About Us
Although we often use the words "we" and "us" in this website, Mindbird Maps & Books is not a business run by two or more people. Nor is it run by one person with multiple personalities. The "we" refers to one guy trying to make an ethical living, with financial and moral support by a number of friends without whom this business would not exist. The "we" also recognizes that the shop itself has a personality of its own. Like a child, it resembles the parent, but has its own unique qualities.
The owner, manager, webmaster, bookshelf builder, cashier, shipper, receiver and carpet sweeper is Lee Dittmann. His work experience was mostly in parks, bookstores, and hostels. His formal education was strong in science, math, drafting, history, writing, and foreign languages (German, Spanish, Russian, and French—though he is not fluent in any of them). His informal education has been in Buddhism, botany, natural history in general, literature, photography, botanical illustration, cartography, bicycling, camping, and long-distance hiking. It is no coincidence that this list reflects much of the subject matter of this website.
What may most interest the reader is that Lee followed a car-free way of life in this car-dependent culture. This was for economic, social, political, physical fitness, safety, and conservation reasons. All of these reasons are aspects of a more central practice of minimizing the suffering inflicted on other beings, whether human or non-human, from the effects of overuse of motors and dangerous wheeled heavy hunks of metal. He walks to work (once bicycled most places when he still had a working bike), and if you place an order from this website, he may carry your package by hand and foot to the neighborhood post office (if it is not a UPS-shipped item).
In fact, he accumulated almost all of his startup inventory of used books by searching thrift shops and library sales in the San Francisco Bay Area, traveling on foot, bus, and light rail, hauling his purchases in a large backpack. This involved almost two years of gathering books. Quite literally, a lot of sweat went into starting this business.
In 2004, though, he "sold out"—learning to drive and obtaining a driver's license for the first time in his life, at age 47. This is because he has had to work other jobs to earn extra income to buy the inventory needed for this shop, and most jobs that he is otherwise qualified for that pay sufficient wages require a license. The new skill has also enabled him to work on store-sponsored field projects that require travel to areas buses don't go, such as the Northern Arizona Flora and Mojave National Preserve websites. That's him at right, shorter than the saguaro, near Burro Creek on a NAZFlora photo trip.Although he grew up in California, and is in many ways a Californian, Lee was born in Washington, and also has lived in Massachusetts and North Carolina. Some of the places he has worked include Garland Ranch Regional Park (Carmel Valley, California), Cornucopia Natural Foods (Carmel), Boston International Hostel, Wordsworth Books (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Schoenhof's Foreign Books (also Cambridge), Malaprop's Books (Asheville, North Carolina), Henry W. Coe State Park and Grand Canyon National Park.
He chose Flagstaff, Arizona as the place to start this business because it is a small city with a major university (Northern Arizona University), surrounded by Coconino National Forest, with a huge mountain nearby to climb (San Francisco Mountain), and near a major National Park (Grand Canyon). All of these qualities he felt would be important to support sales of the kind of quality books and maps he wanted to carry—yet without being as expensive a place to live as urban areas with similar wildlands access. The web business has been more of an afterthought, and had evolved into over 90% of the store income before he closed the walk-in store.
But the business underwent tough financial straights in Flagstaff. The business was growing steadily through early 2005, and was on the verge of bringing in enough income to be self-sufficient, but Lee could neither find the financing needed for buying the inventory that would bring sales up to subsistence levels, nor local work compatible with the business. On top of that, certain highly predacious credit card companies began raising interest rates to over 30%—the first for no other reason than for carrying a balance for more years than they liked. This led to further strains and chain reactions: the higher the interest, the less money available for inventory. Less inventory meant lower sales and late credit card payments, giving others an excuse for higher rates. (We won't mention the name of the most rapacious card company, but it is spelled C-H-A-S-E.)
Nor did he have the means to move the shop to a more visible location, which would have had to have been in another town to be affordable. Few items he sold could sell fast enough to pay for themselves in the short run, so he had to let many items go out of stock, a trend not completely reversed until almost the middle of 2006.
Meanwhile, he cast his supplementary job-seeking net wider, and finally he landed a new full-time government job about 50 miles south of Flagstaff, in Cottonwood. The move to the new town was made possible by the generous assistance of two new backers, who replaced all of the high-interest cards with a low-interest term loan, with extra for moving expenses. So after six and a half years in Flag, he moved into a new apartment and began to set up the new shop in its more visible new location (which, unfortunately, proved not to bring as much walk-in traffic as the old obscure Flagstaff basement).
Along with the move in February 2006 came the change of name. The store philosophy and mix of products remained the same, but the old name, "buddha-nature maps & books," gave new or potential customers the mistaken idea that it was a shop specializing in "spiritual" or New Age books and paraphernalia—not to mention bringing out the frequent irrelevant question, "Are you a Buddhist?" And possibly it deterred persons not interested in such things from investigating our wares.
Internet sales increased so markedly that toward the end of September of 2006, he quit the government job and worked in the shop about 80 hours per week (instead of 40 at the outside job and 40 at the shop) which was also open every day of the week.
Heavy investment in merchandise boosted sales in the Cottonwood location in 2007 to the point that the business was at last beginning to be self-supporting—then came the Great Recession. Weak walk-in sales levels did not justify staying there, and as rents in the entire Verde Valley/Sedona region were too expensive, he moved again. Kingman, in the northwest corner of the state and at the intersection of Interstate 40 and US 93 (which latter connects Las Vegas and Phoenix) was the city chosen, and, in May 2008, the store opened in a new, more spacious location.
Yet not for long—sales were never high enough to build up any kind of reserve, and the 2008 slump forced this business to become an internet-only operation. Mindbird closed its walk-in store in mid-November 2008, and went to internet-only sales out of the owner's small Kingman apartment and adjacent storage sheds.
The business has not yet recovered from the slump, and the owner works half of the year as a National Park Service ranger in southern Utah (taking store inventory with him so as to be able to continue filling your orders). He anticipates a gradual recovery of the business, reflected in a reduced number of "out of stock" items appearing on the website, toward the end of 2010.
Thanks to all of our customers whose purchases and messages have sustained the business this long, and we hope to serve you in however limited a fashion we can, in the years to come. Look for further changes in the business, which we intend to focus more on a limited number of items, with (eventually) more copies of each item kept on hand!
Yet not for long—sales were never high enough to build up any kind of reserve, and the 2008 slump forced this business to become an internet-only operation. Mindbird closed its walk-in store in mid-November 2008, and went to internet-only sales out of the owner's small Kingman apartment and adjacent storage sheds.
The business has not yet recovered from the slump, and the owner works half of the year as a National Park Service ranger in southern Utah (taking store inventory with him so as to be able to continue filling your orders). He anticipates a gradual recovery of the business, reflected in a reduced number of "out of stock" items appearing on the website, toward the end of 2010.
Thanks to all of our customers whose purchases and messages have sustained the business this long, and we hope to serve you in however limited a fashion we can, in the years to come. Look for further changes in the business, which we intend to focus more on a limited number of items, with (eventually) more copies of each item kept on hand!
Original content copyright © Lee Dittmann of Mindbird Maps & Books.
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