Powell's Books

20th century

Walter Powell founded Powell's in 1971. His son, Michael Powell, had started a bookstore in Chicago, Illinois, in 1970 which specialized in used, rare, and discounted books, primarily of an academic and scholarly nature. In 1979, Michael Powell joined his father in Portland, right after his father's store was not offered a lease renewal; within a year, they found the location that became its current headquarters. Michael bought the bookstore from his father in 1982.

In 1984, Powell's opened its first branch store, in a suburban shopping center named Loehmann's Plaza (later renamed Cascade Plaza), near Washington Square. The new branch was not a replica of its City of Books location; Powell was concerned that the "edgy" neighborhood of its headquarters location was limiting its customer base, so the new store was "fairly fancy" with white shelving, a tile floor, and banners over the aisles. It was also four times the size of the typical chain bookstore.

A travel bookstore was established in 1985 on Pioneer Courthouse Square, and other stores followed, one a year for the next few years. By the early 1990s, Powell's bookstores were part of the resurgence of the independent bookstore, which collectively made 32 percent of book sales in the U.S. The travel store closed in 2005.

Powell's established its Internet presence in 1993, beginning with email and FTP-based access to its technical bookstore; it has since expanded to incorporate fiction and other genres as a traditional ecommerce site. Their website was established in 1994, before Amazon.com, and has contributed substantially to the chain's recent growth.

The City of Books location grew to its current size after an expansion that opened in 1999; it included a new entrance facing the Pearl District which featured the "Pillar of Books", a Tenino sandstone carving depicting a stack of eight of the world's great books, on a base with the inscription "Buy the book, read the book, enjoy the book, sell the book" in Latin. For the year ending June 2000, Powell's revenue was $41.8 million.

21st century

In 2002, Powell's was cited by USA Today as one of America's 10 best bookstores.

In January 2008, Powell's announced plans to expand the downtown City of Books by adding as many as two floors to the store's southeast corner. The expansion was due to add at least 10,000 square feet (930 square metres) of new retail space. Plans submitted to the Portland Design Commission in November 2008 called for a rooftop garden atop the new addition and an "art cube" over a redesigned main entrance.

In March 2010, Michael Powell confirmed plans to hand over management of the business to his daughter Emily as of July. That same month, Powell's announced it would close its technical bookstore on the North Park Blocks, moving its sections on math, science, computing, engineering, construction, and transportation into "Powell's Books Building 2" at the corner of 10th and Couch Street, near the main City of Books location. The consolidation was in response to a five-year decline in brick-and-mortar sales of technical books in favor of online sales.

Powell's City of Books

Powell's flagship store, dubbed Powell's City of Books, is located in the Pearl District on the edge of downtown and occupies a full city block between NW 10th and 11th Avenues and between W. Burnside and NW Couch Streets. It contains over 68,000 square feet (6,300 square metres), about 1.6 acres, of retail floor space.

The City of Books has nine color-coded rooms and over 3,500 different sections.

The inventory for its retail and online sales is over four million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books. As of 2009, Powell's was buying around 3,000 used books a day.

Former locations

In the 1980s, Powell's had a location across from Washington Square Mall in Tigard. This was the chain's second location. This location was eventually replaced by their Cedar Hills Crossing location.