Between the Bookends: a bookstore on wheels, and the website that runs it
Between the Bookends · 2026
A storefront with as much personality as a purple trailer full of books, and a back office that runs the whole shop from a phone at the trailer or a laptop at home.
Between the Bookends: a bookstore on wheels, and the website that runs it
The challenge
Brianna and Ashley, a mother and daughter, were turning a shared love of reading into a mobile bookstore: a purple trailer that parks wherever readers gather. They were pre-launch, with no stops on the calendar yet and boxes still being unpacked. They needed a site that felt like the trailer, not a template, and a way to run the business without stacking up separate tools for inventory, sales, scheduling and email. Whatever we built had to work from a phone at a market stall.
Our approach
We started with the brand on paper: plum ink, royal purple, gold used sparingly and sunflower accents, set in Libre Caslon with a handwritten face for notes. The public site borrows from a library: reader's cards for the owners, a Date Due card for the schedule, and cloth-bound covers for books still waiting on a photo. Readers can browse the shelves, take a four-question Book Matchmaker, see where the trailer parks next and whether it is open right now, hold a book for pickup, send the owners on a book hunt, book the trailer for an event, leave a love note, and join the Bookends Letter or the Monthly Book Box. Behind it is Bookends HQ: a point-of-sale register with ISBN scanning, discounts, payment type and change due; scan-to-add inventory that fills in title, author and cover from an ISBN; a schedule that powers directions and a calendar feed; a trailer-status switch; holds and book hunts with "it's ready" and "we found it" emails; and email lists. It is built on Next.js, React, Supabase, Tailwind CSS and Resend, hosted on Vercel.
The outcome
Between the Bookends launched at bbmobilebookstore.com with the storefront and Bookends HQ working together. When the owners add a stop, it shows up on the site's next-stop ticket and Date Due card. When they ring up a sale, the book comes off the shelf. When a reader holds a book or asks for a hunt, the owners can handle it from the same place they run the register.
October 2026
Launched
a phone at the trailer
Runs from
register, inventory, schedule, holds, email
Back office
bbmobilebookstore.com
Live at
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