Kwame Spearman’s first venture in books didn’t work out very well.
Spearman and two business partners bought the city’s classic Tattered Cover in 2020, with support from a couple of the city’s wealthiest people. But it ended with the business still in debt, still hemorrhaging money and eventually being sold to Barnes & Noble in 2024.
Less than a year later, Spearman is ready to try again. He announced this week that he and a business partner, Rich Garvin, are launching the Denver Book Society.
“This is such a good April Fools’ Day prank story,” he said on Tuesday. But it’s no joke.
The new bookstore will be at 1700 N. Humboldt St. in Uptown Denver, which Garvin and Spearman bought on March 25. The building is also home to the restaurants White Pie Pizza and Dos Santos, both of which will keep operating, Spearman said.
Denver Book Society could open for a temporary holiday event later this year, followed by a grand opening next year. The bookstore will occupy about 3,500 square feet of the 9,000-square-foot building.
“It’s not me being insane,” he told Denverite. “It’s more about I am dogmatically stubborn on this belief that entrepreneurial ideas that are socially minded are what’s right of Denver.”
He and Garvin want the new bookstore to be a “third space” where people can come together, with plans for coffee and wine service. The pair paid $2.9 million for the building; that’s a reduction from 2019, when the building sold for $3.8 million.
What went wrong at Tattered Cover?
“Trust me, I’ve obviously spent a long time thinking about that question,” he said.
Spearman’s investors in Tattered Cover included Dick Monfort and the Thiry family, among the wealthiest and most influential people in the state. But the new owners’ ambitious plans didn’t bring in enough revenue and drew complaints from some employees.
Tattered Cover had been around Denver for nearly 50 years and had been sold several years earlier by longtime owner Joyce Meskis. It was already "hemorrhaging" cash prior to the sale, and it owed more than $1 million to vendors, Spearman said.
Instead of going into bankruptcy, the ownership group arranged to pay the debts back over time. “The way that we planned to repay that debt was to grow,” Spearman said.
Opening new stores in places like McGregor Square, Westminster and Colorado Springs improved the revenue picture, but not fast enough to cover debt, Spearman said.
Add in rising labor and other costs, and by 2023 “the wheels fell off,” he explained. Losing cash, cutting staff and inventory, the business seemed to enter a “doom spiral,” said Spearman, who stepped back from leading Tattered Cover to run for mayor that year — he lost.
In the middle of 2024, Barnes & Noble bought Tattered Cover for about $1.8 million and continues to operate it.
What will be different at Denver Book Society?
For one thing, Spearman and Garvin will own the property. That will make costs more predictable and allow the owners to plan for the long term.
“We are not doing this for day to day operational profits,” Spearman said.
Spearman also hopes that he’s now a more experienced leader, and that a fresh start will make it easier to build a profitable business.
“Tattered Cover had an incredibly storied history,” Spearman said. “In many ways that makes Tattered Cover what it is, it also makes it hard to evolve and change with times.”
The building that will house Denver Book Society was built in 1945, according to property records. The new owners value historic buildings and have no plans to redevelop it. The restaurants on the site have leases that extend for several more years.
“The plan is to operate the bookstore for as long as it’s viable to do that,” Spearman said.
