Powell's Books

Powell's Books is a chain of bookstores, based in Portland, Oregon. Their flagship store, dubbed Powell's City of Books, claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world.

In addition to Powell's City of Books, Powell's currently operates three other Portland area stores, as well as a satellite store in the town of Condon.

Walter Powell founded Powell's in 1971. His son, Michael Powell, had started a bookstore in Chicago, Illinois, in 1970 which specialized in used, rare, and discounted books, primarily of an academic and scholarly nature. In 1979, Michael Powell joined his father in Portland, right after his father's store was not offered a lease renewal; within a year, they found the location that became its current headquarters. Michael bought the bookstore from his father in 1982.

In 1984, Powell's opened its first branch store, in a suburban shopping center named Loehmann's Plaza (later renamed Cascade Plaza), near Washington Square. The new branch was not a replica of its City of Books location; Powell was concerned that the "edgy" neighborhood of its headquarters location was limiting its customer base, so the new store was "fairly fancy" with white shelving, a tile floor, and banners over the aisles. It was also four times the size of the typical chain bookstore.

A travel bookstore was established in 1985 on Pioneer Courthouse Square, and other stores followed, one a year for the next few years. By the early 1990s, Powell's bookstores were part of the resurgence of the independent bookstore, which collectively made 32 percent of book sales in the U.S. The travel store closed in 2005.

Powell's established its Internet presence in 1993, beginning with email and FTP-based access to its technical bookstore; it has since expanded to incorporate fiction and other genres as a traditional ecommerce site. Their website was established in 1994, before Amazon.com, and has contributed substantially to the chain's recent growth.

The City of Books location grew to its current size after an expansion that opened in 1999; it included a new entrance facing the Pearl District which featured the "Pillar of Books", a Tenino sandstone carving depicting a stack of eight of the world's great books, on a base with the inscription "Buy the book, read the book, enjoy the book, sell the book" in Latin. For the year ending June 2000, Powell's revenue was $41.8 million.

In 2002, Powell's was cited by USA Today as one of America's 10 best bookstores.