If I know I’m gonna be in San Francisco, I always plan my trip around Kayo Books’ very limited business hours (Thursdays through Saturdays, afternoons only).
Kayo is located on Post, four blocks west of Union Square, and it’s absolutely the world’s greatest purveyor of vintage paperbacks.
What’s that mean?
What it means is floor-to-ceiling stacks and shelves of paperbacks and magazines, crammed into a very small space but all painstakingly categorized…
Sci-fi, westerns, hardboiled detectives, pulp originals and reprints, 1960s and ’70s TV show novelizations. (If you’re looking for impossible-to-find “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” paperbacks, Kayo is the spot to find ’em.)
Some categories would make the old Dewey Decimal System blush, then curl up and die in a musty closet…
Catholic guilt, sex on the moon, big-busted hillbilly girls, naughty nurses, juvenile delinquents, boarding school antics, and hookers with hearts of gold.
Besides its extraordinary and intimidating inventory, what’s most impressive about Kayo Books is its self-awareness.
Kayo knows what it does, it does it very well, and it knows its market.
Here’s how the Kayo people describe their business on their website:
“KAYO Books is … a bookstore in downtown San Francisco specializing in Vintage Paperbacks from the 1940s to 1970s and esoteric books of all persuasions. Our small store is like a museum of pulp fiction and non-fiction. The stock presents a glimpse into the lurid past of dimestore novels, sleazy 1960s exploitation, and 1970s pop culture.”
This finely honed “unique sales position” is what distinguishes successful little Kayo Books from a big “something for everyone” chain like Barnes & Noble. And even from almost every other used bookstore.
Kayo has a rabid clientele because it recognizes a desire and caters to it shamelessly.
Kinda makes ya wonder how well tuned you are to your own (or future) business, huh?
What exactly do you offer?
Who’s your market? (Fer cryssakes, don’t say, “Everybody!”)
Kayo knows itself inside and out. These folks know who they are and why geeks like me go bugnutz when we discover them.
Study what Kayo Books, and others like them, do. Then go and do likewise.
