Success Stories | 2018 SoMa Business Development Accelerator

Arkipelago Books — with Plinth Agency

Background

Arkipelago Books is a pillar of the community for over 20 years and exists as one of only 2 of the distributors of specialty books outside of the Philippines. The bookstore was founded in 1994 by Marie Somero, who recognized the need for Filipinx literature in the U.S. when she encountered difficulty finding books for her children, and began loaning what she could find to friends in the community.

Since then, the company has grown and ownership has since passed hands to Golda Sargento and Lily Prijoles. Along with the brick and mortar store location at 1010 Mission St., the new owners inherited the company logo and branding.

Arkipelago joined the SoMa Business Accelerator’s first batch in 2018, hoping to grow and modernize their business to reach an increasingly digital audience.

Consultation & Partnership

After assessing their business needs, they were paired with B2B consulting partner Plinth Agency, a service-providing member of the SEED Network, in order to refresh and bring their operations online to new avenues to reach customers who were hungry for Filipino literature.

The Plinth team worked closely with the new owners to create a new logo mark that represented the personalities of the new owners, but also still paid homage to their cultural roots.

Through a new website, Plinth also helped to bring Arkipelago’s entire inventory online and setup their digital distribution channels — a very large undertaking!

The website was intentionally designed with the company’s bilingual and culture-exploring audience in mind.

Results

From their participation in the SoMa Business Development Accelerator, Arkipelago Books doubled their overall sales revenue. This was attributed to an 10% increase in online sales through their new online store and, attesting to the impact of this digital refresh on traditional bookselling, a 40% boost in in-store sales as well.

This project was fully-funded by The SEED Program though our partner, the Wells Fargo Foundation.

All services were provided to Arkipelago Books for free as a participant of our SoMa Business Development Accelerator program. As a B2B service-providing member of the SEED Network, Plinth Agency was fully compensated for their services.

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