Westgate Books continues under new ownership in familiar Saskatoon location

Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today the StarPhoenix talks to Luke Syrnick and his business partner, who purchased Westgate Books to keep it open after the previous owner retired.

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Westgate Books has a long history in Saskatoon, stretching back to when it first opened in a different location in 1972.

The bookstore has had four groups of owners, including Luke and his partner when they took over last May. They have been working on some new plans for the long-running bookstore, including organizing and digitizing the inventory and introducing a store cat.

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Luke’s partner has asked to remain anonymous.

Q: What made you decide to buy Westgate Books?

Partner: A friend of mine heard that the previous owner was looking to retire. We really loved Westgate. It was our favourite bookstore before we bought it.

I had a bit of money for a down payment for the business from my grandma who passed away about a decade ago. She was a teacher. She loved books. I think she’d be happy with this money going towards this kind of thing. It felt like, why not?

Even when we still lived (elsewhere) and we could visit … here, we would always look forward to coming to Westgate. We always found the philosophy section was really well stocked, and the literature.

Luke Syrnick: I always found something here at Westgate. I would always find books I couldn’t even find in Vancouver.

Q: How important was it for you to see Westgate continue?

Luke: We definitely didn’t want another used bookstore to close in the city.

Partner: I don’t have the long connection with Westgate, but people come here all the time and they’ve been coming here basically the whole time it’s existed, which is over 50 years. So people are really happy that it’s continuing, even though we’ve reorganized a lot of it.

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We’re kind of doing a lot of modern upgrading, and obviously we’re different people. But the location is still the same, the name is the same, and people are just happy about that and that it’s going to keep going for a while.

Q: How long have you had a love of books?

Partner: I’ve always been a big reader. My mom is a big writer, not published or anything, just constantly writing. She wrote a few plays when she was younger. There were always books in our house. I could always read whatever I wanted.

I don’t remember not knowing how to read. I’ve always been a big devourer of books, although I feel like less now that we actually own the store. I don’t have time to read.

Luke: I guess I grew up with books all over the house. My parents were always trying to get me to read and I would have none of it when I was a kid. I was always going to the mall and into sports. But then in my early 20s, something flipped, and I couldn’t get enough of reading.

Q: What sets Westgate Books apart from other used book stores?

Luke: An eclectic stock of inventory is a part of it.

Partner: I’ve worked in customer service my whole life. We have a few employees that are really good, really friendly. They know more about books than I do. One of them has a creative writing degree; the other one is working on hers. So they’re just really helpful people to have around.

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In the new year we want to do some events, like getting a letter writing club going. We have a student discount now, trying to get some new faces in the door. We’re just trying to be out there more and really be part of the community.

Coming from Vancouver, in Vancouver you really feel anonymous. It’s so much bigger and busier. Saskatoon is so much friendlier and I see the same people all the time. So I’m really diving into that. I want to be part of this thing. And I’m an artist and people know me a tiny bit from that. Now they can know me because I own the bookstore too. And we hang some local art on the wall, too, that is changing all the time.

Q: What kinds of changes are you making in the store?

Partner: A big one is we are working on getting a digitized inventory of the books. To have everything inventoried is huge. Some of our employees only work a few hours a week and of course don’t know where everything is. We hardly do either. It would be super easy to look up a book. We’d be able to take requests for customers.

That’s what the previous owner was doing, but it’s so hard without the computer keeping track of things. That’s going to be a big modern upgrade that’s going to make a big difference and it’s going to streamline a lot of stuff. Then we’ll be able to put some rarer, weirder books online and sell to a bigger audience as well, which would be good.

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A lot of what we’re doing too is kind of reorganizing the store a little bit. It had some interesting categories, like it was divided by gender of author a lot of the time. And that was kind of my one thing that I didn’t love about the store. We’ve eliminated that.

We are just making the store tidier with a bigger emphasis on going around and organizing, because every day the books get out of order just from people looking at them. And we’re playing music now. We feel like it’s a little cozier.

Luke: And it’s a very comfortable store, too, just to be in and browse and spend some time in. You don’t have to know what you want. You can come in and browse around. There’s something for everybody. We have our LGBTQ+ books a little more prominently displayed. And we have a website and Instagram.

Q: How does your pricing work?

Partner: We’re trying to do about half the new book price. That’s probably how the majority of the books are priced. If they’re more rare or unusual, we price them higher. We try to be competitive with what they’re selling online from other used book stores. Some books are priced less than half the new.

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We do get donations of books sometimes, and we appreciate those. Sometimes those will be a little more beat up than I would take in for store credit. I’ll price those lower, which is kind of nice to be able to do. We try to be pretty in line with what other used book stores are doing.

Q: You have a store cat?

Partner: We have a store cat named Cracker. She’s about nine. We got her from a man who lived nearby and had to re-home her. It’s actually a nice situation. He can still visit her all the time.

Q: What do you love most about owning Westgate Books?

Luke: I love when we find books that we haven’t seen before.

Partner: I just like learning every day about a new author. I learn about different books all the time. I’m happy to let authors and books take up room in my head. That’s the best thing about working here, for sure. I feel like I’ve added 20 books to my list of books that I want to read.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Westgate Books

Owners: Luke Syrnick and partner
Address: 1022 Louise Avenue (Louis the 8th Mall)
Hours: Monday and Wednesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 12 to 4:30 p.m.; Closed Tuesdays.
Phone: 306-382-5252
Email: we**************@***il.com“, “layout_section”: “in-page-link”}” data-evt=”click” data-evt-typ=”click” href=”http://thestarphoenix.com/mailto:we**************@***il.com” data-original-string=”C4JDMFw/4iw+FRIHTeKy8Q==7f4+onLWO6+Mh9AaT4V12VgjcU1IXEsazwhPyruE1gv6dA=” title=”This contact has been encoded by Anti-Spam by CleanTalk. Click to decode. To finish the decoding make sure that JavaScript is enabled in your browser.”>we**************@***il.com
Website: www.westgatebooks.ca
Check: Instagram

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