FORT COLLINS
From her perch behind the counter at Old Firehouse Books, Teresa Steele recently noticed a young couple wander into the store from the tea shop next door and move among the shelves chatting about the titles they’d read, or wanted to read.
Observing customers and catching wisps of excited conversation are just a couple of the satisfying perks of overseeing this anchor of the city’s historic Old Town, where retail and relationships often converge.
“You could just kind of tell with the body language that either it’s a first date or they’re just starting to date,” she recalls with a smile, “because they’re both like, ‘Oh, I’ve never heard of that book. Maybe I’ll have to look into it.’
“They’re still, like, in that honeymoon phase.”
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In a sense, so are the bookstore’s new co-owners, Steele and Revati Kilaparti, longtime employees who, as of Jan. 1, purchased it from the woman who hired them years ago and now steps slowly into the background — making herself available to answer questions in this transitional phase but also trusting the abilities and judgment of the women who will build on the store’s legacy.
At 79, Susie Wilmer experiences the full range of emotions that come with the unique experience of selling an independent bookstore — a transaction that touches on elements of identity, literary love and an enduring sense of community. It’s a financial calculation, but also a balancing of loss and hope, pride in what has been and promise of what’s to come.
Turning the page to a next generation in the bookselling business means many things. Sifting through offers to find the right fit. Cobbling together a financial agreement. Mapping out a transition. In the case of an independent bookstore nursed to health and prosperity by decades of perseverance, it also means an excruciating goodbye.
“I’ve got all degrees of sad, and anxiety attacks and everything,” Wilmer says. “But I really have faith in them.”
Kilaparti, 40, started working for Wilmer in 2008, when she was still an undergraduate at Colorado State and the bookstore was called Book Rack at a different Fort Collins location. After a few years, feeling she wasn’t on a career path, she became a veterinary technician.
But a few years into that, Kilaparti felt burned out and went back to CSU to earn a master’s degree in business. In 2017, she reconnected with Wilmer and, eventually, had both the schooling and the experience — she’s been manager for the last five years — to imagine purchasing Old Firehouse Books.
LEFT: Susie Wilmer, owner of Old Firehouse Books for 25 years, recently sold the independent bookstore to Revati Kilaparti and Teresa Steele, two longtime employees. RIGHT: Kilaparti arranges books on a shelf. (Tanya Fabian, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Steele, 42, had worked at a Loveland bookstore where she’d met Wilmer a couple of times through the store’s owner. When that store closed, she learned that Wilmer was hiring and soon hopped aboard. Gradually, she and Kilaparti began taking on larger roles as Wilmer dialed back.
“So it was just that gradual kind of relinquishing control,” Kilaparti says. “And then I realized I’m doing a lot of the things an active owner would do.”
“Susie had kind of stepped away from the day-to-day operations and Revati and I were doing more of the behind the scenes stuff,” Steele adds. “So it just seemed like a natural segue when she decided to get really serious about (selling).”
After years of working together, the women felt they complemented each other well. Steele says Kilaparti, with her academic grounding in business, is especially well suited to address finances and “the nitty-gritty of stuff.” Kilaparti notes that while she’s hesitant to make big decisions, Steele brings the energy to jump in and act on ideas.
But they also realize that Wilmer is a tough act to follow. And in that sense, it’s comforting to know that she’s never far away, even if Old Firehouse Books is no longer just her baby, but their baby, thanks to Wilmer retaining a tiny slice of ownership.
“To keep a bookstore alive for as long as Susie did,” Steele says, “just speaks to the fact that she was obviously doing something right.”
“I said, ‘Hire me.’ And they did.”
Susie Wilmer was a newly minted MBA in the early 1980s when recession hit. With limited means to feed her appetite for fiction — sci-fi classics by Heinlein and Asimov were her literary wheelhouse — she looked for used books at Book Rack, a franchise store on South College Avenue owned by Bill Hawk.
On one visit, she learned that an employee had just been let go and “for once in my life, I thought fast enough, and I said, ‘Hire me.’ And they did.”
In 1985, she and her now late husband, Dick Sommerfeld, became partners with Hawk, and opened a second Book Rack store in Cheyenne and in the late ’80s a third in Greeley. (Both the Cheyenne and Greeley stores have since closed.)
But in 2001 they bought out Hawk’s Fort Collins location and revitalized the operation, “just mainly by being there and knowing what I was selling,” Wilmer says. Though Sommerfeld had a knack for marketing that proved useful for the shop, his primary work was as a scientist with the Forest Service.
Books were Wilmer’s passion.
When she moved the Fort Collins store just two blocks away on College Avenue, to a spot next to a popular Dairy Queen, it really started to take off. But then the recession of 2008 came along. Wilmer recalls that during the downturn, space opened up at the Old Firehouse building — a historic site in a popular business district — when a previous tenant went out of business.
She jumped at the opportunity, and after her 2009 move-in — with a name change as a nod to architectural history — it proved a comfortable fit. Two neighboring businesses, Happy Lucky’s Teahouse and The Forge Publick House, currently add to the community vibe.
“From the first day, the fabulous foot traffic of Old Town was amazing,” she says.
As the years wore on, Wilmer started coming to grips with the fact that she’d eventually need to let go. But where to find a worthy successor? They’d have to be smart, responsible, tuned in to the unique machinations of the business and, perhaps above all, passionate about books. That’s what made longtime employees worth a serious look.
Steele and Kilaparti checked all boxes, to differing degrees. Kilaparti reads a lot “for a normal person,” Wilmer observes, while noting Steele consumes books like she used to — at a rate of five or six titles a week, sometimes more.
“I read most of the classics at one time or another, but I’m not a ‘literary type,’” Wilmer says. “I hire them, though, and they sell books quite well. And a lot of them have dreams of publishing someday, and they think hanging out at a bookstore will help them. I’m not sure about that.
“But we never have trouble finding intelligent, capable people, because the graduate department over at CSU churns them out. They love to read. They love to talk books. They love to sell books. We have a new crop every year, and some of them really like the business, because it is a unique business. It’s a constant learning curve. It’s a fascination.”
About a year and a half ago, she began having serious discussions with Steele and Kilaparti. They took their time deciding on an ownership structure and settled on Wilmer retaining a 2% interest with the two longtime employees owning the rest.
Preferring to keep banks out of the equation, Wilmer financed the deal for the new owners.
“It feels like we’ve worked out something that ensures their ability to stay in business and make money,” Wilmer says, “because I want to ensure the store’s survival as much as anything else.”
Books as fabric of the community
Intense personal ties like those described by Wilmer often figure prominently when independent bookstores, local hubs of both social and retail activity, change ownership. Nicole Sullivan has experienced those transactions from both sides.
She launched the popular BookBar, a neighborhood space for both literature and libations, in northwest Denver back in 2013, and in 2021 found herself a buyer when the longtime Denver children’s bookstore called The Bookies came calling.
Original owner Sue Lubeck had died, and the family sought to sell by first feeling out other independent bookstore owners. For Sullivan, the acquisition made business sense as a move toward diversification — two stores with different customer demographics that could combine back office operations. Plus, she appreciated the history of a more than 50-year-old institution whose clientele spanned generations.
The way The Bookies was woven into the fabric of the community reflected a common theme among bookstores.
“It’s very emotional,” Sullivan says. “As an owner, you don’t want to sell to an investor who’s going to come in and make all these changes and turn it into a corporation. Most smaller independent bookstores try everything in their power to not do that and to sell to somebody who has, if not the same, a very similar vision to the original mission of the store and a commitment to the community.
“It’s not about who comes in with the most cash.”
By 2023, though, Sullivan felt the strain of operating two bookstores at the same time she realized she needed to carve out more time for her family. In large part, she felt that she wanted to get away from the bar aspect of BookBar and focus on literacy and literature. So she decided to close BookBar, rather than sell it.
“My identity was so wrapped up in it, it would have been really difficult for me to sell to a different owner,” she says. “And I couldn’t turn around and close The Bookies after having just purchased it and having this huge legacy that I felt responsible for.”
Preserving that legacy also figured into her decision to move The Bookies (it’s now known as The Bookies Bookstore) in 2024 from its longtime location tucked away in a Denver strip mall off South Colorado Boulevard to a more visible standalone building at South Holly Street and East Evans Avenue. Sullivan felt well positioned to continue the bookstore’s tradition for the long term.
But only a year later, she was looking for a buyer when family concerns, including her own health issues, the changing needs of a teenage daughter with intellectual disabilities and a father in declining health, made her realize that she needed to step back.
Once she put out word that The Bookies was for sale, she was deluged with inquiries. In the abstract, it turns out, owning a neighborhood bookstore strikes a chord with a lot of people (reflected cinematically by a litany of bookstore films that are practically a genre unto themselves, including the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan classic “You’ve Got Mail”).
Months of conversations that laid out the less romantic realities of the industry yielded a handful of serious prospects who had the understanding and savvy — and capital — to preserve The Bookies’ legacy beyond the initial excitement and passion. It turned out to be an eleventh-hour candidate, Kirstin Gulling, who officially took the reins July 1.
“All it takes,” Sullivan says, “is that one right person.”
“I feel like they’re coming into my home.”
Nearly 13 years ago, Marya Johnston, settling into retirement in Grand Junction, visited a local chain bookstore in search of some titles on hiking the region. She found none.
I can do a better job than this, she thought.
And Out West Books was born.
She had books in her blood. Her mom ran a bookstore in Utah for 20 years, and Johnston worked alongside her as an assistant. But now, busier than ever with Out West, Johnston, 69, has put the store up for sale as she seeks to spend more time hiking trails, or camping with her husband, than running a business.
“As the store’s gotten busier and busier and busier, I get less and less time off,” she says. “And that’s not sustainable. I’m working 12 hours a day, six days a week. So it’s always like putting out fires the whole time. And I’m no spring chicken.”
Like Sullivan, she has found no shortage of interested buyers. She warned her listing agent that “everyone wants to own a bookstore” and says that he’s now finding that out to be true. It’s a heart-and-soul type of undertaking.
“When a person walks in the door here, I feel like they’re coming into my home,” Johnston says. “I chose these books. It’s a ‘Look at these wonderful books I chose’ kind of thing. I don’t think you get that with a landscaping business.”
Which is why some bookstores, such as Wilmer’s Old Firehouse Books, end up selling to employees, people who have lived the business and feel compelled to make sure the independent outlets endure. But Johnston doesn’t have any employees with the desire to take on ownership.
“Somebody told me a long time ago,” she says, “it always takes a few years for bookstores to sell, because you do have to have just the right person.”
She recalls that when her mom sold her bookstore in Utah, the buyer “drastically changed” it, to the point where disappointed customers said it was never the same. She’s trying to avoid that by judiciously choosing her successor, but closing a deal has been complicated by a variety of factors, including the massive downsizing of the federal government — and the Small Business Administration, in particular.
She has two offers in the works, one full-price offer and another that’s a combination of loans and owner financing, but that process has been gummed up by the cutbacks that slowed applications for government small business loans. So while Johnston has come to grips with the emotional hurdles of letting go of the bookstore she built, circumstances have lengthened the timeline to a deal.
“Now that I have my head around it,” she says, “I’m in limbo land. Now that I’m ready to go, I can’t.”
Creating a “third place”
In the late 1980s, by Wilmer’s estimate, a new concept permeated what she calls the “bookosphere,” an idea increasingly embraced by independent booksellers hoping to evolve into more than simply a retail outlet for reading material. An aspiration, really.
How do we make ourselves the third place?
“And now, it’s totally legitimate,” Wilmer says of the term. “I think they write papers about it. A ‘third place’ is like a library or a bookstore. It could be Cheers, a community bar where everybody knows your name. It’s not home, and it’s not work. It’s a third space.”
“A successful bookstore is generally part of the community,” Wilmer says. “Barnes and Noble figured that out, lost it, and then found it again. And when they lost it, people were coming into our store and going, I was just at Barnes & Noble, and they don’t have such and such, and I would point at the right shelf. And then they became customers for life.”
Last year, 5280 magazine recognized Old Firehouse Books among the 10 best indie bookstores on the Front Range, singling it out for “the bibliophile looking for community.”
Even before the sale, Steele and Kilaparti had been putting their imprint on the bookstore. They’ve hosted a “bedazzled book night” in which customers add artistic touches to a book they’ve purchased. Steele has run a book club for about a decade that has fostered such a sense of community that participants often continue their fellowship after the meetings by going out for drinks or dinner.
The bookstore will continue to work with Fort Collins Reads and host its reception, and recently added or expanded its horror and romance genre sections in response to customer feedback in the constant evolution of offerings. But community lies at the heart of everything.
“It’s just kind of creating a space where everybody feels safe and welcomed,” Steele says, “whether you’re buying something or you’re just coming in to browse, or attend an event with an author that we get to host.”
That notion of maintaining its identity as a third space really boils down to creating a place where people can venture in and discover, have fun and find their needs met — whether it’s one of the groups of special-needs adults on field trips who need some extra help, or kids and their parents settling into the children’s section in back.
And Kilaparti seconds Steele’s observation that a bookstore makes a pretty good relationship incubator.
“A lot of first dates come here,” she says. “Because it’s nice. It takes the pressure off. You have things to talk about. People that have an interest they don’t think other people have, like animanga or romance books, might meet someone also into those things.”
Taking over an operation of seven people — the two owners plus five others working the floor plus a couple of part-timers — has also meant that some of the cozy, informal aspects of operating a bookstore have had to become a little more, um, by the book. Hammering out the sale meant hiring lawyers, agreeing to terms and committing rules to paper.
“That’s been a growing process of standardizing some things while still retaining our vibe here,” Kilaparti says. “I think that was the biggest writing-stuff-down thing we’ve ever done, which is funny, given that we sell written works. But that’s really tough for us.”
When people ask the new co-owners what they’re going to change about Old Firehouse Books, they have a simple response: Not much, at least in the first year. They want to get their feet under them, get organized, maybe do some overdue tidying up. And advertise.
Customers who’ve wandered in while strolling Old Town sometimes ask — too often, the new owners think — how long the bookstore has been here. Almost like it’s a well-kept secret.
“We’ve been here since 2009 and they’re like, ‘I never knew,’” Kilaparti says. “So our goal this year is to let people know that we exist and get the word out.”
There are new hurdles to clear, but Wilmer has handed off the bookstore profitable and in good shape, testament to all her years revamping, relocating and fine-tuning the business. Kilaparti and Steele recognize they owe her a debt of gratitude — beyond the loan debt included in the purchase. But Wilmer also realizes, even with her slender piece of ownership, she still has an obligation to her successors.
“Now what I owe them is to keep my mouth shut,” she says with a chuckle. “It’s hard, but they’re never going to learn till they get out on their own, and they don’t need me. And the fact that I’d love to come in and meddle sometimes, well, slap my mouth, because it’s bad management.”