Business
Column: L.A.'s only Spanish-language children's bookstore will soon get más grande
When Chiara Arroyo and Celene Navarrete decided to sell Spanish-language children’s books in 2012, they weren’t worried about customer demand.
As mothers with kids at Edison Language Academy in Santa Monica, they saw that the market for bilingual books for Latinos and non-Latinos alike was surging, especially as schools created dual immersion programs. As immigrants from Mexico and Spain, they knew that Spanish had been part of Southern California for over 250 years and wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon.
No, what made them fret was the eternal question Angelenos face:
LA Librería co-founder Celene Navarrete in her bookstore.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
How do you make it in L.A.?
“It’s so easy to be invisible in this city,” Navarrete told me as we walked toward the back of LA Librería, the brick-and-mortar store she and Arroyo own and run. “It’s so spread out. Promotion is so hard. You have to go community to community, street by street.”
Navarrete and Arroyo knew that success wasn’t guaranteed even in a city with a long Spanish-language literary tradition, a megalopolis where the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that nearly 40% of households speak Spanish. They were preparing to launch in an era when bookstores were closing, Amazon was dominating online sales and the publishing industry was preparing to pivot from paper to digital.
The two were undeterred, however, because of a sense of obligation brought on by disgust. The few children’s books translated from English to Spanish that they could find were riddled with mistakes.
“In English, you don’t publish a book with errors,” Arroyo said. “In Spanish, [American publishers] don’t care. They think that the Spanish-speaking families don’t have money? There’s negative values associated with Spanish.”
“Such tremendous prejudices,” Navarrete added. “When we saw the reality,” opening a store “became a necessity.”
They started with an online bookstore and began to organize school book fairs across the U.S. Next came a tiny warehouse in West Adams that opened to the public in 2015. Soon followed community festivals, contracts with schools to provide bilingual books and increasing fame as one of the few Spanish-language children’s bookstores in the country — and one of the only Spanish-language bookstores in Los Angeles, period.
LA Librería co-founders Chiara Arroyo, left, and Celene Navarrete in the stockroom.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
The COVID-19 pandemic nearly ended LA Librería, but Arroyo and Navarrete pulled through with the help of grants and the fact “that children went home with books to read,” according to Navarrete. The store has not only rebounded, but it’s also ready for the next stage of success.
I met Arroyo and Navarrete a few weeks ago at their new location: a long, single-story 4,400-square-foot building in Mid-City that’s double the size of LA Librería’s last spot and that they’ll officially debut in mid-June.
“We’ve asked ourselves if we were crazy many times,” Arroyo, 47, said with a laugh, then a look at Navarrete. They’re both gregarious but not grating and carry conversations with the grace and teamwork of Mookie Betts firing off a throw to Freddie Freeman.
Navarrete, 51, shook her head with a wide grin. “We don’t even believe what we have, because we’re so happy.”
Our tour began in the warehouse section, where 8,000 titles from across the Spanish-speaking world on all sorts of subjects rested in boxes and on huge steel racks better suited for tires. We spoke almost exclusively in Spanish, with me slipping into English a few times even though español was my first tongue. The two were sympathetic.
Books are displayed at LA Librería.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
“The interest for bilingualism is here,” said Navarrete, who’s also a professor of coding and computer information systems management at Cal State Dominguez Hills. “It’s changing the importance of keeping Spanish that we need to work on.”
“People want to feel represented,” said Arroyo, a former film critic for Spanish and Mexican publications. “They don’t just ask, ‘Do you have books about Guatemala?’ They ask, ‘Do you have books from Guatemala?’ They want to see themselves.”
Of Spanish and Italian heritage, Arroyo grew up in Barcelona, Spain, where “in every corner, in small towns, there was a bookstore.” Navarrete, a native of the Mexican state of Aguascalientes, was raised in a household where books weren’t as common but were nevertheless treasured. When the two met, they were taken aback by the paucity of Spanish-language literature available in Los Angeles. Festivals and bookstores had come and gone over the decades, done in by lack of funding and the precarious business that is book selling in the digital age.
LA Librería co-founder Chiara Arroyo.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
“Spanish has always lived here along English — all kinds of Spanish,” Navarrete said. “But most of what we could find was through Mexican eyes.”
We were now walking around LA Librería’s offices, which double as a packing area. Empty dollies and carts stood near two employees who readied books for delivery. Cool stuff was everywhere I looked. A compendium of Latin American folk tales. A young-adult version of radio legend Maria Hinojosa’s memoir. Picture books teaching Spanish speakers words in Nahuatl and Maya. Above us were giant papier-mâché heads of alebrijes — colorful Mexican folk art figurines — used at LA Librería’s recent appearance at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, where they hosted a signing for me.
“A book in Spanish in this city has a different meaning in this city,” Navarrete said. “A child learns to keep their parents’ language, or just learns it. For immigrant parents or grandparents, the books let them teach a new generation, but also let them remember.”
“It’s a mirror,” Arroyo said. “A portal.”
The two laughed at memories of the early days of LA Librería: How the warehouse began in their homes and moved to their first storefront. How demand soon exceeded supply. How customers quickly asked for readings as well.
“You know Charlie Chaplin?” Arroyo said. “Our first place was like that. We pull this, we move that, and our kitchen turned into a reading space, just like that!”
That won’t be a challenge at LA Librería’s new spot. The tour ended at the front of the store. Wooden planks and plywood sheets waited to be transformed into bookshelves. A glass-encased conference room the two jokingly call “the Fishbowl” will serve as a community gathering space for workshops.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Once the store opens, it’s time to work on more dreams. Deepening their relationships with L.A.’s other non-English bookstores. Their own publishing house. Expanding the Los Angeles Libros Festival, a bilingual fair they co-founded. Selling more adult books in Spanish.
“We have the kids’ world controlled, but we don’t know the adult world,” Navarrete said. “But pasito a pasito” — little step by little step.
She smiled. “The kids who bought our first books are now in college.”
Arroyo nodded. “Our spouses say we have the stars aligned for us. Maybe they’re right!”
Lululemon, the yoga pants and athletic clothing company, has hired a former executive from a rival, Nike, as its new chief executive.
Heidi O’Neill, who spent more than 25 years at Nike, will take the reins and join Lululemon’s board of directors on Sept. 8, the company announced on Wednesday.
The leadership change is happening during a tumultuous time for Lululemon, which had grown to $11 billion in revenue by persuading shoppers to ditch their jeans and slacks for stretchy leggings. But lately, sales have declined in North America amid intense competition and shifting fashion trends, with consumers favoring looser styles rather than the form-fitting silhouettes for which Lululemon is best known.
“As I step into the C.E.O. role in September, my job will be to build on that foundation — to accelerate product breakthroughs, deepen the brand’s cultural relevance, and unlock growth in markets around the world,” Ms. O’Neill, 61, said in a statement.
Lululemon, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has also been entangled in a corporate power struggle over the company’s future. Its billionaire founder, Chip Wilson, has feuded with the board, nominated independent directors and criticized executives.
Lululemon’s previous chief executive, Calvin McDonald, stepped down at the end of January as pressure mounted from Mr. Wilson and some investors. One activist investor, Elliott Investment Management, had pushed its own chief executive candidate, who was not selected.
The interim co-chiefs, Meghan Frank and André Maestrini, will lead the company until Ms. O’Neill’s arrival, when they are expected to return to other senior roles. The pair had outlined a plan to revive sales at Lululemon, promising to invest in stores, save more money and speed up product development.
“We start the year with a real plan, with real strategies,” Mr. Maestrini said in an interview this year. “We make sure decisions are made fast.”
Lululemon said last month that it would add Chip Bergh, the former chief executive of Levi Strauss, to its board to replace David Mussafer, the chairman of the private equity firm Advent International, whom Mr. Wilson had sought to remove.
Ms. O’Neill climbed the organizational chart at Nike for decades, working across divisions including consumer sports, product innovation and brand marketing, and was most recently its president of consumer, product and brand. She left Nike last year amid a shake-up of senior management that led to the elimination of her role.
Analysts said Ms. O’Neill would be expected to find ways to energize Lululemon’s business and reset the company’s culture in order to improve performance.
“O’Neill is her own person who will come with an agenda of change,” said Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData, a data analytics and consulting company. “The task ahead is a significant one, but it can be undertaken from a position of relative stability.”
Eaton wildfire survivors’ anger about Southern California Edison’s burying of electric wires in Altadena boiled over Tuesday with residents calling on government officials to temporarily halt the work.
In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, more than 120 Altadena residents and the town’s council wrote that they had witnessed “manifest failures” by Edison in recent months as it has been tearing up streets and digging trenches to bury the wires.
The residents cited the unexpected financial cost of the work to homeowners and possible harm to the town’s remaining trees. They also pointed out how the work will leave telecommunication wires above ground on poles.
“The current lack of coordination is compounding the stress of a community still reeling from the Eaton Fire, and risks causing further irreparable harm,” the residents wrote.
The council voted unanimously Tuesday night to send the letter.
Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Wednesday that the company has been working to address the concerns, including by looking for other sources of funds to help pay for the homeowners’ costs.
“We recognize this community has already faced a number of challenges,” he said.
Johnson said the company will allow homeowners to keep existing overhead lines connecting their homes to the grid if they are worried about the cost.
Edison’s crews, Johnson said, have also been trained to use equipment that avoids roots and preserves the health of trees.
The utility has said that burying the wires as the town rebuilds thousands of homes destroyed in the fire will make the electrical grid safer and more reliable.
But anger has grown as work crews have shown up unexpectedly and residents learned they’re on the hook to pay tens of thousands of dollars to connect their homes to the buried lines.
Residents have also found the crews digging under the town’s oak and pine trees that survived last year’s fire. Arborists say the trenches could destroy the roots of some of the last remaining trees and kill them.
Amy Bodek, the county’s regional planning director, recently warned Edison that a government ordinance protects oak trees and that “utility trenching is not exempt from these requirements.”
Residents have also pointed out that in much of Altadena, the telecom companies, including Spectrum and AT&T, have not agreed to bury their wires in Edison’s trenches. That means the telecom wires will remain on poles above ground, which residents say is visually unappealing.
“While our community supports the long-term benefits of moving utilities underground, the current execution by SCE is placing undue financial and planning burdens on homeowners, causing irreparable harm to our heritage tree canopy, and proceeding without adequate local oversight,” the residents wrote.
They want the project halted until the problems are addressed.
Edison announced last year that it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation.
The work — which costs an estimated $4 million per mile — will earn the utility millions of dollars in profits as its electric customers pay for it over the next decades.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom last year that state utility rules would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. Pizarro estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.
But some residents, who need to dig long trenches, say it will cost them much more.
“We are rebuilding and with the insurance shortfall, our finances are stretched already,” Marilyn Chong, an Altadena resident, wrote in a comment attached to the letter. “Incurring the additional burden of financing SCE’s infrastructure is not something we can or should have to do.”
Other fire survivors complained of Edison’s lack of planning and coordination with residents.
“I’ve started rebuilding, and apparently there won’t be underground power lines for me to connect with in time when my house will be done,” wrote Gail Murphy. “So apparently I’m supposed to be using a generator, and for how long!?”
Johnson said the company has set up a phone line for people with concerns or questions. That line — 1-800-250-7339 — is answered Monday through Saturday, he said.
Residents can also go to Edison’s office in Altadena at 2680 Fair Oaks Avenue. The office is open Monday to Friday from 8 to 4:30.
It’s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena’s neighborhood power lines had been buried.
The blaze ignited under Edison’s towering transmission lines that run through Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through the company’s territory. In Altadena, Edison is burying the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.
The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow re-energized to spark the blaze.
The fire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.
Oil prices rose and stocks moved slightly higher on Wednesday as investors tried to make sense of President Trump’s decision to extend the cease-fire with Iran despite doubts about the status of another round of peace talks.
An adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the influential speaker of the Iranian Parliament, dismissed the cease-fire announcement, saying that it had “no meaning.” He equated the U.S. naval blockade with bombings, with commercial vessels coming under attack near the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial shipping lane that has been at the center of a growing energy crisis.
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