Store Runs Counter To Corporate Culture -- Half Price Books: Offbeat Place

DALLAS - Half Price Books Records and Magazines answers the query: Can an enterprise on the cusp of socialism endure?

This 1972 brainchild of "down-with-the-establishment" thinking has grown into America's largest used-book chain by keeping rules to a bare minimum, encouraging offbeat personalities and sharing corporate spoils with all workers.

Founders Pat Anderson and Ken Gjemre never intended to get rich by paying cash for other folks' reading materials and reselling them for a profit. Ken, then 51, wanted a job that wouldn't interfere with his war-protest activities. Pat, at 40, was in the midst of a clinical psychology internship and expected to save the world's mental health.

Twenty-one years later, they're still selling books. They wanted a straightforward name. Since everything would be priced at half of the cover price or less, they decided on Half Price Books Records and Magazines. It's held up all these years.

The chain has four stores in this area - on Roosevelt Way Northeast near the University District, at Crossroads Shopping Center in Bellevue, and in Edmonds and Tacoma.

From inauspicious beginnings in a tiny converted laundromat and then a smelly meat locker, Half Price Books has turned recycling books into a chain of 47 stores in eight states that sold $30 million in printed and recorded materials in fiscal 1993.

Gary Hoover, founder of Bookstop, says Half Price is a rarity in an industry dominated by mom-and-pop shops. "They're the best in the country at what they do," he says. "When I was at Bookstop, they had people we wanted to hire, and we couldn't shake them away."

CEO Anderson delights in saying prosperity has come because they do things that would make mainstream corporate America wince.

Babies can go to work with parents until they're too mobile. Employees borrow the merchandise. Hiring outside managers is forbidden. Excess inventory is given away - including 8,743 paperbacks to help a competitor get back on his feet after his store was damaged by fire in July.

Once asked by pyschological testers to name their favorite book, each partner gave the same response: Robin Hood. Take from the rich and give to the poor. "That certainly would lead one to a socialistic viewpoint," says 61-year-old Anderson, who even as company president and CEO identifies more with the worker than the corporation.

Her views were colored at an early age by the coal companies where her father, uncle and grandfather worked. "Coal miners still break my heart," she says, as her eyes immediately cloud. "Uncle Willie got hurt by one of those carts in the mine that was pulled by a donkey. Crushed his leg. No workman's comp, no nothing."

Unlike those coal operators, Anderson wants Half Price Books to take care of its own. And with 500 employees spread from Washington to Texas, that's no small effort.

All full-time workers get 12 paid holidays, 12 vacation days and birthday, a day for each year of service up to 10 days, and 12 sick days.

Nepotism is rampant, so a new child often has two Half Price parents. Moms get four weeks paid maternity leave in addition to 23 sick days that can be used during pregnancy or after the baby comes. She also can have up to two months unpaid time off. Dads get two weeks paid paternity leave.

Then there's the compensation philosophy. Upper-rung executives, officers and department heads make a salary of about $50,000 to $52,000 - no more than four and one-half times the salary of entry-level sales clerks, who make $950 a month plus full benefits.

The 500 employees who make up Half Price Books' iconoclastic family will pad their salaries by splitting more than $715,000 - roughly a third of the company's $2.1 million 1993 pretax profits. Bonuses range from about $1,200 to $3,500 a year - based on company and store success.

Calculating 500 different bonuses paid each quarter is a computerized nightmare, Anderson admits - half is determined by corporate profits; the other half by the performance of the store where the employee works.

This is about as organized as Anderson wants to get. "We didn't want another bureaucracy," she says.

Bureaucracy just doesn't come to mind. Half Price Books serves as a halfway house for creative minds. "We have a lot of musicians and artists, very creative people," she says. "Some of them have been hanging around here for 18 years waiting to be discovered."

Financial arrangements at Half Price Books have always been, well, loose. Anderson is training 35-year-old daughter Sharon, a.k.a. Boots, Anderson, currently vice president, how to run the business that she hopes to keep in the family.

Gjemre, 72, has retired from day-to-day operations, so Anderson is pretty much in charge. That means deciding where Half Price might open next, what store might need sprucing up more than others and which store needs to be moved.

Pressures to become like other companies have increased as Half Price Books expands.

With some dismay, Anderson admits to having established a dress code recently: No political slogans or curse words on T-shirts, and visible tattoos must follow the same rules; no bare feet, skimpy tops or gravity- defying pants; nose-rings are OK if they're small; hair should be clean and not impair vision; nametags are a must.

What happens if someone violates the code? "We just tell them to go forth and sin no more."