Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

Fair's Fair "For Book Lovers" Inc. is a group of four bookstores in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, employing 28 people who like books and enjoy people. Fifteen of the staff are family members by birth or marriage. The founder and owner is George Henderson.

Fair's Fair opened in the basement of 1336 – 9th Avenue SE, Calgary, Alberta, with a party for 78 friends and relatives on October 13, 1988. The bookcases arrived three days before the party; and, just in time for the opening, six family members stocked the shelves with 7,300 books George had accumulated from garage sales during the previous four months.

Although George and his brother Brian were two constants in building this surprisingly vital retail store out of what had been a sodden woodworking shop, other friends and family members pitched in when they found the time. Without the many helping hands, the success of the store would not have been possible.

People ask, "What is Fair's Fair's perspective on the business?"

1. The book business is constantly changing and evolving; consequently, we cannot rest on our laurels. As booksellers, we are obligated to learn, grow, and improve in every way to meet the needs and expectations of our customers.
2. Our customers have been our primary source of information about individual books to buy and which genres should receive the most attention. They provide the incentive to maintain the best quality of bookstore services that we can.
3. Everything we do has a long-term goal of making a customer's visit to the store as pleasant as possible. Our inventory is organized to accommodate them if they are in a hurry yet is deep and broad-based if they want to browse the shelves.
4. Each of our stores is computerized with a listing of the books in that store, and we constantly are improving this process. In 2004, we installed The Diamond Eye Database, a point-of-sale system with built-in inventory controls that utilize barcode scanning and the production of barcode labels, and this too has helped advance the business.

The book business deserves our attention. If we work hard at that, we can achieve one worthwhile goal: to have a positive impact upon as many people's lives as possible.

We hope you like our stores. If you do, you have our customers to thank. We, too, have our customers to thank – and we do – every day.