It was the 1980s and bookstores with coffee shops attached were the new craze.
But self-proclaimed bookworms Robin Moody and Helaine Harris pooled their money to buy into a part of the book industry with a little less sex appeal. They bought a small distribution center that specialized in overstock and "remainder" books -- the excess inventory that publishing houses sell at discount.
It was a small operation called Daedalus Books with a mailing list of a couple of thousand individual buyers and a small roster of bookstore clients.
Remainder book sales was a fairly new concept at the time and few had figured out how to make it profitable. The genre that was Daedalus' specialty -- scholarly books -- didn't bring in big returns.
But Moody and Harris have proven that there can be big business in leftover books. They've grown the company from one with $620,000 in annual sales and seven employees to a $27 million operation with 170 workers. They will celebrate the grand opening of their first stand-alone retail shop tomorrow at Belvedere Square on York Road, south of Northern Parkway, in Baltimore.
Moody said that opening bookstores -- Daedalus also sells to the public from a location attached to its headquarters in Columbia -- is a dream of any bibliophile. Moody's wife, Tamara Stock, joined the company a few years after it opened.
"Bookstores are really for book people like us," Moody said. "It's a real fun experience to be able to put books in the hands of consumers."
Opening its own bookstore can also help Daedalus reach more customers in a business with traditionally thin profit margins. The company also sells books through the Internet and by catalog. It also sells music, including a CD collection it produces with National Public Radio.
"We found that by diversifying, you're hitting people in as many ways as possible," Moody said. "It's a symbiotic relationship. It makes us a more solid busi- ness."
While reading seems to have taken a back seat to video games and Internet surfing, especially among the young, Daedalus has been able to attract new customers by targeting avid readers.
The company advertises in magazines such as The New Yorker and Harpers and has gained new customers through word-of-mouth referrals. Over the years, it has compiled a list of 600,000 customers, most of them repeat fans of the book company. It also sells to 3,000 bookstores around the world.
