Mojo Books & Music

Melanie Cade is the co-owner of Mojo Books
& Music, one of the few independent music
and bookstores in Tampa. Since 2007, this
independent business has provided music
and book lovers alike the opportunity to buy,
sell, and trade books, games, CDs, DVDs, and
vinyl records. Photography/Brittany Cagle

In New York, records had just started becoming popular, but in Tampa that was not the case

WE'VE ALL SEEN THE SIGNS POSTED ON VACANT, GRAFFITI-SPRAYED BRICKS, STONE, AND WOODEN BUILDINGS--RECORD STORE CLOSING, FINAL SALE 50-80% OFF, EVERYTHING MUST GO, SPACE AVAILABLE, GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!

It might take a little more than guts to keep a record and book store open with the rise of technology, but Melanie Cade, co-owner of Mojo Books & Music, damn sure knows how to keep up with demanding cultural shifts and trends.

USF alumni Cade got her start in selling books and music online, and at the Bull Market on Wednesdays. The market was where she met her business partner, Dan Drummond, who was also involved in collectable record shows. Together, they began their search for a property near the University. “At the time, Just Books on Fletcher was closing,” Cade said. “And the couple who retired there encouraged us to open up our own place.”

In 2006, Cade and Drummond sought out this opportunity to open up their own business when they realized there weren’t many other book or record stores in the area. “In New York, records had just started becoming popular but in Tampa that was not the case,” Cade said. “We figured we were personally passionate, so other collectors had to be out there too.”

Cade and Drummond’s original location for Mojo on Fowler Avenue is located in the same plaza where their new location is today. Their old space is now IQ Outfitters Scrubs & School Uniforms. “If you went into that store, you would still see our industrial ceiling with sparkly brown paint over it,” Cade said.

In the old location, Cade admitted that there were too many space constraints. “For some people it became claustrophobic,” she said. “Books were shoved here and there—anywhere you could fit them.” Customers were also limited in the amount of time they could spend in the store since the old location provided no access to a public bathroom.

When the Washington Mutual Bank went out of business in the same plaza, Cade finally decided that she needed more space for her inventory. “Our books and records had outgrown us,” she said. “We had to move everything slowly on little carts, back and forth, to the new location.”

Cade said the move was physically and emotionally stressful, especially with the doubled rent costs. The lease was now up to $8,000 a month. “I remember writing the check and thinking how terrifying it was,” she said. “It was such a risk. I had never written a check that big in my life.”

Cade said with the move, she struggled to make the rent and pay her only employee—a part-timer. “At the time, we really didn’t have new inventory and mainly sold used items,” she said. “It was very much a break even thing with sales and payments each month.” Cade said it was at this point that she began marketing with Creative Loafing. She had to depend on her regulars to spread the word. With slow growth, she could eventually expand her inventory

The store’s new 4,200-square-foot space is located a few doors down from the old storefront. 2540 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa, 813-971-9717, mojotampa.com.

The Washington Mutual Bank that was located in the space where Mojo is today went out of business. Cade repainted the low ceiling red to symbolize her business logo

At the time, we really didn’t have new inventory and mainly sold used items,” she said. “It was very much a break-even thing with sales and payments each month

Even with the posed challenges, the move was exactly what the business needed. The 4,200-square foot space now allows customers easier access to buy, sell and trade everything from books and games to CDs, DVDs and vinyl records.

What had already been in the space helped in part for Cade to decide what she wanted for Mojo’s look. “We decided to keep the original white ceiling and the circular hanging object from Washington Mutual,” she said. “Except before it was purple and had a weird looking alien thing in the middle.” Cade battled the alien, but kept the idea of the circle. She painted it red to go along with her business logo.

With the new location, also came in an added coffee bar. “At our old space, customers had suggested we add one in,” Cade said. “I was thinking, ‘Oh God, one more thing.” She took her customers’ requests and ripped up the old carpeting from the previous bank. She added in Tetris tiles to go with the colors of the store and began to develop more of a personal interest in coffee.

Cade’s coffee bar focuses on producing third-wave coffee, a current movement that creates the highest form of culinary appreciation of coffee. These crafters take their brews seriously, as if they were producing something as rich and similar to wine. “We offer a lot of brewing methods that you won’t see at a lot of other places,” Cade said.

One of her bestsellers is the slow-drip Yama cold brew iced coffee. This method was adapted from Japan and is produced in a lab-like contraption with a swirling test tube. The result is a super caffeinated and filtered brew. “It’s a relatively recent trend, that you see in a lot of larger cities,” Cade said. “The brew takes 8 hours to make.”

Mojo is a mix-free zone. Everything at the coffee bar is brewed fresh, using rBST-free milks and natural and organic syrups and sweeteners. The coffee bar also helps support the live music shows in store

Having multiple components to the store provides more of a positive, group experience with a little something for everyone. "Some customers come in and out because they know exactly what they're looking for, but for others Mojo might be a half-day experience," Cade said. "Sometimes people will reappear from the book shelves and you'll think 'I can't believe that person is still here. They came in at the beginning of my shift.'"

Cade hadn’t always known that she would be the owner of a book and record store. She described it as one of those things that she started falling into. “I didn’t have a formal background in music,” she said. “But I was really into classical music in high school.” Cade considered going in the music direction as a career until she started developing arthritis. She struggled as she tried to overcome the condition and play an instrument. “If I tried to move my wrists, they would snap every time,” she said.

Cade went in a different direction and earned her bachelor’s degree in design and marketing, and later earned her master’s in business administration. Although she was unable to play an instrument, she continues to remain passionate for music and plays records daily for her customers in store. “If you don’t hear music playing, it’s probably because everyone got busy and no one had time to flip the record yet,” she said.

Music also runs in the family. Marcus Goldberg, the eldest of her three cousins, was a professional musician who was a vocalist and played a variety of instruments. He is no longer alive today, but is recognized for his talent.

Andie Cunniffe is one of the baristas at Mojo Books & Music.

Pictured is the slow-drip Yama cold brew for iced coffee. This drink takes 8 hours to make and is crafted daily.

Mojo Books & Music specializes primarily in secondhand items, but also has a small collection of new items, including new vinyl.

As far as encouragement from her family in the business role, Cade said, “Most of them are supportive of what I do. But from a parental perspective, they sometimes say ‘but, you were so smart…you could make more money than you do, which is just enough to get by.’”

There’s been a history of music stores in the plaza where Mojo is today, including Turtles Music and Warehouse Music. These businesses were successful in the CD heyday steadily into the 90s and early 2000s. Quickly, however, as CDs became less popular these businesses started to fall off the map. “I imagine how difficult and more competitive it became for them,” Cade said. “And I know they had problems with theft here when CDs were something to steal.”

Seeing these past businesses fail might make a business owner think twice about opening another music and bookstore. Yet, under the ownership of Cade and Drummond, Mojo remains as an outlier. “It seems a lot of times when book or records stores have closed, it’s because they have gotten a little out of touch with where the market is going,” Cade said. “These places try to cling onto whatever it was they were doing before, whether that be specializing in new CD, record, or DVD releases.” Cade described those sales as high-risk, because often the merchandise isn’t returnable, “leaving those stores to fall by the wayside,” she said. Cade would fall into a risk category if people stopped buying books and records from her store. If her business wasn’t able to transition with the sales, she admitted she might have to return to school.

She must keep a close watch on sales and constantly revamp her inventory to avoid this risk. “At first we had cassette tapes in store, but at this point we don’t sell those anymore,” she said. “You really have to analyze sales. Sometimes you may personally think a genre is great, but sales might show that you might need to condense that category a little more and give room to another genre.

Employees, like Robert Simmons, are hired specifically to shift through used goods brought in by customers. He must pay close attention to trends within the store and figure out ways to adapt sales to customer needs. Considering that the average customer in the store isn’t a top twenty listener, Simmons must look into what customers are listening to at the moment in the Tampa area. “This avoids overloading the system and receiving things we can’t sell,” Cade said. Very rarely does she buy new CDs, but she will specially order something at the request of a customer.

When selling and trading records, Mojo looks for music categories in classic rock, indie, metal, punk, jazz, soul, blues, r&b, world, folk, reggae, electronic, soundtracks, and more.

At first we had cassette tapes in store, but at this point we don't sell those anymore. Sometimes you personally think a genre is great, but sales might show that you might need to condense

Robert Simmons selects through the books brought in by a customer. Customers can sell their used books, music, movies, and games for cash or store credit. With store-credit, customers get almost 40 percent more for their items than if they chose to receive cash. The buying/trading hours include M, T, Th, F, Sat: 12pm-7pm and Sunday: 12pm-6pm.

Customers can also sell their textbooks to Mojo and it doesn’t matter where the seller originally bought them.

Cade said that books outnumber both record and CD sales. Her biggest sales come from classic and contemporary literature. “Young adult and graphic novels are also something that has grown since we first opened up. Now they’re a serious part of any bookstore.” Mojo also sells used books for social sciences, philosophy, and sociology. “We sell many of the ‘ology’s,’” Cade said. “There aren’t a lot of bookstores that specialize in those titles, so when customers come in looking for them, we get pretty good feedback.”

Mojo has also transitioned with the major trends of paranormal romance, vampires, and young adult literature. “All these things go in cycles, like the Anne Rice vampire trend from the 80’s that eventually came back,” Cade said. “We were also hit with the parade of Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Cade has noticed the recent trend that customers are reading fewer books than they were before. “I don’t want to be one of those people who say nobody reads because clearly they do,” she said. “But it does seem like more and more people just browse and just get their information from an Internet based source.”

She also believes the customer should judge a book by its cover. She hopes that future book covers will be reinvented and redesigned, similar to the recent vinyl releases that have amped up the look of their records. “A lot of labels go out of the way to produce something special, whether that’s really nicely colored vinyl or something interesting like a book pamphlet inside the record,” Cade said. “I’d like to see something more with books. Often times you see a publisher drop the ball on the cover, even when the author has done a really good job on the written work.”

She imagines that books may one day go in the same direction as records, since they have already begun to transition with turn of the century books now showcasing elaborate bindings, gold edge pages, and built designs in the covers. Some books have even started to include supplemental materials, such as discs inserted inside the cover. “It’s more than just content, but really more about the art that goes into delivering the work,” Cade said. “The physical quality of the publication is just as important. If you amp it up to the next level, it will become even more interesting to a customer."

Cade admits that there’s even a science to knowing about content and format trends. She said she is constantly learning of different pressings, publications and printings. “And there’s still so much I don’t know about records, books, or coffee,” she said. “Any of these things could be a rabbit hole that you could jump down and learn so much more about."

And as Cade continues to learn through experience, she must take on numerous roles at Mojo. “You have to wear a bunch of different hats,” she said. “You have to do accounting, keep track of books, coffee, and music, work with human resources, and physically do all of the functions in a business.” Often the phone will be ringing and she’ll suddenly have a line of people at the front desk with large boxes of things they want to sell. “And you really have to be able to handle those stressors,” she said. “It all comes back to you as a business owner. If something financially fails, it’s back on you.” Cade commutes to Mojo all the way from Sarasota, which is an hour drive to work. At home, she runs the online business where customers have the option to buy textbooks.

Customers can find particular titles that they are looking for by visiting the website and viewing the tab “book, music, and film categories in stock.”

It's more than just content, but more about the art that goes into delivering the work. The physical quality of the publication is just as important. If you amp it up to the next level, it will become even more interesting to a customer

Classics can also be found on the coffee bar as well as brownies and coffee mugs.

Mojo celebrates Record Store Day, an internationally celebrated day on the third Saturday of April each year. Its purpose is to celebrate the independently owned bookstores.

Our customers are here because they want to be. We aren't selling a basic necessity, but rather we're selling things that they can really enjoy

When working in the store, customers are often unaware that Cade is even the owner. “I don’t feel the need to tell people that I’m the owner. I should be doing what anyone else is doing,” she said. “When I’m making coffee, I’m just your typical barista.”

Owning a small business does come with many advantages that can’t be denied. “Ultimately, there’s a great allure to not getting up at 7 am every day and doing the same thing,” Cade said. As a benefit, Mojo is a store that she is very passionate about and owning this type of business allows her to come into contact with good quality customers. “Our customers are here because they want to be. We aren’t selling a basic necessity, but rather we’re selling things that they can really enjoy.” Cade said that she is satisfied with offering things that can help the consumer develop intellectually.

A downside to working closely with buying items from the public can be that people may place more value on their items than they’re actually worth. “People can get a little ‘pawn-shoppey’ on you,” Cade said. “Sometimes you can have that certain parade of jerks.” She said when people bring in tons of stuff in at once and she has to deal with difficult personalities, the work can become more challenging. “It’s really a matter of experience. You have to hold a knowledge about literature and music,” she said. “When you first start buying products from customers, you’re going to make mistakes.” And those mistakes can be costly, when a product might not be valuable to the sales of the store.

Her customer base is always changing, from age to interests. Although one might assume that most customers are USF students with the location being so close to the University, this isn’t necessarily the case. “Customers are collectors, people who are looking for oddities or specifics, of you have your average readers who are just coming in the store for enjoyment,” Cade said.

There are also those moments where Cade comes into contact with rare music and book collections. “Every once in a while someone will bring something in and you’ll think, “I can’t believe this person is parting with this,” she said. Typically in these cases it’s because the customer is moving or someone has died in their family.

Recently, Cade had a professor from USF come in who was ready to retire. She brought in boxes of books on philosophy, women’s studies, and Puritan studies. “You’ll get things like that—where people have been collecting all of their lives,” Cade said. Typically, these customers share their professional body of work for other customers to enjoy. “You’ll also get former DJ’s and radio station hosts who have some really awesome records from a long time ago.”

One of her most memorable experiences and collections came from a man in Sarasota. He left behind numerous boxes and never came back for the money. His father had recently died and left behind the collection to his son. “It was just one of those things where he didn’t want the stuff to go to waste,” Cade said. “He wanted all of the records that his father was passionate about to go to someone else who would appreciate it just as much."

At Mojo, she often sees really focused collections, where the person was extremely serious about what they were collecting. “And sometimes you just see other things beat to hell at places like the Salvation Army. And clearly whomever that stuff was passed down to, didn’t have the same perspective or appreciation that their relatives did.” Cade said it would be nice to think that whoever cares for your possessions would treat them with serious care and consideration.

Around the store, customers can also find rare pieces on the “red wall” of the store, which holds the rarest collections of records. They can also enjoy odd pieces of memorabilia ion the tops of the bookshelves, such as the old 60’s and 70’s Beatles figures or the framed velvet crying Elvis hanging on the wall of the store. Sadly, Elvis isn’t for sale.

On the top of the stacked shelves throughout the store, customers can find memorabilia pieces such as the velvet Elvis pictured here.

The business supports local artists and musicians by selling their merchandise and allowing the bands to perform in store.

Mojo Books and Music is located at 2540 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa FL 33612. Store hours are Monday-Saturday: 9am-10pm and Sunday 11am-7pm.

As far as the future of Mojo, Cade wants to improve her own marketing strategies and optimize her store’s inventory. She’s not looking to open up a second location, but would much rather work on expanding the online business. “We have the space here to physically increase. I just need to work on targeting customers to bring the right products in for the store.” She hopes to reach out to old customers who went into the old location and didn’t give the store another chance. “There are definitely people out there who don’t know we now have a coffee bar, or who aren’t aware of the new expansion and location.”

For other small businesses in the Tampa area, Cade hopes to see more collaboration in Tampa compared to other equally sized cities. “Everything seems so spread out,” she said. “In Tampa, there is such a delineation from Seminole Heights to South Tampa, from Carollwood to Lutz. When you talk to people in other areas about Mojo, they think you’re talking about Antarctica.” Cade said she wasn’t sure if an improvement would be to have more regional segmentation where people could collaborate in those particular, targeted areas.

Cade said the USF area could work to have an alliance. “We could communicate more to students about local independent businesses,” she said. “There’s so many really interesting businesses that I don’t think students find out about until they’re at the end of their degree.” Cade said that it would helpful to create a guide targeting these students to become more educated about the businesses in their area.

In other locations like Austin, Texas, the Independent Business Alliance has adopted the slogan “Keep Austin Weird,” to promote small businesses. “These cities do well to put a social pressure on people to shop and value small businesses and uniqueness in a community,” Cade said. There’s definitely a role for big box stores and chain businesses, but Cade said there are small businesses that could add to your life if you are willing to discover them. Culturally, more people are becoming more aware. Cade said there is a small appeal to small businesses that really wasn’t there ten years ago.

“Sometimes small businesses can offer something than chains can’t do quite as well or not in the same way,” she said. “And that’s when you’ll see that one particular business sticking around or continuing to grow.”

Melanie Cade is currently reading The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo and is currently listening to The Handsome Family, composed of Brett and Rennie Sparks, an Albuerque-based duo.

Brittany Cagle works as a creative writing instructor and writing consultant at the University of South Florida. Her poetry and prose has most recently appeared in Spry Literary Journal Issues 2 and 4, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Welter, Mad Swirl, and is forthcoming in The Stray Branch and The Poet’s Billow. Her poetry was recently nominated for the 2014 AWP Intro Journals Award. Her poetry chapbook, My Family Sleeps in New Beds, was selected by The Poet’s Billow for the Pangaea prize, submitted to Best New Poets anthology, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014.

All photographs taken and owned by Brittany Cagle.