Featured photo: Colette Conway shows the Inspirational & Devotional and Religious Studies section at ReImage Books & Resource Room, which she and her brother co-own.
Written by Tanya Terry
Colette Conway is owner and manager at ReImage Books & Resource Room. She owns the business along with her brother, George L. Conway II LCSW, a licensed psychotherapist. Her brother’s practice is ReImage Collective Counseling.
Her brother had an office downtown. Then, when COVID hit, he shut the building down and started offering therapy from home. So, he has a home office he works out of, or he offers counseling at the bookstore when the store isn’t open. The sessions conducted are all telehealth sessions now-done by video.
Colette Conway was working as a retail merchandiser but said when COVID came, her job, which involved dealing with customers, ended. She was receiving unemployment.
According to Colette Conway the way the bookstore came about was mostly through her brother’s practice.
“Once COVID came and people started losing family members and things like that, then he got pushed with an influx of people trying to get sessions, but he was all full and couldn’t accept any more (clients),” she said.
Colette Conway said these people asked if there was any printed material her brother could provide them to help with their trauma until he could take clients for counseling.
“So, he started ordering different books; and that’s how the bookstore came about,” she said.
Colette Conway also used to work at Family Christian Store, formerly called Family Book Stores, for eight years, where she was assistant manager. She had also just received her degree in business administration management from the University of Michigan at the end of 2019. In addition, she had experience managing at Baker Shoes and Piercing Pagoda, having been in retail management since age 18.
Originally, the brother and sister team had found a location for the business on Linden Road. After a few months of being there, the director of education at the Sylvester Broome Empowerment Village, having known her brother from a previous job, approached him about moving the business to the Sylvester Broome Empowerment Village.
“It’s a bigger space,” Colette Conway said. “Our other space was half the size of this.”
They have been in the Sylvester Broome since September 2021.
Colette Conway especially enjoys going to various conferences and meeting people as she helps promote the business.
“We’ve done different women’s conferences and even different churches-they had weekly meeting conventions, and they asked us to be there.”
Conway also participated in Small Business Saturday at Word of Life Christian Church.
Colette Conway said her family is a “family of readers,” including not only her and her brother, but their kids and their mother, as well.
Colette Conway describes herself as the “people person,” and her brother as “the thought behind the business” or the “silent partner,” having his full time practice.
They changed the bookstore hours so they could be open during afterschool programs.
“When we’re purchasing books, our main focus has always been mental health because that’s what this all came from…We really focus on our local authors. I would say that’s our second thing we focus on. At this time, we’re trying to find more local authors.”
At the time, they are featuring all African American local authors. The Conways know many of these authors, and the others reached out to them asking about putting their books in the store. But, Colette Conway said they would like to offer more diversity in local authors.
When doing store pricing Colette Conway said she does research on how much other booksellers are charging for books, and tries to make their prices at least $1-$2 less.
“A lot of people would like to read, but they can’t afford it. So, we try to give everybody a deal.”
Because the Conways are partnered with the Sylvester Broome Empowerment Village, which is connected with the Will & Jada Smith Family Foundation, they had the opportunity to get copies of Will Smith’s book “Will,” which was released in November 2021. Free copies were given to those who enrolled in the store’s book club, along with free FitBit deluxe fitness and wellness tracking bracelets.
During a tent sale held in the summer, Colette Conway noticed people who said they weren’t readers were picking up books, buying them and enjoying them.
“What I always tell people is when you’re in school, you have to read. You read what they give you. The difference in a bookstore is you pick what you read.”
