Carving out their niches

Crescentwood

St. James-Assiniboia

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/02/2025 (413 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For a business to fill a niche and succeed, in-depth knowledge of that market is key.

Proof of that concept is Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore, a Lilac Street mainstay since 1994. Wendy Bumsted and her husband Jack bought the shop in 2007, Bumsted explained, as a “retirement project” for her husband, who had been a history professor at the University of Manitoba.

“We didn’t really envisage maybe even being still here and having a much bigger store at this point,” she said, with a laugh. “In 2018, we moved into this space (from next door). (Our son) Michael had come back from finishing his PhD in the U.K. He was going to be around a bit, so we thought we would expand. It has been very successful.”

While the shop, which has been located at 163 Lilac St. since then, has branched out its inventory to suit the market, it remains, at heart, Western Canada’s only crime fiction bookstore.

“We have almost 24,000 books in stock,” explained Michael Bumsted, who is now the full-time proprietor. “We have 19,000 crime fiction novels. So maybe 20 per cent is not crime fiction.”

While the COVID-19 pandemic proved a major challenge for many small businesses, Whodunit? was able to weather the various health orders and come out even stronger on the other side.

“We’d always had a system for delivering books for shut-ins,” Wendy Bumsted explained. “We had a lot of customers who maybe started off coming in as customers, but now they couldn’t get out, so we had a system of doing that.”

“We had even done curbside pickup before that,” Michael Bumsted added. “So we had figured out how to do all those individual parts. I think we sold seven books on our website in 2019, to selling something like 11,000 in 2020.”

“It was crazy!” Wendy Bumsted added, laughing.

“That also showed us what people actually wanted from us,” Michael Bumsted said. “It did turn out that people wanted to be able to buy the latest biography, for example, that before we would have said weren’t really for us, because we were a genre store, with a little extra stuff. But it was of real interest to people who shop here to be able to get those books as well. Some people only buy their mysteries here, but … they’ll go to other bookstores to buy other things.”

Both Bumsteds agree that having a reputation for specialized knowledge of the crime fiction genre is what has allowed Whodunit? to gain a loyal customer base, not just locally, but across Canada and internationally.

“People come to visit family, or do events, or whatever, and they come to see us while they’re here, specially, because we’re a crime-fiction store. That has real value,” Michael Bumsted said. “We can offer specialized knowledge when it comes to crime fiction, which means you get a different experience here than at a store where people read crime fiction, but don’t live it or regularly talk to publishers or authors specifically about it.”

Among a number of other community initiatives, including partnerships for upcoming Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Prairie Theatre Exchange, and Hood & Dagger Productions performances, Whodunit? will be hosting a used book sale from Feb. 12 through 16, featuring half-price used books and other incentives. For more information, visit whodunitbooks.ca

Meantime, Raven’s End Books (1859 Portage Ave.), a specialty horror bookstore, is celebrating its first anniversary on Saturday, Feb. 8.

“It’s definitely been an interesting year,” said owner Chelsea McKee-Trenchard. “We had to focus on building that community. We were at lots of markets, we’ve had lots of events in store. It’s been interesting watching it grow. We have a fantastic customer base now. I feel like we’ve done a good job at ingratiating ourselves into the community, and being a community space ourselves.”

Raven’s End, which now includes McKee-Trenchard and two employees, is Canada’s second horror-specific bookstore, following Toronto’s Little Ghosts, and also plays hosts to events such as book launches and author readings, as well as weekend vendor markets and evening book clubs.

“We’ve had lots of things for different folks to come together, so it’s not all just one track, but however you come to reading horror,” McKee-Trenchard said. “Our objective here is to be a place for people to find new horror. We want to be defined by our knowledge of horror and be able to be that space where people can come and find exactly what they’re looking for.”

Raven’s End’s anniversary event on Saturday, Feb. 8 will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a number of prizes and other incentives.

For more information, visit ravensendbooks.com