On this episode of Banking on KC, Tyler Enders, co-owner of Rainy Day Books, joins host Kelly Scanlon to share how the team is honoring the bookstore’s 50-year “legacy of literacy” with a Nov. 4 celebration, expanded author events, and community initiatives that make reading more accessible across Kansas City.
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Kelly Scanlon: Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Tyler Enders, the founder and owner of Popular KC Retailer, made in KC. But in 2022, he started a new chapter of his business life and helped turn the page for another beloved Kansas City retailer, Rainy Day Books.
He and 15 other business people joined together to purchase the decades old bookstore located in Fairway, Kansas. Welcome, Tyler.
Tyler Enders: Thanks so much for having me, Kelly.
Kelly Scanlon: Well, I'm eager to get an update here. First of all, you're celebrating a milestone, I think coming up in November 50 years.
Tyler Enders: Yes. It is unbelievable to be the steward of this milestone and to get to bask in it.
So Rainy Day Books is turning 50 this November. To headline, the celebration, I'll say right off the top. We are gonna have an amazing event with founder Vivian Jennings On November 4th, she'll be in conversation with David vre. Telling Just the most wonderful, absurd, hilarious, heartwarming stories of the past 50 years of owning an independent bookstore.
Kelly Scanlon: Oh, and she has some. She definitely has some. So that will be a great talk. In November 4th you said? Yes. Where's that gonna be?
Tyler Enders: Unity Temple on the country called Plaza.
Kelly Scanlon: Alright. And I'm sure we'll see lots of information about it. Absolutely. Over the next few weeks, what motivated you to consider the purchase of Rainy Day Books three years ago?
I mean, you had a successful retail company yourself, and you were expanding, and most people would say, stay in your lane, do what you do best, but why were you interested?
Tyler Enders: All right, I'm gonna try this out. I haven't told this story publicly and we'll see how it goes. So first, my two business partners and I, Thomas McIntyre, Keith Bradley.
At the same time, all three of us heard about this separately, and we all independently decided we have to submit a bid to be the stewards of Rainy Day Books into the future. So, I don't know who initiated the conversation, but it was one of those hilarious moments where everyone was already there and we didn't have to have the conversation.
But the, the part that I wanna share that we haven't shared. Is that I think a lot of us sometimes have, you know, what people jokingly call main character syndrome, where you think about things from our own lived experience and our own perspective. So as we decide this is worthwhile and, and the reason we decide it's worthwhile is because being in local retail, seeing what local retail means to the community, we really view your independent bookstore as the pinnacle of local retail.
So Vivian's son, Jeffrey, he always talked about it as a community's wellspring of ideas, which I love. And Vivian always talks about this legacy of literacy. Yeah. We know all the reasons that bookstores are so integral to communities and unfortunately so few of them exist, but we mutually decide. Keith Thomas and I, were gonna do this, um, bookstores.
Are difficult to run. That's why there aren't very many of them. We needed to get the right people on board, get the right resources on board, figure out how to structure this, not just for the next five years or 10 years, but the next 50 years. Wow. And so as we started exploring this, we took this to our advisory board who was made up of some incredible.
Kansas Ians, and we tell them about our vision and what we're trying to do. And one of them, now, I should say multiple of them are now investors and now owners of Rainy Day Books. But one of them in particular, bill tro, said, you know, I'm, I'm interested, you know, let's, let's talk more about this. And so, you know, one conversation leads to the next.
We start to pick up some momentum. We're introduced to David vra and. From our perspective, at least for the first couple of months of this deal, we had kind of marched along and put together this amazing ownership group and this amazing team .
Kelly Scanlon: Behind the scenes, no publicity.
Tyler Enders: Yeah. And it was a wonderful experience to, to meet all these people who care so much about Rainy Day Books.
Now, the main character syndrome part, later on, and I don't know when this dawned on me, there were probably multiple opportunities at which I could have had that aha moment, but later on I realized. David had been working on this four years really. He's a long time friend of Vivian and Roger, and he had gotten together with a lot of his friends and who are, who are business leaders and had said, you know, at some point there's gonna be a time at which Vivian decides that it's time to pass this institution on.
And so he had actually. Already had a lot of these early conversations with people about how important indie bookstores are, how you can't value them the same way you value other retail, you know, organizations, companies. And so he had done so much of this legwork and we really fit into that puzzle. I was thinking of it as like, we are building this puzzle, we're building this path, and in reality we came along at the right time to fit into what a lot of the people on the ownership group had already been mapping out.
And so we're, we're so privileged. I, I get to speak on behalf of Rainy Day Books so often, which is such a joy, but it really is, as you said, it's, it's a lot of Kansas Indian who are behind it.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah, it, it definitely is. And one of the things that happens though is that when you take over an icon or fan favorite, like Rainy Day Books, you really have to be careful about the kinds of changes you make because they really do have a raving fan base.
And when you, and they feel ownership themselves of it. So sometimes when you make changes that doesn't sit really well. So when you became the owners, when this ownership group came over and started to implement changes and you have made changes, um. How did you go about introducing them in a way that was mindful of maintaining that customer support and enthusiasm?
Tyler Enders: Well, I think the best bookseller I've ever met is still probably Vivian Jennings, but besides Vivian, we've retained, you know, every other bookseller. So Vivian gets to enjoy retirement. Very, very well deserved. Um, but the rest of the team wanted to stick around. And it was really important to us to try to figure out a way to retain everyone.
And that relied on a lot of things. As you said, if we're gonna be implementing changes, we needed to make sure that the team was on board for them. If we are bringing in new team members, we needed to make sure they fit. And so it's, it's been led by a lot of those team members, some of whom have. Literal decades of Bookselling experience.
We celebrated 30 years for one of our booksellers. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's, it's just incredible to, um, be surrounded by so much talent and experience and most of our most of the changes have come outside the store.
Kelly Scanlon: Okay. Let's talk about some of those changes. I know you have some book clubs and the backend technology changed.
I mean, they run the gamut. There's a lot of different changes that some people might not see, and then others that are very visible. So talk about some of those.
Tyler Enders: Sure. Okay. This one might not be interesting to people, but I find it fascinating. So if you think about. Independent bookstores. Over the last 50 years, it has been one of the most tumultuous industries.
Oh yeah. Borders, Barnes and Noble, Amazon. I mean, there have been so many changes Kindles, and there's some upsides and downsides to that. One of the downsides, though, is that there's been consolidation in the indie bookstore world, and that's not just with bookstores. 'cause independent bookstores don't necessarily consolidate.
The service providers, the backend providers who run the point of sale, who manage the websites, et cetera. So all these indie bookstores rely on a robust backend. And so we have made a lot of changes that, um, no customer will ever see. They hopefully feel it in the speed of service, in, in the way that we're able to work with customers, get books out, et cetera, and they make the business.
More efficient. Um, and so in that way, we're actually trying to take some things back to the industry and implement new changes that other independent bookstores can benefit from as well. So that's like the, the weird wonky stuff that most people won't ever see or care about.
Kelly Scanlon: Very important though.
Tyler Enders: Exactly.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah. So, so what are some of the more visible changes?
Tyler Enders: Rainy Day Books is, is known for author events in the early two thousands. Vivian already had a very successful independent bookstore. However, it was amplified to an immeasurable degree by the way that she and her team started to handle author events.
Picture an author event where someone is sitting at a lectern reading from their book and maybe it's kind of a sleepy event. She completely threw that out and, and rethought it. And not only from the experience, but also thinking about, okay, how can we ticket this in a way that publishers will appreciate?
Right? So too often, as we all know, and this now seems common sense of course, but free events, people might buy a book. They might not. And so the way that she started ticketing events really actually transformed the industry. The first Winter Institute that I went to, which is held by the American Booksellers Association, it's the big annual event that everyone goes to.
I proudly wore my rainy day book shirt around. And let me remind you, we're a small. Independent books were in Fairway, Kansas with maybe 3,500 square feet. So many people came up to me, said, oh my gosh, you're with Rainy Day Books. I love Rainy Day Books. Or, you guys are amazing. So much Praise was heaped on us and we had just stepped onto the scene.
But this is because of Vivian's legacy, which impacted all indie bookstores. So. Post pandemic. We purchased Rainy Day Books and we are back up to over a hundred author events this year.
Kelly Scanlon: That, that you have several a week?
Tyler Enders: Yes.
Kelly Scanlon: And I know Vivian used to read every book that she, 'cause she would get up there and interview the author, so I'm glad to hear those are continuing and as you said, they.
Put Rainy Day Books on the global stage and you know, she was able to get huge names to come here, Jack Welch and Susie Welch and, and many, many others. Too long to go on. I just happen to remember those. Mm-hmm. Off the top of my head, so I'm glad to hear those are continuing. Let's turn to the book clubs.
How do those work book clubs?
Tyler Enders: So we have nine book clubs right now. Most of them are hosted by booksellers, but we're looking to expand in the new year with people outside the bookstore hosting. Book clubs. So we've done that with the three sisters. They host a phenomenal book club. Councilman Wes Rogers has started hosting a book club and American Public Square is gonna be announcing a book club.
Or I guess maybe, you know, I've just let the, um, cat outta the bag. But there are more book clubs coming and we really love the energy in the room. After the fact, people coming together to discuss something, and this is everything from romance to current events. You like Abundance by Ezra Klein, and it's just phenomenal to get people together.
Sometimes similar backgrounds, sometimes different backgrounds across the city having a. Great conversations.
Kelly Scanlon: So are these book clubs based on genre or are they based on geography and then there's all kinds of different genres within that. The people in that geographic region, how do they, how are they divided up when you see there's nine?
Tyler Enders: Yeah, we're all genre based. So in the last year, you know, I'm going back to author events, I've been to, you know, countless author events and I always tell people you, you don't have to have read the book often. The author's debuting their book. Yes. So there's no way you could've read it, right. But sometimes I used to think, well, I haven't read this author, or I don't even know this genre.
And I always, always leave feeling more full and having enjoyed listening to this amazing conversation. That said, I hadn't been to any of our book clubs until more recently and I was very curious about how different moderators handle, you know, a mixed room of anywhere from 10 to 20 people. And it was just one of the most wonderful things to experience and see it.
It's just what. You expect from a Kansas City community, you know, people coming together, sharing insights, laughing about the same things, pointing out things that they didn't see, and I, I highly recommend it.
Kelly Scanlon: You mentioned Vivian's vision nearly 50 years ago when she started. She started talking about the legacy of literacy, and I'm just curious, what are you doing specifically to continue that vision?
Tyler Enders: When we took over ownership, the first. Step was to make sure that we preserved all the wonderful things about Rainy Day Books. The second step was to see what are the resources that M in KC brings that a large, robust ownership group brings that we can leverage in a greater way than than one owner operator could.
So as you noted, Vivian was reading hundreds of books a year, and there are certain capacity limits. One of the things that we've tried to lean into is leveraging different community relationships. Now. It'll take us a while to build the number of community relationships that Vivian has. And they've, they've done a great job of passing them on one area though, in which we focused is schools and nonprofits.
So we have launched our new book fair program. We hosted 12 book fairs in area schools this year and are, are about to host the rest of them. And we're going to schools doing the classic book fair. However, the classic book fair that most of us think about is produced by one publisher, and so therefore, the scope of the books that are brought are relatively limited, and it's a very for-profit minded.
Endeavor. What's nice about when we go into a school with a book fair is we're able to bring a very, very wide selection of books from multiple publishers. We're able to bring in books that are friendly to kids with dyslexia. We're able to bring in books with multiple languages, specific different topics based on what the librarian or teachers want, create, wishlists, et cetera.
And when we go into these schools, we really want every kid to have that phenomenal experience. And so as part of this, we launched a Books for All program. And the Books for All program ensures that every kid is gonna get a book.
Kelly Scanlon: It it's, it's a fund. Right, exactly. They can dip into the fund in order to purchase a book.
Yeah. So
Tyler Enders: we've created a fund where a teacher would identify us that a student would benefit from books for all funds. We provide them funds. It's the same bookbook that sometimes parents send their kids with. Yes. Yeah. So there's no distinction, um, amongst the students, but then everyone's able to participate.
And so our goal for next year is to go into our first school where everyone will benefit from the books for all funds. So currently we are going to schools that have. Mixed socioeconomic status, but we'd like to go into schools that otherwise would never get a book fair from one of those publishers.
But because of our effort to expand this legacy of literacy, we'll be able to reach more students.
Kelly Scanlon: Where do those funds come from? Do they come from the ownership team or do they come from contributions from philanthropists in the community?
Tyler Enders: Yeah. Currently it's. All internal efforts, but we've just partnered with United Way and so we're, we're working on some initiatives with United Way.
Um, we've just partnered with Lead to Read.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah, great organization.
Tyler Enders: We are gonna be hosting an adult book fair where some of the proceeds will go to lead to read in their amazing initiatives and some will go to our books for all fund. And that is Thursday, November 13th. We're hosting what's called Story by Story, the KC book Fair.
And it's gonna be. An adult book fair where people can come through, buy books for themselves, all proceeds would go towards the books for All fund or Lead to read, or someone could just purchase a book to donate in that moment. And so we're gonna start to do many, many more of these initiatives. We're doing them with businesses, we're doing them in our store.
Through the ownership group, et cetera.
Kelly Scanlon: Well, and the other thing that you do in terms of collaboration is the cross marketing you've begun to do throughout the city, like with Dolce Bakery and talk about that. It sounded fun.
Tyler Enders: Life is busy right now, and even with people who are the most tapped into what we do, I often get the.
Wait, I didn't know they were in town. And you know, we miss out on these amazing authors that we love because there are just so many things to do in Kansas City. Our lives are so full, there are many competing interests. One of the ways that we found is the best to cut through that noise is to find fun, unique partnerships.
And so Dolce Bakery is working on this book creating Gingerbread Cookies for us doing this promotion that Mating KC has been roped into. And it's created a really, really. Fun buzz and excitement about this author who's coming to share her book, which is a holiday themed book around a gingerbread bakery.
So it, it's by, um, Lori Gilmore. It's very soon, it's sold incredibly well, and I would say it's because of those unique partnerships. I'm 90% sure Lori Gilmore. Is not doing any other event that's partnered with a local bakery.
Kelly Scanlon: I bet she isn't.
Tyler Enders: Yeah. That's what we need more of. That's Kansas City's unique advantage as we try to compete with these authors to get them to come here instead of other cities.
Kelly Scanlon: Do you have any other of those kinds of collaborations in the works with other local businesses?
Tyler Enders: We absolutely do. We're so, it's, it's, um, something that I think will ramp up more and more. I would think that right now. Probably 25% of our events have a collaborator, so we just collaborated with Voy. We've collaborated with American Public Square in the last few weeks.
Truman Institute. Multiple library partners, the Kansas City Public Library, Mid-Continent Public Library. Um, I could go on and on. I'm certainly leaving people out. There have been some amazing collaborators, but I think we probably, with the a hundred plus events, author events, each year, we're probably only collaborating with about 25% of our events.
And one of our goals over the next year, two years is one, to bring in more of those for-profit businesses like Doge, and then secondly, to have multiple collaborations per event.
Kelly Scanlon: Wow. It sounds like a lot of fun. You've talked about the importance of independent bookstores, kind of in a general way.
Obviously you believe them and a lot of people do. But you also mentioned how busy we are and you know, just trying to cut through the noise and you know, right now it's easy for someone to just sitting on their couch, you know, press a couple buttons and have a book delivered to their house from some big national Sure, sure.
Places we will not name global, in fact. So how does an independent bookstore like Rainy Day Books. Cut through that noise and continue to thrive in the age of online shopping when there's so many easy. In your home ways to obtain a book?
Tyler Enders: Yeah, I think there are probably really good recommendation algorithms out there for books.
I think that AI could probably be a really useful way to recommend reads. For me, there's something different when someone tells you to read it. So if I'm talking to a friend who either knows. You know, my interest in books, we have similar taste, or if I'm going into one of our books sellers and talking about how, you know, I hadn't read this genre before.
I kind of liked it, but this was the part I liked or didn't like. Maybe they give me a phenomenal recommendation. Maybe I could find those recommendations on lists or other places, or look at best sellers or the most popular of a category. There is something very different when a bookseller that you know, or that I've gotten to know, or that you see often tells you, you need to read this and you need to tell me what you think.
Kelly Scanlon: Oh, yeah. To get you come back, you know, tell me what you think.
Tyler Enders: Jerry is is one of my, I would say bookseller accountability partners. I feel obligated, you know, to read the things that she recommends. I feel obligated to come tell her what I think about it, and that to me is a more rich reading experience.
So. Easily if, when I look back at the last 50 years of, of what Vivian created for me, and she might answer differently, but the number one thing she created was an incredible ability for her booksellers to recommend books that people enjoyed.
Kelly Scanlon: So Kindles, we talked about the online shopping, but then the technology now allows us to read without having a physical book in our hands.
You can have a Kindle or some other kind of reader. How has that changed your business? Has it helped? Has it hurt?
Tyler Enders: It's been fascinating to, to watch at e-reader adoption because I kind of think about that technology as something that only goes one direction. When you think about adoption, it's up and up and up and more and more adoption.
Strangely, and I don't remember what year it happened, but we actually saw pullback from it really. Now I'm a huge fan of. Anyone reading in any way that works for them, including audio. Luckily, there are really good industry solutions for supporting your indie bookstore. So if you are an e-reader, if you like to listen to your book, you can still support rainy 80 books with every single purchase.
Kelly Scanlon: How's that?
Tyler Enders: So you go to our website and there are two national organizations that provide both audio books and then also e-reader books, and
Kelly Scanlon: you get. Back a portion of it, or you get the whole thing, the whole purchase price.
Tyler Enders: Yeah. The, the consumer pays the same price they would pay anywhere else, and instead of the profit being absorbed by that, you know, national company, there's a small portion that's actually sent directly back to the independent bookstore.
And it is remarkable when you do this at scale independent bookstores. See very, very meaningful revenue from both forms of non-physical books. Go to Rainy Day Books.com and you can get either form through Rainy Day Books. Oh,
Kelly Scanlon: that, that's great to know. So who is your typical customer?
Tyler Enders: Great question. And we don't have one.
And, and we're, we're continually expanding that. I mean, the typical customer is someone who is open to new ideas, who likes to escape, who likes to take time on their own. Reading is something that. Those who do it often, um, are making a pretty conscious choice to spend a lot of their time in a solitary way, in that they're by themselves when they do it.
However, they're experiencing shared feelings through the story, through what they learn, potentially sharing afterward. Our customers range so much. Of course, we have. The entire age range. What we're working to do with this new ownership group is expand our geographic reach. Wow. And so not all of Kansas City is gonna drive to Rainy Day Books potentially at some point in the future.
That's something that, you know, means we had to have other locations. At one point, Vivian had franchised to a dozen plus. She did.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah, I remember.
Tyler Enders: And I think that now there's an appetite for it again.
Kelly Scanlon: And so really your profile isn't so much about. Certain genres or age groups or male, female, that sort of thing.
It's, it's more about having a curious mindset and willingness, openness to being a lifelong learner.
Tyler Enders: Absolutely. Even when you think about how you are often gonna pay a little bit more at an independent bookstore that doesn't. Self-select socioeconomically as much as you might think it does, which shows the value that people place on reading.
Kelly Scanlon: What are your future plans?
Tyler Enders: The number one thing we want to do is carry on this legacy of literacy. As you mentioned, Rainy Day Books is owned by so many people, and I don't mean the ownership group, it belongs to. A very, very large community. It also belongs to the industry to a certain extent. Now we aren't, um, just trying to stay the course.
We are trying to be creative. We'll probably try some new things, whether it's on the tech side, whether it's on the promotion side, collaborations, et cetera. We do feel that we have a very good opportunity as you look at the entire independent bookstore. Landscape to try to be innovative. And we think that's important.
Vivian has a history of being innovative. We wanna carry on that as well.
Kelly Scanlon: Tyler, thank you so much for being with us on this episode of Banking on KC. It sounds like there's a lot of things going on and really bright days ahead for Rainy Day Books. But, you know, I also wanna give a big thank you to the founder Vivian Jennings, for her vision and her tenacity as she steered the company.
For more than four decades alongside her partner Roger Doran. And now, as you say, you get to be the stewards of this 50th anniversary celebration coming up on November the fourth. Look for details for that. But Kansas City is a better place because of all of you. So thank you.
Tyler Enders: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
This
Joe Close: is Joe Close, regional leader. Thank you to Tyler Enders for being our guest on this episode of Banking on KC. As a co-founder of Maiden KC Tyler is helping guide the next chapter of Rainy Day Books, one of Kansas City's most treasured independent bookstores by honoring its 50 year legacy. While introducing new programs from more book clubs to school partnerships and book fairs, rainy Day is expanding its role as both a bookstore and a community gathering place.
Through these efforts, it continues to connect people to ideas, stories, and one another. At Country Club Bank, a division of FNBO, we value local businesses that preserve community traditions while building for the future. Re books is a reminder that when we invest in culture, education, and connection, we strengthen the entire Kansas City community.
Thanks for tuning in this week we're Banking on you, Kansas City Country Club Bank, a division of FNBO and Member FDIC.