Daedalus knows how to read its customers.
While sticking to its mission of offering drastically reduced prices on its merchandise, area business Daedalus Books & Music also has branched out into compact disks, DVDs and the Internet to serve the wants and needs of its consumers. And according to Vice President Helaine Harris, the changes Daedalus has made are paying off for both ends.
“Listen to your customers, treat them well and they will be back,” said Harris, who helped co-found the store in 1980. “You have to [listen] to grow a business in the 21st century.”
Since recently adding DVDs, Daedalus is now looking to become more established in wholesale and online sales. On its mailing list, the store maintains 600,000 subscribers while shipping out about 9 million catalogs a year. Conversely, about 30 percent of Daedalus? total business is conducted on the wholesale side, a number that Harris expects to grow.
Annually, the company sells about 5 million books, 7 million CDs and an increasing number of DVDs. Data from the Census Bureau and other sources indicated that last year, U.S. publishers had net sales of more than $24.3 billion.
Harris also has the unique job of being responsible for purchasing the store?s stock. Receiving overstock lists from various companies, she puts in total bids for varying numbers of books. Buying in bulk, Harris can purchase 50 to more than 50,000 books at a time.
Daedalus has two locations, one in Columbia and one in Baltimore City at Belvedere Square. Each location takes up about 10,000 square feet of floor space.
“I save a lot, buying the books I want at a third of the price of anywhere else,” said Janet Smith, 59, a teacher from Ohio who makes a habit of stopping at Daedalus whenever she visits her daughter, buying copies of “The Little Prince” in French for her classes. “I cleaned them out.”
