Last week, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Denver’s famous Tattered Cover bookstores to change ownership for the second time since the retirement of longtime owner Joyce Meskis in 2017.

The independent bookstores were purchased by Colorado investors, Denver natives and long-time friends Kwame Spearman and David Back, founding partners of Bended Page, LLC.

Spearman and Back have strong ties to the Denver community, graduating from East and George Washington high schools respectively. Back’s first job at 15 was as a cashier at the Tattered Cover in Cherry Creek. The two went on to attend Columbia, Yale and Harvard before working for international retail companies.

Spearman and Back talked to The Denver Gazette about purchasing their community bookstores and their plans for the next 50 years.

How did you come to the decision to buy Tattered Cover in the middle of a pandemic?

Back: The origin of this was love for Tattered Cover. When the pandemic hit, it was obvious it was going to be a cataclysm for small businesses. I reached out to (the previous owners) and asked how I could help. They said they didn’t have the resources and needed to sell. We’d been passionate about Colorado business for so long, now was the time to make a difference and keep this beautiful institution alive.

What is the transition going to look like? The previous owners, Len Vlahos and Kristen Gilligan, transferred power in a two-year-long apprenticeship under Joyce Meskis.

Spearman: A two-year apprenticeship is very long but it’s not lost on David or I that neither of us has ever run a bookstore. Len has graciously agreed to stick around for the next six or seven months. We are opening two new locations in McGregor Square and Westminster. He’s going to lead those efforts and, quite frankly, teach us the ropes of how to run a bookstore.

What is your vision for the future of Tattered Cover?

Spearman: The thing we’re most excited about is creating Tattered Cover to be synonymous with community, having a space where everyone in our community can feel welcome. We want to hear from other small businesses, we want to hear from our artists. We want to use our store and our brand as a way for them to communicate with a new customer base.

We’re all in the fight of our life right now. If we don’t band together, think collaboratively and understand how we can help each other, we’re not going to survive. I’m so excited to join this community in Denver because it’s going to keep the city great.

The other thing we’re going to do is expand our digital offering. We think we can take that same sense of community and bring it digitally. We think we can have an e-commerce experience that has many of the same qualities that people found when they came into our store and we’re looking to create that in 2021.

With Kwame being the CEO and major shareholder, Tattered Cover is now the largest Black-owned bookstore in the country. How does that feel?

Spearman: It’s incredibly hard to put words to it. I’m going to do my best to make sure Tattered Cover is always on the right side of history. There’s an obligation that an independent bookstore has to its community and on issues of importance. I think Tattered Cover is going to be a leading voice in helping people come together to discuss and hopefully find productive solutions.

The previous owners made headlines for taking a neutral stance on the Black Lives Matter movement. How is Tattered Cover’s relationship with BLM going to change?

Spearman: It’s going to feel like night and day. We want to be part of the community and we don’t want to limit that to just the community that walks in our stores. We want outreach, we want to go into neighborhoods and areas that we haven’t been to. If you look at one of the greatest things that have kept oppressed groups down, it’s the lack of literacy. You’ve got to get books in front of people. We want to go out and be aggressive about that.

Will that include having more work from Black authors in the bookstores?

Spearman: Of course. You can’t have a place where everyone feels comfortable if not everyone is represented. It’s something that we don’t want to just participate in, we want to lead. And I don’t want to limit it to just Black authors. Every author of every background needs to be represented. There’s so much talent out there and there’s so much talent in Denver.

Back: A big focus for us is going to be on local authors, local musicians, local artists, other local small businesses. We think that by going out and saying to people across Colorado, ‘we’re looking for new authors, we’re looking for small authors,’ that’ll be something people hadn’t thought was possible before.

This sale came as a shock to the Denver community since the previous owners had operational control for less than four years. Do you two plan on sticking around?

Back: We very much are in it for the long haul and we intend to remain the owners hopefully for 50 years. Len and Kristen didn’t intend to be at the helm for such a short period of time, they wanted to be here for decades but the pandemic has changed the plans of everyone in the world.

What would you say to anyone concerned about the new ownership?

Spearman: I think people are going to see our actions and those will always speak louder than words. This is in no way, shape or form a private equity, let’s gut this thing out. This is the only venture that David and I are participating in and we’re doing it because we love the Tattered Cover.

Companies either evolve or they die. We have to remember what makes us great but we also have to reimagine how it works and how it can serve our community. But what we won’t do is lose Tattered Cover’s identity.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.