What does it take to get millennials to patronize a bookstore? One group of entrepreneurs is hoping that the answer is “free booze and hip DJs.” Those are just two unique offerings found at the Second Home Bookstore in London, dubbed Liberia.
Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton, two UK-based tech entrepreneurs, are getting a little less technical with their latest project – though they’re not getting any less creative. The pair, who are best known for creating this “Utopian work-space” for start-ups, are venturing into the book-selling business with this new bookstore-workspace collaboration. Their Second Home Lison space has been a proven success.
As of it’s opening in December, the store offers between 5,000 and 6,000 different titles. But that’s not all that’s on tap: the new space reportedly offers free booze and includes a DJ booth. The architecture is beautiful, with curving glass walls, bright yellow floors, and low-hanging lamps . There are, according to the Second Home website, “over 1,000 plants and trees…fed by an advanced hydroponics system,” within the building, in an effor to “support wellbeing, productivity, and creativity.” Melville House’s blog team noted a job posting on the Bookseller that challenges applicants to “help create an interdisciplinary space that crosses books with booze and an in-house printing operation and DJ sets.”
There is also a “critically acclaimed in-house restaurant” and weekly excersice classes, like yoga and pilates. Of course, seeing as Second Home is all about “promoting wellbeing”, there are meditation classes as well.
The choice to move from tech startups to the bookselling world wasn’t one that the businessmen took lightly. But as Silva put it in his op-ed for the London Evening Standard, “we increasingly crave places where we can escape from the incessant chatter and distraction of technology.” And if millennials also crave booze and music, then this new store is sure to be a hit.
All images courtesy of SecondHome.io