White Whale Bookstore expanding in Bloomfield

White Whale Bookstore is expanding in the Bloomfield building where it has operated for nearly five years.

“We had been thinking about expanding for a couple years,” said Jill Yeomans, who owns the bookstore with her husband, Adlai.

The expansion will be in a second storefront in its current building on Liberty Avenue.

The couple bought the East End Book Exchange in 2016 and relaunched it as White Whale later that year.

The independent bookstore had previously planned to expand with a second location at The Terminal in the Strip District. But that plan fell apart. The developer gave the space instead to Posman Books, a small chain with locations in New York, Atlanta and Boston.

Big news this morning, friends: White Whale is officially expanding! We now also lease the second storefront of our Bloomfield building. We'll be getting the other half spiffed up over the next few months, so subscribe to our newsletter for updates! 1/2https://t.co/oGV0FhGqiZ pic.twitter.com/QqrTSpRpIJ

— White Whale Bookstore (@whitewhalebks) June 2, 2021

Though their initial plan to expand into The Terminal didn’t work out, Jill Yeomans said she was eager to expand in their Bloomfield location.

“Our landlord, who didn’t even at that point know about the Strip Terminal, reached out to us less than 24 hours after we found out we weren’t going to be moving into that space in the Strip,” she said.

The landlord, she said, owns Mindful Brewing and had previously planned to expand his business into that space. But when the pandemic struck, he decided to scale back his business and lease out the storefront instead. He offered the space to the Yeomanses, who readily accepted.

“It was just really fortuitous timing, right as something else had just fallen through,” Yeomans said. “We just jumped into it.”

She said she didn’t want to share the news with customers until they were certain they had secured the space. They signed the lease last month and announced their expansion plans on Twitter Wednesday.

“We got the keys about a week ago and we’re good to go,” Yeomans said.

While Yeomans said she’s excited to grow the business, there was a time during the pandemic when she didn’t think it would be possible.

“In the first couple months of the pandemic, we were completely rethinking our business,” she said. “We were shipping books out of our home. We were doing everything online. We didn’t even know if our business would survive the year because we were seeing so many other businesses close.”

But the community rallied behind them, she said, and by the end of last summer, she knew the bookstore would survive.

“People were stuck at home so they were getting back to reading more,” she said. “The drive to support small and local businesses certainly continued in our community. Our customers have been really loyal and supportive.”

Now, Yeomans is turning her energy to renovating their new space, which will connect with their current store through a hallway in the middle of the shop. They plan to install custom shelving and seating, something they didn’t have before.

“We’re definitely expanding a bunch of book sections,” she said, adding that they hadn’t had a dedicated fantasy or romance section in the past. With more space, they’ll be able to “really stock and make it a full-offering bookstore.”

The store will also sell more cards and merchandise, she said.

“We have some stuff in the works that we’re sort of rolling out as we go so that people can remain engaged and excited about what we’re doing,” she said.

As they expand their footprint, they’re also looking to expand their staff, Yeomans said. White Whale is hoping to hire an events coordinator and one or two booksellers.

Yeomans said she hopes to open the new section of the store in the fall.