Site search
sponsored by
News
ENLARGE
Cheryl Owens chats with a customer recently. She also offers massage therapy and hosts a farmers market on Wednesdays.
|
ENLARGE
|
Cheryl Owens whips up a coffee drink at Books Gallery in Sutherlin on Wednesday.
|
|
ENLARGE
|
Books Gallery on West Central Avenue in Sutherlin.
|
SUTHERLIN — Among the 40,000 books stacked on shelves, with the farmers market a dozen steps away and the organic coffee and tea counter on the other side of the partition, Cheryl Owens therapeutically massages clients at Books Gallery.
Though it may seem incongruous, the Books Gallery business model has evolved with Owens’ personal interests and customer recommendations into a one-stop emporium for cerebral, bodily and Epicurean interests.
Pining to solve a dead dame mystery with hard-boiled and whiskey-soaked shamus Philip Marlowe?
Books Gallery has Raymond Chandler books.
Hankering for chocolate-dipped biscotti or an olive-and-cheese loaf from the Lighthouse Center Bakery?
Books Gallery has a farmers market from 2 to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays.
Wondering how else an interactive Thai massage on a floor mat may differ from a Swedish massage?
Books Gallery has a licensed massage therapist, and an answer: “It’s almost like a passive yoga,” Owens said.
As owner, Owens, 49, is essentially in charge of all offerings at the bookshop. But she readily admits the Sutherlin bookstore wouldn’t be what it is without help from her mother and husband.
“We’ve all worked pretty well as a team,” she said last week, an hour after massaging a client. She explained how her family kept Books Gallery in business while she attended hundreds of hours of massage therapy classes at Lane Community College until becoming licensed a year ago.
Three years ago, Books Gallery and its 5,000 books was a fledgling five-month-old bookshop up for sale on West Central Avenue.
Owens, who had worked nearly five years at While Away Books in Roseburg, had always yearned to buy or open her own bookstore.
“I had this nag in my head,” she said of an old inner voice that grew loud whenever she drove through not too-distant communities on the Oregon Coast or near Mount Shasta. The voice implored her entrepreneurial judgment: “Can I do a bookstore there?”
Peggy Cheatham, who had bought While Away Books from Karen Tolley while Owens worked there, learned about Books Gallery going up for sale after a short stint and persuaded Owens she had the know-how to turn it into a successful enterprise.
So Owens, who mentored under the tutelage of Cheatham and Tolley in the trade of buying and selling books, took a chance.
The old nag disappeared.
“I feel like I’m doing what I was supposed to be doing for so many years,” she said.
Yet Owens had one more nag to satisfy, the one that kept her pursuing a license in massage therapy.
While Owens attended classes and studied, her mother, Irene Young, and husband, Jimmie, a lumber grader at Roseburg Forest Products in Dillard, helped tend shop.
Young, who lives in Florence, still makes the weekly drive to Sutherlin for the four-day shift and stays at Books Gallery and with the Owens.
“I worked really hard then to make sure she gets a day off,” Young said of her daughter, “and I still do.”
Yet Owens said she didn’t experience her first two-day weekend until two weeks ago — her massage business has kept the appointment book full.
“I didn’t have to go out and drum up business,” she said, explaining that the bookstore and word-of-mouth marketing has helped grow that second part of the enterprise to five clients a week.
“And that’s the way she likes it,” Young said.
Though it may seem incongruous, the Books Gallery business model has evolved with Owens’ personal interests and customer recommendations into a one-stop emporium for cerebral, bodily and Epicurean interests.
Pining to solve a dead dame mystery with hard-boiled and whiskey-soaked shamus Philip Marlowe?
Books Gallery has Raymond Chandler books.
Hankering for chocolate-dipped biscotti or an olive-and-cheese loaf from the Lighthouse Center Bakery?
Books Gallery has a farmers market from 2 to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays.
Wondering how else an interactive Thai massage on a floor mat may differ from a Swedish massage?
Books Gallery has a licensed massage therapist, and an answer: “It’s almost like a passive yoga,” Owens said.
As owner, Owens, 49, is essentially in charge of all offerings at the bookshop. But she readily admits the Sutherlin bookstore wouldn’t be what it is without help from her mother and husband.
“We’ve all worked pretty well as a team,” she said last week, an hour after massaging a client. She explained how her family kept Books Gallery in business while she attended hundreds of hours of massage therapy classes at Lane Community College until becoming licensed a year ago.
Three years ago, Books Gallery and its 5,000 books was a fledgling five-month-old bookshop up for sale on West Central Avenue.
Owens, who had worked nearly five years at While Away Books in Roseburg, had always yearned to buy or open her own bookstore.
“I had this nag in my head,” she said of an old inner voice that grew loud whenever she drove through not too-distant communities on the Oregon Coast or near Mount Shasta. The voice implored her entrepreneurial judgment: “Can I do a bookstore there?”
Peggy Cheatham, who had bought While Away Books from Karen Tolley while Owens worked there, learned about Books Gallery going up for sale after a short stint and persuaded Owens she had the know-how to turn it into a successful enterprise.
So Owens, who mentored under the tutelage of Cheatham and Tolley in the trade of buying and selling books, took a chance.
The old nag disappeared.
“I feel like I’m doing what I was supposed to be doing for so many years,” she said.
Yet Owens had one more nag to satisfy, the one that kept her pursuing a license in massage therapy.
While Owens attended classes and studied, her mother, Irene Young, and husband, Jimmie, a lumber grader at Roseburg Forest Products in Dillard, helped tend shop.
Young, who lives in Florence, still makes the weekly drive to Sutherlin for the four-day shift and stays at Books Gallery and with the Owens.
“I worked really hard then to make sure she gets a day off,” Young said of her daughter, “and I still do.”
Yet Owens said she didn’t experience her first two-day weekend until two weeks ago — her massage business has kept the appointment book full.
“I didn’t have to go out and drum up business,” she said, explaining that the bookstore and word-of-mouth marketing has helped grow that second part of the enterprise to five clients a week.
“And that’s the way she likes it,” Young said.
And with the Lighthouse Center Bakery — which keeps the farmers market in the corner of Books Gallery going through winter — set to open the Lighthouse Center Bakery & Cafe in the old Umpqua Store in about six weeks, bakery workers say they’ll keeping setting up their goods inside the bookstore on Wednesdays so they can still serve their regular Sutherlin customers.
“We’ll still come here,” Michael Tortorice said. “It’s going good.”
• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@nrtoday.com.
• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@nrtoday.com.
