Scribner Book Store at Crystal Court Doing Well in Sales, Executive Says : RETAILING

Despite appearances, Scribner Book Store at Crystal Court is doing “quite well,” with sales beating projections, according to the chief executive of Scribner’s parent company, Rizzoli Bookstores.

Gianfranco Monacelli said there was a “misconception” that the Crystal Court annex of South Coast Plaza would be an extension of the original mall.

“In fact, it’s a brand new shopping center. It will take some time before it reaches its potential,” he said.

A new bookstore, Monacelli said, generally reaches its potential in three years.

The executive was in Orange County recently, visiting the company’s Rizzoli store at South Coast and its Scribner store in Crystal Court. His comments were made in response to criticism by some Crystal Court merchants, including employees at the Scribner bookstore, of the mall’s performance.

In an interview in May, an assistant manager at Scribner described business as “very slow.” According to the employee, the store chose its third-floor location because it believed it would someday be right next to a connecting bridge to South Coast Plaza. The bridge was never built.

Monacelli was unavailable for interviews about the Crystal Court store earlier this year.

Last week he acknowledged that the bookstore “has a long way to go” and that traffic at the Rizzoli store is “much heavier.”

But South Coast Plaza “has been there for 21 years,” he added. In light of that, he said, the Crystal Court store “is doing fine.”