Profile: Flagship Books
Strawberry Hill has a new bookstore!
Photos by Courtney Wiebe
Strawberry Hill is one of KC’s oldest & coolest neighborhoods— from a thriving restaurant scene, to cool coffee shops and great dive bars, there’s plenty to check out. Head on up to this historic hill and check out the neighborhood’s newest addition, a book store! We sat down with brothers & founders Joel and Ty Melgren to chat about their new shop:
Congrats on the new shop! You started out as a shipping container shop in the Iron District– when did you know you were ready to grow?
Iron District was the perfect place for us to start. We had a lot of fun running the store in the shipping container and were getting strong positive feedback from our customers. From there we started to think about how we could best sustain the business' energy and increase the volume of books we were able to get to people without compromising on the selection, and soon realized we would need to be in a bigger space.
Why did you choose the Strawberry Hill area for Flagship?
We live in Strawberry Hill so we have had our eyes on spots in the neighborhood before we even got our opportunity in the Iron District. We love the walkability, diversity, and friendly people. KCK is one of the largest cities to our knowledge without an independent bookstore. Mainly it's our home and we can't think of a better location than our own neighborhood.
How are you planning to engage with the neighborhood?
We’re starting to plan some events for the next few months – book clubs, local author readings, poetry nights, zine making workshops – so that the store can become a place where people can come with friends or maybe meet new people. It’s also important to us to try to recognize and support the various communities in the neighborhoods around us, so we’re working on building our selection of books in Spanish, and we’re hoping to be able to stock books in Burmese and other languages soon, too.
What have been a few of your favorite reads this year?
Ty: I’ve been reading a lot of poetry by Langston Hughes, and it’s great. I also really liked a novel about the astronomer Johannes Kepler’s mom called ‘Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch,’ and I’m currently halfway through Nnedi Okorafor’s ‘Binti’ trilogy.
Joel: I really liked ‘Entangled Life’ by Merlin Sheldrake.
Tell us about the used books portion of your business! Can customers show up anytime with books to sell/trade?
Sure! People can come in any time with books if they’re in good condition. We just ask that people only bring in one box of books at a time, so that we have time to sort through them, and then we’ll offer either cash or store credit for the books we can accept. We’ll also gladly take any book donations.
What's it like running a business as brothers? Any advice for families working together to grow their business?
It’s usually fun! We occasionally get frustrated with each other, but it helps that we have different skills and interests that complement each other.
What are you excited for this year?
One thing we’re excited about is KCK’s art walk returning in the spring. It just started last year, but it quickly grew into a big community event that lots of people came out for. Mostly we’re looking forward to getting the store established in the neighborhood, making more connections with our neighbors, and getting good books to people.
