According to Elizabeth Mattson, co-owner of Henry’ s Books, that is one of the most important questions you can ask.
What are you reading right now?
According to Elizabeth Mattson, co-owner of Henry’ s Books, that is one of the most important questions you can ask.
Located at 111 East Hudson Street in Spearfish, Henry’ s Books started as a grassroots crowdfunding campaign. Elizabeth and her husband Dylan knew that Spearfish did not have a bookstore, but they thought it would be a good fit for the town.
Although owning a bookstore wasn’ t necessarily a childhood dream, Elizabeth’ s aspirations have always featured entrepreneurial and community-oriented aspects. Thus, opening a store seemed like the next right thing to do.
Having worked in the online business space doing marketing for a time, Elizabeth said,“ I couldn’ t pass up the opportunity to be in a space that was more face-to-face and people-oriented with opportunity for tangible community building.”
Based on her research, Elizabeth started with a long list of everything she knew they would need to do to open their doors. After that, she started chipping away at it one task at a time. They began the groundwork in the spring of 2023, and the crowdfunding campaign began that fall.
Elizabeth said they went the crowdfunding route because they felt it was important to let the community be part of the business from the very beginning.
“ We wanted to give people the opportunity to have stake in helping bring something to fruition that’ s bigger than themselves, to be able to come into a space and say,‘ I helped make this happen,’” said Elizabeth.
Although their Kickstarter campaign did not reach its goal, Elizabeth said they received a wealth of knowledge regarding the reading preferences of the Spearfish community.
“ There was truly no better way for us to validate the want and need for this than our crowdfunding,” said Elizabeth.
Elizabeth took the winter to regroup, and that’ s when she received a phone call from the owner of Nonna’ s Kitchen, a restaurant in Spearfish.
“ He said,‘ I’ ve got this weird space back behind the restaurant. Do you want to come take a look?’ He knew I was looking for something, and it was a horrible mess in here,” said Elizabeth,“ but I could see it so clearly what a perfect space this would be for a bookstore and for our community.”
The space had been dearly loved over the years and was already a center of community in Spearfish.
Henry’ s Books is a crowd-funded indie bookstore dedicated to fostering a love of reading and building community in Spearfish. myblackshillscountry. com
Down Country Roads
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