Woozles celebrates 40 years in business

A well-known Halifax children’s bookstore held early birthday celebrations on Saturday in honour of turning 40 years old.

“When people ask how I feel, I say, ‘Kind of stunned and absolutely delighted with the response that we still have,'” Liz Crocker, the owner of Woozles, said at the event.

She, along with two others, opened the store on Oct. 14, 1978. She said she was was inspired to open it because she couldn’t find the children’s books she was seeking at the time for her one-year-old daughter.

“We said, ‘Why not? Let’s do it,'” Crocker recounted.

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There are more things, namely electronic gadgets, competing for the attention of her customers now, but she thinks that the advent of online shopping has been the biggest challenge the business has faced.

“We do customer service really well, we do selecting the perfect book and the perfect toy really well, and so we have, I think, met that challenge and carried on,” Crocker said.

New initiatives at the store are in the works, including one that is about supporting school-aged writers, she said.

There were 600 visitors to the store on its opening day, and it appears that that record was broken on Saturday, Crocker said.

In 2013, she told Global News that the store didn’t have a cash register for eight years.