookstore in the nearby town of Golden went up for sale, Grant went to take a look — not with any intent to expand, but for another opportunity to learn. The owner asked him, why do you want to buy the store?

Grant laid out his love of books, his desire to keep bookstores in their community, and the potential economies of scale and improved relationship with publishers from having two stores. He ended up convincing himself. After some negotiations, Four Points Books had a second location in Golden, B.C..

Having excellent store managers is key to running a larger business, he says. With two stores separated by more than a hundred kilometres, he couldn’t be everywhere at once. He started looking for help. Grant now has two managers in place who know and love the business, and who he trusts to run the day to day while he focuses on the larger picture.

He also saw the need for someone to handle all the activities that are one step removed from the floor. He now has a dedicated staff person who runs events, works with publishers on cooperative ventures, takes care of the planters on the sidewalk, and assists him with a myriad of other special projects.

Nimbleness: The indie advantage

Grant and his staff pay attention to emerging book trends. Booktok in particular, he says, can catapult a title into instant popularity. Some trends that appear on social media are not relevant to his store. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, he gives as an example. 

“If someone comes in and says, ‘I really want to cry. I want to be crushingly sad,’ this is the first book we suggest,” he says.

It’s not for him. But it has a strong social media following, which keeps customers asking for it.

Although the shelves are certainly full, the bookstore keeps its inventory lean — if they have a title, it’s on the shelves, not in a back room. But they are constantly analyzing trends and constantly ordering. If a customer comes in and asks about a newly-popular book, often Grant has it already on order and will put their name on a copy. Like all small indies, however, Four Points can’t carry everything, and handles thousands of special orders every year.

Being an indie bookstore means we can be nimble, he says. The 7,000 books on the shelves constantly change according to the ebb and flow of customer requests, world events, social media trends and community needs.

What’s next?

“Hopefully we don’t expand for a while,” Grant laughs, although he’s always open to opportunity. “There are a few irons in the fire.”

When pressed on his plans for the immediate future, he says, “The integration of the new store in Golden was quite taxing on our entire team, so now we’ll slow down a bit and focus on other business priorities, like internal systems and marketing.”

Also, he wants to enjoy Invermere and the Columbia Valley, the place he and Thiloma now call home, and the community that has treated them so well. Continuing to build on a successful business, and taking a breath, will position Four Points Books for whatever opportunity comes next.

For more information on Four Points Books, visit: www.fourpointsbooks.ca.

Tony Berryman is a freelance writer and author of The Night Nurse, which was published in 2020. He also co-writes under the pen name, Trigger Jones. Learn more about Tony’s books at: www.tonyberryman.com.