Happy 9th Birthday to Us!

Today marks our 9th anniversary. It's been an interesting year!

We re-opened the store a little over three weeks ago.

It's been wonderful to have people back in the store! It's so nice to hear about how much you missed being able to come in. More than a few people have told us that we were the first place they visited after things opened up again.

We've also seen a lot of new faces (half-faces?) -- first timers who have discovered us online, or who moved to town in the last year or two and have finally been able to come visit.

We've seen old friends meeting serendipitously, browsers finding books they've long been searching for, and people discovering new favourite authors. It's starting to feel a lot more normal around here!

We're not quite out of the woods, however, and so we maintain rigorous health and safety standards. Presently, we allow only 4 customers in the store at a time so we can maintain physical distancing. Masks and hand sanitizer are still required. We want to create a safe and comfortable environment for everyone.

If you have any concerns, or ideas for how we can improve in this area, please let us know!

Beyond the pressing concerns of the present pandemic, we're also looking to the future. Minimizing our environmental impact is an important goal for us going forward.

All of our bags, bookmarks, receipts and shipping materials are either recyclable or compostable. And of course all of our books are second-hand -- with the exception of Nicola Ross' excellent Loops and Lattes hiking guides -- and fully re-usable! :)

But that's just the tip of the (rapidly melting?) iceberg, and we can do more. Some of the areas I'm currently researching:

• switching to 100% renewable energy
• replacing our inventory stickers with fully compostable or recyclable labels
• carbon-offsetting initiatives

I hope to have some exciting news to share about this over the next few months. If anyone has any suggestions or experience in this area, feel free to reach out to me.

We're also investing in the future of the store with a multitude of of planned improvements, large and small. I'm developing new software to help us grow and we continue to improve our website and online shopping experience. We've modified the layout of the store slightly, and made minor improvements to the lighting.

We'll be adding thousands of books to inventory over the summer -- I expect the shelves to be bursting again in no time! Right now I'm working on streamlining our purchasing process to make it easier than ever. I will be making an announcement about this in the next few weeks and we'll resume buying books in a major way as soon as possible.

I'd like to personally thank everyone who has supported us over the years, with a big special thank you to everyone who has supported us in the last year and a half! We are still here because of you. I am delighted that you see the value in what we do, and I am glad that we can continue trying to make our little corner of the universe a better place in our own small way.

I wish I had more time to write about all the wonderful things that have happened over the last year, and our exciting plans for the future -- but it's almost time to open the store and get to work.

Kieran Dunn
Owner, Janus Books