Twila Dang’s longtime dream of starting her own bookstore came one step closer to becoming a reality when her pitch for BookMother was announced as the winner of the 2025 Hatch Bloomington contest on Sept. 10.
Dang plans to put the $100,000 reward toward establishing a brick-and-mortar in Bloomington. The reward is a major contribution toward her 2,500-square-foot shop, which she estimates will require around $75,000. That leaves the remaining $25,000 for unanticipated costs, like the city’s water usage fee (about $5,000).
Dang has been a resident of the Twin Cities for close to 30 years. She started her media company, Matriarch Digital Media, in 2016, offering women an online platform that celebrates and supports them through a network of podcasts.
With BookMother, she aspires to create a welcoming, traditional, all-purpose independent bookstore, where she envisions people getting together, shopping, and reconnecting with creativity. Her core audience: curious adults. Dang says people have forgotten how to create meaningful spaces for adults that aren’t centered around alcoholic beverages. She hopes to create one through BookMother, where every category of book will be offered, other than children’s books.
“The Hatch money basically means we don’t have to go out and get a loan to be able to get ourselves off the ground and into a space,” Dang says, although the store is not solely reliant on the contest for funding. A few other initiatives to bring in capital, mostly still to come, include a founding reader membership, community events like book exchanges and dinners, as well as sponsorship and advertising revenue from a newsletter and podcast.
“Many of these initiatives will continue after the store is open, as well,” Dang says.
Dang’s win marks the conclusion of the second Hatch Bloomington. The seven-month, three-round retail pitching competition was inspired by the long-running Hatch Detroit.
“The priority goal from the city is celebrate and support small-business activity here in Bloomington,” says Kim Berggren, the community development director for Bloomington. “A few years back, the city made a strategic investment in economic development planning. Hatch program emerged out of that and continues to be one of the most prominent of all business programming.”
The panel of judges includes experts familiar with Bloomington’s business community. The judges vote based on the criteria of planning, impact on the city, leadership, and finances. The $100,000 reward is funded by Stearns Bank, Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines, Bloomington Port Authority, and Bloomington Travel and Tourism.
“I was very grateful that the judges were fair, but they were tough,” Dang says.
The doors to BookMother are tentatively scheduled to open in the summer of 2026, and Dang aims to hit her own Mother’s Day weekend deadline to avoid losing any momentum she has from winning the competition.
Growth in the face of Amazon
With BookMother, Dang will join the independent book retailing business in the Twin Cities, a business that has often been seen as in decline, unable to compete with Amazon’s pricing and inventory as well as bigger companies like Barnes & Noble.
David Enyeart, manager of Next Chapter Booksellers, the largest independent bookstore in St. Paul, disagrees; in fact, Enyeart points out the independent book retail market is growing.
“We’re not worried about the future or anything,” Enyeart says. “Quite honestly, the idea that independent bookstores are struggling is a lot of marketing from Amazon, who would like you to believe they’re the only option.”
Amazon may have shaken up the industry at the time of its launch, as it did other industries, but Enyeart says independent booksellers figured out the solution a long time ago—Amazon simply does not offer experiences that brick-and-mortar bookstores compete on, and Enyeart believes customers care about that experience no less now than before. These experiences range from meeting new people and socializing to curating literary options to customer tastes.
Membership in the American Booksellers Association (ABA) has grown this year to 2,433, up 255 from the prior year. Around 192 additional bookstores plan to open in the next few years, the ABA says. The ABA also reported a 49% growth in the number of independent booksellers over the 2010s, from 1,651 in 2009 to 2,470 in 2018.
The sales at Next Chapter reflect that. While daily sales are volatile, overall sales are growing, says Enyeart, who became manager at the store shortly before new ownership took over in 2019.
The bookstore used to sell more literary fiction and now sells more genre fiction and graphic novels, but “these are all normal fluctuations,” he says. He has also observed less seasonality than in the past, which he says is great for cash flow.
There is impressive growth especially among minority-owned and specialized indie bookstores, Enyeart says.
Dang views BookMother as an opportunity to bring to the table what is missing from the experience of browsing online.
“We all miss the alchemy of running into people and interacting with people every day,” Dang says—in fact, that was partly what inspired Dang to pitch BookMother to begin with.
Dang says she often finds herself leaving the city for adult solo or social outings not oriented around family, such as shopping for specialty gifts or hanging out with her friends.
“If I’m the advocate for Bloomington and I’m leaving the city whenever I want to do something, that speaks volumes to what the city is sometimes missing,” Dang says. “Potential comes together not just in the resources you have but the things you intentionally build. I wanted to be a part of the intentional build.”
Dang’s research for the Hatch contest found that the independent bookstore market, particularly in the Twin Cities, is strong, with 37 independent bookstores participating in Rain Taxi’s Bookstore Passport program in 2025.
Her conservative projections for revenue entail a six-month first fiscal year to get set up and a second year in the red, with some expected hiccups and time to learn more about resupplying inventory. By year three, Dang aims to have a solid revenue and event structure, as well as profitability by the end of year.
Scramblin’ Egg’s ribbon cutting
Hatch Bloomington
The seven-month Hatch contest involves three rounds: the first round, where 25 contestants have three minutes to convince judges that the pitch is a good idea; the second round, where 10 contestants have 10 minutes to convince judges that the pitch has true potential; and the third round, where three final contestants have15 minutes to present a fully realized plan including research and financing. Public voting also plays in during the final two rounds.
Last year’s Hatch winners Grant Veitenheimer and Nick Peterson have come a long way since conceptualizing a modernized breakfast spot, starting with a Scramblin’ Egg food trailer in 2023 and evolving into a brick-and-mortar location that opened in June this year with the Hatch Bloomington reward money.
Veitenheimer, who grew up in Bloomington, says that shifting to a new location has been good for the business, providing them with a bigger kitchen space to help get the food out more quickly and a refreshing change of scenery compared to the food trailer setup. Not only has the number of customers increased, but the menu has expanded thanks to new equipment.
“There’s more things we would like to try in the future, and being in a big space gives us that ability,” Veitenheimer says. “[Hatch is] a fantastic program, what they have going, and I hope they can keep doing it year after year.”
Regarding Bloomington, he notes, “It’s a suburban area. You end up getting a lot of chains, which isn’t bad, but I think people really appreciate having a small local business, someone they can get behind.”
His advice to Hatch winners: “$100,000 goes quick.”
Working hand in hand with the city, Dang is currently in the process of finding the right location for BookMother and says things are moving along at a good pace.
“At this point, we know we have a viable business,” Dang says. “We’ve just got to put everything in motion.”