The Well Dressed Reader

Everyone enjoyed the Spoonful of Chocolate post about  book purses so much I decided to introduce another book themed company I love The Well-Dressed Reader and owner Carin Barwick. Carin, if I were you, I’d be making the rounds of all the New York book conferences. You’d sell out in a flash! Soon I’ll be dressed head to toe in books…now if I can just find cute book shoes. Hmmmm.

BTW: I don’t receive any money or products from the companies I feature. I just like them!

Jodi: How did your company, The Well-Dressed Reader, start?

Carin: It started in such a strange way – my husband and I had a conversation in which I lamented that the kind of jewelry I loved best, book-themed jewelry, just wasn’t available. There just wasn’t anything – a Google search would come up with zilch. I was surprised, because I thought that there were plenty of librarians and others who were book-mad and would like book jewelry. My husband suggested I try selling some, and the idea was born. My husband and I own the business, and we live in Dansville, New York, which is in the western part of the state.

Jodi: How long have you been selling your book themed products?

Carin: We’ve been in business a little more than a year. I love every bit of it. The business has always been strictly online, because I knew that my customers would be just about evenly spread around the world.

I’ve never made a piece of jewelry – we sell pieces of jewelry made by artists whose work I’ve admired. Since very few people were already making book jewelry, my approach was to search out artists who work I liked, describe the site, and then let them create a prototype. I’m very careful not to specify what I want the artist to create – this way, the pieces always look like the artists’ work and are much more varied. As a result, I’ve got a great group of people that I work with, and the pieces remain true to the each artist’s work and style. . I’m so excited when a new prototype arrives – it’s like getting my favorite gifts in the mail every day!

Jodi: That accounts for such a wide variety of pieces! Do your artists ever customize pieces to a customer’s requests?

Carin: We try to offer the best service we can while letting the artists be themselves. I think there are two ways that we end up customizing work: sometimes, we get a specific color request, and that can be fun for an artist, and other times we get a volume request that exceeds what we have in inventory, so we need to arrange with an artist to burn the midnight oil. For example, we’ll sometimes get a customer who is in a book club and wants each member of the book club to get an identical pin, or the same pin in several different colors, and depending on the size of the club that can be a challenge! It’s not as if these pieces come off an assembly line. Our artists are always amazing and go the extra mile.

Jodi: Tell us about your “Charity of the Year” program. Last year it was the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and for 2010 it’s First Book. How do you choose your charities?

Carin: From day one, we knew that if the business was successful, we needed to share that success with others. Our charity choices are not very strategic; we choose causes that are personally important to us. My husband’s colleague has two daughters with Cystic Fibrosis, and we have always tried to support the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, so that seemed like a natural for us. Our idea was to change each year and eventually settle on two or three charities that we could cycle through annually. First Book has a great reputation; I knew of them through my day job and obviously a literacy-related charity resonates with me.

Jodi: What is that ‘day job’ that introduced you to First Book?

Carin: There may be better jobs than mine, but I can’t think of one offhand – I’m an elementary school librarian in a terrific school with great co-workers and wonderful students. A side benefit is that the jewelry I wear always seems appropriate in a library setting!

Jodi: Any new developments with The Well-Dressed Reader? New products?

Carin: We have two new jewelry pieces specifically for Valentine’s Day that I’m excited about. We’re going to be branching out into custom handbags and book bags, which are in keeping with our “well-dressed” theme, and creating a reasonably-priced, high-quality line is a challenging and fun project.

Jodi: And what types of books do you like to read? Do you have a favorite title or author?

Carin: Oh my, that is a difficult question. I have always been a reader, and work with books every day. I have so many books I could say were my favorite! Here, I’ll do it be age grouping:

baby book: Counting Kisses by Karen Katz
picture book: The Talking Eggs by Robert SanSouci
Intermediate book: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert O’Brien
YA book: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Adult book: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and anything by John Sandford.

But my all-time favorite, re-read a thousand times, best-loved book is
Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley.

Jodi: Well, thank you for the fun jewelry and the great book list! We always like to take suggestions from an expert!