Got an email in the bookstore today from a potential customer who chose Amazon over my employer Quakerbooks, a niche independent bookstore, because of their cheap cheap prices. I got a bit inspired by my reply, included here.
Subject: book prices
I really wanted to buy the below book [Why Grace is True], but I checked amazon. com. Their prices: new is $16.07, or used from $5.94. Your price is $22.95.
I know how hard it is to be competitive, but I wanted to let you know that people do comparison shop.
Blessings, C.
Dear Friend,
Yes, Amazon, Walmart and the rest of the global media/distribution juggernaut will always be able to underprice us on the mainstream books.
What we offer is a much wider selection of Quaker books than anyone else. We don’t just have the more watered-down books aimed at the general population (mostly with the unsaid premise “what you can learn from those folksy Quakers”), but a whole list of books about Quaker religious education, Quaker vision, Quaker belief, Quaker history and what it means to be a Quaker today. We don’t just have the HarperCollins titles, but those from Quaker publishers that Amazon’s never heard of. We easily beat Amazon in selection and we certainly match them in speed and customer service.
We give a more grounded context to what these books mean to Friends – the reviews on our site’s If Grace is True are written by Friends for Friends. We try to know our books. When people call us up we’ll help with their selection. When they’re trying to decide, we’ll read the table of contents to them. Quaker publishers and booksellers talk about the “ministry of the written word,” which means remembering that there’s a purpose behind this bookselling. These books aren’t commodities, they aren’t units, they’re not ISBN numbers to be packed and shipped. We’d rather not sell a book than sell a book someone wouldn’t value (which is why we’ll include negative book descriptions & comments).
Paying a few extra dollars to support us means your also supporting the outreach and Quaker self-identity our catalog provides for many Friends. Plus you can be assured our employees get living wages and health care (for which I’m personally thankful).
So yes, customers can save a few bucks at Amazon. Always will be able to. But your purchasing decisions are also decisions about who you support and what you value. There’s a price to distinctiveness, whether it’s cultural, religious, regional, or culinary. By buying from Amazon you’re financing a Wall Street-run commodity seller that doesn’t give a jot about Quakerism or even whether grace might be true. If enough Friends choose price over content, then Quaker bookstores and publishers will disappear, our only representation being mainstream books sold at generic shops. That will cost us a lot more than seven bucks.
Well, I hope you enjoy the book. I’m sure Amazon appreciates your patronage.
In friendship,
Martin Kelley
Just a follow-up about the price-shopping Quaker… Our Friend did place an order the next day with Quakerbooks. In my confirmation email, I apologized if my response was a little “over-argued” and he wrote back:
bq. “Not at all. I don’t even shop at WalMart for the same reason. I want Quakerbooks to succeed and be around forever.”
Aww, how sweet. It’s nice to know there are Friends like this. It makes me a bit more hopeful for the future of the grand Quaker project!
Loved your comments about Quakerbooks.org. I make an attempt to support it as often as I am able to, especially when ordering Quaker or other related books. I particularly like to order Christian related things via them to remind them not to forget about THAT aspect of Friends. 🙂 (By the way, they do a fine job NOT forgetting it, thank God!)
Also: love your blog! I’m not a yonger Friends (just turned 45), but heartily agree with many of your concerns about us unprogrammed liberal Friends here in the States. Well done, Friend!
PS: I also appreciated your links to other Friends doing blogs. Nice resource.
Hi Joe,
Thanks for using the FGC bookstore. I’m all in favor of you using your selection to promote Christian awareness among Friends! I’m always happy to sell the more Quakerly materials, as my staff pick will attest to. At 37, I’m not all that far behind you in the younger Friends category but a lot of my “generational” concerns aren’t deterministically age-related. Good to hear from you, glad you like the blog.
I first found Gohn brothers in The Whole Earth Catalog, which for me was one of the greatest publications ever. How I miss it! For years I wore the dropfall pants and found them to be superior to jeans for general use. Of course, the uniform in those days and our set was overalls, themselves like jeans a political statement. Now I have almost a dozen pairs but seldom wear them __wife bought ’em__ as they bind the knees and the paunch. (Not as easy to shed the paunch at 74 as at 34) And I’m really bored with well-meaners taking me aside and whispering “Your flies are open”. Big deal! With the social revolution of the 60s and 70s jeans became the worldwide democratic leveler, like the tee shirt and later, flipflops.
Jan de hartog, in his wonderful novel Peaceable Kingdom, says that early Quakers would not wear indigo-dyed clothes as processing the plant for dye was so disagreeable that only slaves could be made to do it..
Simple clothing comes naturally to me, although for years working in architects’ offices had me in the professional uniform: Oxford gray wool-and-acrylic suit with 2 pairs of pants, all navy-blue socks for ease of laundry sorting, button-down blue Oxford shirts and knit ties for drafting. Chinos were for days when I could get away with no jacket, but the tie stayed, a bow tie in colorful Indian silk or Madras cotton. Long gone together with my 30 inch waist!
Our family’s earliest immigrants came to Delaware 40 years before William Penn, spoke Swedish and later Dutch and Lenni Lenape. They were soldiers, traders and farmers. One was actually a translator between Penn and the Indians. Then came the Quakers and the Anabaptists responding to Penn’s offer of religious freedom, and many of them spoke German for several generations. (Eighty percent of Pennsylvanians spoke German in 1776.) I don’t know how they dressed, but being in the heart of Chester County, the Quakers at least surely wore gray. Several early towns in Pennsylvania were founded partly by my ancestors, among them Upland (renamed Chester by Penn) and Germantown.
Even my parents had very few clothes by today’s standards. All of both’s fit nicely into one small closet. Many were home-made. Neither wore jeans, tees or sports shoes. Mom never wore slacks.
Now that I’m retired from architecture and spend most of my time gardening I’m ready to simplify. It may be difficult, however, to convince my wife to give away the suits and blazers which she loves to see me in. I wear cargo shorts almost all the time__to Meeting, too__and Redwing boots in the garden.
I’m interested in the plainness statement. I never minded looking different, always had a beard unless it was forbidden by an employer. Now (the last few months) I have an Amish beard and after shaving my bald head since the 60s (very odd then; “I’m not bald, I just shave my head”) I have begun to let my thin gray hair grow down to a blunt cut at ear and nape and will not flatten it. Since the 60s I have worn a hat against sunburn and sunstroke, but not the Gohn Brothers kind. There are no visible Mennonites here in Shasta County, so I suppose I’ll stand out. I will not abandon my tiny gold earring, however. How’s that for contradiction?
I admit to being mildly narcissistic. Always loved being in costume on stage and in historical pageants. It’s amazing how much a simple change in hair and beard style evokes a particuler period. Some re-enactors and dancers are so attached to their current style that they can’t conceive of changing. Not me! But I cannot see wearing the full Amish outfit. Too contrived!
I am non-thieist, non-religion, anti-religious (including religious property). I attend the small Monthly Meeting in Redding, CA.
Inspired by these recently discovered sites on plainness, I think I’ll simplify my wardrobe and red out my stuffed closet.
Please two questions
1‑I assume all clothing and good are american?
2‑are clipon’s with plastic tips or just metal teeth ones.
Does plain dress allow for neckties or modern men’s rimmed hats like the Blues Brothers look?
Sir,
Interesting,interesting…I remember Gohn Bros. pants from some 25 years ago..just
remembered,actually,and was just exploring about them.…Suspenders,please investigate
Perry Suspenders in Decateur,Il..EXCELLENT product..got plastic clips thst hook over one’s
belt..may not seem like much,but is an excellent innovation. NOTE;I’ve recently seen some Perrys in Walmart..Of COURSE they’re WAY inferior to ones direct from Perry.
I have been partial to a Cabela’s Lite Felt™ Outback Hat (Chocolate) for many years. I am on my sixth one. Gohn braces: my wardrobe is fully committed to the 3/4 tab
Gohn Bros hats, especially the fur felt ones, wear like iron. They are great quality and well worth the cost
I have worked in Middlebury for close to 30 years. I shop @ Gohn Brothes and can tell you with certainty that the broadfalls and other plain clothing is made upstairs above the retail store below. They have hardwood floors and you can hear the sewing machines downstairs while shopping ;-). We’re lucky to livein Amish country and have plain/practical goods available to us!!!
I attended a Friend’s meeting in New England years ago, wearing plain dress, some of it from Gohn Brothers. A few Friends thought that I was a Mennonite, and had no idea that some Quakers still found meaning in plain dress. When I tried to explain my leanings towards it to several people at coffee hour after meeting, I mentioned George Fox, and some of them didn’t know who HE was. I thought they might be visitors from other denominations or faiths, but no, they assured me that they were Quakers. Go figure. Plainly, of course.
I had a similar experience as yours visiting a meetinghouse in the upper Midwest. It’s education and outreach to our own as well. I actually feel more of a tug toward plainness when I’m more embedded among Friends.
Eons ago, ok, 30-some years ago, I was a sophomore at a Quaker boarding school. Somehow, it became a “fad” to wear broadfalls, for both genders. I just found one of my pairs from back then. I was trying to remember the term so I googled, and this site came up as a hit.
I was first introduced to Plain living in the late 70s and early 80s. I went with some friends to a Quaker meeting in New Canaan, CT (which is a decidedly un-plain place). I was a New Age‑y kind of guy back then and felt a kinship with the organic, spiritual flow of thought and speech at the meeting.
I then volunteered for work at a Quaker camp in Vermont as an off-season (winter) crew member. There were a couple of people there who were Quaker but most were young folk like me who just wanted a groovy, live off the land kind of place to be for a season or two of our lives. During that season, I heard about Gohn brothers and bought a couple of pair of the broadfall pants you describe with the buttons for braces. Just the thing to wear going country dancing in New England or to collect maple sap, or chop wood.
In between the first instance and the second, I lived briefly in San Francisco and made going to Green Gulch Farm, an appendage of the Zen Centre, on Sundays. For me it helped me detox from living in the city. but the “plain” life espoused by the Zen monks also called me.
Now, 32 years later, I live in New Jersey like yourself. I am a born-again Christian and admire the Amish / Mennonite convictions of being in the world but not of it. I, have also been convicted of vanity and pride that goes hand in glove with wearing clothes as an advertisement, rather than as the function of clothing. Am I “orthodox” in my practice? No. But I, like you, just want to wear clothes as a sign of humility rather than pride. Gratitude rather than arrogance. To be able to say that the clothes I wear are also supporting a business and a lifestyle I strongly support, is also a big plus.
I have just requested a catalog from Gohn’s. I can’t wait to see how little it has changed in 32 years.
Just wanted to send an FYI out there- looks like Middlebury, IN has put up a few videos on Youtube about Gohn Brothers. When I came across them, I immediately thought of this post and wanted to put a comment up with the link to them. Not sure if it is ok to link to Youtube in your comments section Martin, but you can find the 4 videos here- http://www.youtube.com/user/inMiddlebury. They are short videos, but posted a month ago. Hope others find it interesting to get a real look at the store.
I have worn their pants, shirts, and hats for 37-years and can report that they are exactly as I have wished. Good solid clothes made well and comfortable. I admire the people that produce and sell them. They are doing something right every day. Thank you good people.
A Quaker friend from Durham Friends Meeting in Durham Maine. Thanks you for the infro