Caroline Davidson and Dorryce Rudd of the Midlothian Book Exchange (Photo by Jay Paul)
Before mother-daughter duo Dorryce Rudd and Caroline Davidson became the owners of the Midlothian Book Exchange, they were avid readers and longtime customers.
The women say it only took a few visits before they fell in love with the shop’s warm atmosphere — to say nothing of its long aisles of shelves filled with an estimated 175,000 books, a reader’s paradise. People of all ages mill about the generously sized space with books in hand, peruse seasonal and thematic displays, or wait to trade gently used books for store credit. Stock includes a wide range of fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, first editions, and antique and vintage books, as well as audiobooks on CD, puzzles and gift items.
When Davidson and Rudd became regulars, the store belonged to another mother-daughter team. Native Richmonder Maude Kerby opened the store in 1986 after retiring from her career as an elementary school teacher. Her daughter, Martha Graydon, joined the staff in 1991 and later became co-owner, taking over entirely on Kerby’s death in 2010.
After spending decades building the store into a third space cherished by the local community, Graydon decided to retire. She put the store on the market in early 2020 but was immediately faced with an unexpected challenge: the COVID-19 pandemic.
As an added obstacle, Graydon says, potential buyers who did reach out wanted to take the business digital at the expense of the physical store and its close-knit community. “I had one guy come in who was never going to even open the doors,” she recalls. “He was going to treat it like a chop shop and sell the entire shop online. I told him, ‘No, you’re not going to do that.’”
Without a viable buyer to continue the business and with book donations restricted due to the pandemic, Graydon was considering recycling or throwing away most of the titles. That news hit Davidson hard. “I remember having this physical reaction,” she recalls: “‘No, you can’t throw the books away.’”
In July 2020, she and her mother bought the store to keep the books from hitting the bin. “We really bought it to save the books and ended up getting a community,” Davidson says. “It is a business, but it’s so much more than that for us.”
Neither Davidson, who worked in direct sales, nor Rudd, a retired elementary school teacher and pastor, had owned a store before. Some of the decisions were made easy by their promise to Graydon not to alter the exchange system. All books are priced at half the cover price; customers who trade in books receive store credit that can be used to pay for half their purchase, resulting in net savings up to 75%.
The Midlothian Book Exchange at 13198 Midlothian Turnpike (Photo courtesy Caroline Davidson)
Despite the learning curve for the new owners, the store is now prospering like never before. The pair have grown both the community of customers and the connections with other independent bookstores in the area.
“Caroline has been much more proactive about an online presence and networking with other shops in the area than I ever was,” Graydon says. “I didn’t branch out of my comfort zone beyond making the store into something that people could walk into. She is really taking the ball and running with it.”
One of the new features, launched this month in celebration of the store’s 40th anniversary, is a membership program facilitated by a digital fundraising platform for bookstores. True to the store’s community roots, Davidson and Rudd also held a party and a food drive and are hosting a yearlong reading challenge with quarterly book club meetings, as well as “Fifth Saturday” promotions that began in January and continue through May, August and October.
Inside the Book Exchange (Photo by Jay Paul)
Lisa O’Hare was a longtime regular before she began working at the shop over a decade ago. The sole employee to work for both sets of owners, she has watched the store grow under both mother-daughter teams. “It was a dream job for me,” O’Hare says. “I was surrounded by books, and I had been shopping here since Martha’s mother owned it. When my kids were small, her mother would help me, so I love this store.”
Another passionate customer who joined the staff, Jordan Carrera, says the Book Exchange became a haven after she and her mother moved to the area from Oregon in 2016. Stopping in to pick out books was one of their favorite pastimes. “My first thought was that this place is so relaxing,” Carrera says. “Even working here is relaxing.”
The staff of diverse readers enjoys helping customers with recommendations and advice. An artist and fantasy genre lover, Carrera specializes in 2010s young adult novels. Lately, though, she finds herself selling unsure parents on graphic novels. “I’ve been trying to explain to parents that [graphic novels] are still OK,” she says. “I think that as long as [kids are] engaging with the art, whether it’s graphic novels or books, that it’s fantastic.”
Conversations like these help grow the bonds within the store’s community — so much so that Davidson’s next endeavor will be building a reading room in the back of the store for the growing number of book clubs and events. “This is where we have them now,” Davidson says, gesturing to a small sitting area in front of the rare books section. “We’re rapidly outgrowing the area, and we just need more space.”
In a time when reading has become digitized and more expensive, Davidson and Rudd stay boldly traditional in the store’s approach. They don’t offer online sales or inventory, just an old-fashioned book exchange that tailors each customer’s experience and strives to keep reading accessible. “We can get to know our customers,” Rudd says. “We want them to enjoy, to visit, to enjoy.”
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