Supporting the Country’s Youngest Bookseller
At 14, she’s the youngest bookseller in the nation.
When Shawnee Mission North High School freshman Halley Vincent went to her principal asking to be excused from school, he said the answer was a no-brainer.
“She asked for permission to take time off from school for her store’s grand opening,” Principal David Ewers said. “I told her, ‘of course!’”
At the age of 14, Vincent became the youngest bookseller in the country when she opened the Seven Stories bookstore in downtown Shawnee.
While this was highly unusual for a teenager to accomplish on her own, it fit right into her school’s goals for her.
“In education today, we prepare students for a life beyond our walls,” Ewers said. “For some kids, that’s college; for others it’s a career or the military.”
Shawnee Mission North, like all schools in the Shawnee Mission School District, has opportunities for students to get involved in its Real World Learning program and asks each student to earn a market-value asset by the time they graduate. This asset is a skill that will prepare them for the world beyond high school.
Ewers saw that Vincent was already demonstrating those skills earlier than most students, and he and the dedicated team of teachers did all they could to support her.
Owning a bookstore at age 14 was not even the beginning of Vincent’s business ventures.
At the age of eight, she told her mother that she wanted to hold a bake sale. She made brownies, cookies and popcorn balls. Wanting to be independent, she asked her mother to wait in the car while she sold them. Afterward, she donated the money she raised to the shelter where they adopted their family dog.
Next, she held a raffle for the shelter, and she began to volunteer there, sitting outside the kennels to read books to the dogs. She made and posted video book reviews featuring the dogs, which attracted the attention of some of the authors.
These authors encouraged her to keep going, and she decided her next project would be a neighborhood bookmobile. She painted a riding lawnmower gold, hitched a garden cart to it, and filled it with bins of used books to give away. The golden bookmobile became a staple at the Shawnee farmer’s market on Saturdays.
The next step came when her mother offered her some space in her art studio, and Vincent decided to branch into selling new books. After a year of squeezing into the 97 square feet available to her in the studio, it was time to expand.
She made a pitch at the local Masonic Lodge asking for the lease to the 400-square-foot space the Masons had available in downtown Shawnee.
“The Masons upstairs unanimously voted for her, based on her presentation and her meetings with them,” said her mother, Ali Vincent.
Now Halley Vincent has filled that space with books, gifts and local art, and Seven Stories has a steady stream of business and regular customers.
“You shouldn’t have a bookstore just because you love reading,” she said. “The thing that rises to the top when you’re considering opening a bookstore is whether you have the skills to do it. Because I was already giving away free books, and I was already talking to people about books and trying to find something they’re interested in, I knew I was ready.”
This is exactly what her principal saw in her, so he knew she was ahead of the game when it came to earning her market value assets.
He and her teachers worked to connect her with more opportunities, including a chance to sell her books at the Shawnee Mission School District’s Real World Learning storefront at Oak Park Mall. She is especially excited about the classes that she can take that will help her continue to develop her skills, including communications and business courses.
“She’s a phenomenal young lady,” Principal Ewers said. “She’s incredibly thoughtful. She has an incredibly bright present, and an even brighter future.”