Jazzi McGilbert didn’t really start with a business idea, but rather with a vision of a space for black people in Los Angeles. She wanted to create a place where they could gather as a community, inspired by her own childhood in the city. “I was just a creative, bookish, introverted black girl growing up and I always needed spaces to feel safe. And I missed it,” Jazzi says. “So I went out and built one.”
With just $20,000, Jazzi started Repair Club, a bookstore and a community space. In just three years, the store grew into a seven-figure business. Much of this growth has happened organically, through creativity, conservation, and careful risk-taking.
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Harness your creative side
Jazzi is an artist who works in several mediums. She was a fashion magazine editor and creative director before starting Rep Club, and brought a similar artistic sensibility to store design. “I approach my business like an artist in the sense that I think about color and texture and how people will resonate with the work,” Jazzi explains.
For Reparations Club, Jazzi wanted the store to have a 1970s-inspired aesthetic, similar to the decor of his childhood.
![Jazzi McGilbert lying on a couch at the Reparations Club and reading a book](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0070/7032/files/jazzi_reparations-club_doen-18_1.jpg?v=1710822706)
Organize with purpose
Reparations Club sells books and repair products Black-Owned Brands. “I think every bookstore is ultimately, in some way, a reflection of its owner,” Jazzi says. She explains that her interests and identity, as well as those of her staff, are reflected in the products on the shelves.
![People shopping at the Reparations Club](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0070/7032/files/1077040-R4-E133_1.jpg?v=1710822947)
The ups and downs of entrepreneurship
When she started, Jazzi had a vision for Reparations Club and knew the community she was building it for, but she didn’t know how it would be received. When she found her first retail space, she expected the worst. “If no one walks into this space and buys anything, how much do I have to lose? she wondered.
When the building’s roof sprung a leak, Jazzi nearly lost everything, with the water damaging almost the entire store’s inventory.
Jazzi continued, however. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Reparations Club to temporarily close its physical location, but the Reparations Club opened an online store and began delivering books throughout the city.
And Reparations Club was able to meet clients’ needs when they were looking for resources amid the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. “It was the summer of anti-racist reading. People were really looking for an education that they now realized they were lacking,” says Jazzi.
Grow through word of mouth marketing
The Reparations Club did not spend any money on advertising. Instead, the brand’s growth has been organic. “I just wanted to focus on people who were having such a good experience that they were telling someone else about it,” Jazzi says. Creating that experience is sometimes as simple as recommending a book to a customer or helping an author celebrate their first release.
The independent bookstore business can be tough at times, but Jazzi sees some hope in the amount of books people are reading and the number of movies based on books. “There is this return to reading that deeply inspires me,” she says.
To learn more about the Reparations Club and Jazzi’s journey to becoming a business owner, listen to full interview on Shopify Masters.