Kwame Spearman Isn't Done With Tattered Cover...or Denver Politics

Tattered Cover and Kwame Spearman emailed a shared announcement on April 5 that Spearman would not be returning to his position as CEO of the independent bookstore chain. He’d been on a leave of absence from the company since January, when he started a run for Denver mayor, a campaign that he ended in mid-March, weeks before the April 4 municipal election.

Spearman suggests that his move away from management will be relatively invisible to the Tattered Cover faithful. “Luckily, we had a fantastic and dedicated staff who’d already been working hard running things day-to-day during my run for mayor,” says Spearman, “and they’ll continue to do a super-super-amazing job.” That senior staff includes CFO Margie Keenan, who’s worked at Tattered Cover since the mid-1990s.

Spearman, who was part of a group that bought Tattered Cover in late 2021 from the successors to longtime owner Joyce Meskis, is quick to point out that he’ll still be involved as a co-owner, and available for whatever the company might need as it moves forward. “The simplest way to put it is that Tattered Cover will no longer be paying me,” jokes Spearman.

Spearman's departure from the CEO position comes at a good time for the company, he says: “We’ve just gotten Tattered Cover back to a place where it feels like the existential crisis we experienced through the pandemic has subsided. It’s still an incredibly tough business environment for retail, but it’s going to be like that for a long time. But the major concerns just aren’t there in the same way, and with the team already in place, we’ll be able to take our time in looking for the person to take over as CEO. For our next Joyce Meskis.”

Meskis, who passed away in December, had bought Tattered Cover when it was a tiny, two-year-old spot in Cherry Creek, and grew it into an independent chain with a national reputation.
But Spearman’s exit is also personally strategic. “Essentially, one of the things that I probably should have anticipated in the mayoral race was that Tattered Cover was super connected to me and the way I was running,” he explains. “When I took a stance on an issue, people who were either happy or unhappy with that stance would express that at the stores, or in our social media. It didn’t affect sales, which was great, but it was an undue stress on the stores and the staff. Obviously, if I’d been fortunate enough to have won the mayoral race, I would have stepped down anyway — but after I withdrew, I thought that it might be a good idea to do that, anyway, if I wanted to continue participating in the political arena.”

And politics loom large in Spearman’s future plans. Most immediately, the Denver native and East High School grad is looking at a run for the at-large seat in the November 7 Denver Board of Education election; that spot is currently occupied by Auon’tai Anderson, who's already campaigning to retain the position. Spearman admits that he “really, really, really enjoyed running for mayor. Thinking through policy, working to improve Denver, the interaction with constituents, the back-and-forth process between government and citizens — I caught the bug.”

Whether he ultimately makes the run, Spearman hopes that Denver Public Schools puts a renewed focus on excellence. “Every student should receive an excellent education, and every student deserves an excellent outcome,” he says. “We have to figure out what that excellence looks like, and then create a path to get there. One of the things I’ve enjoyed doing — particularly at Tattered Cover — is working to evolve space into place. Space is just bricks and mortar; a place is a thriving community. East High School is a place; the resiliency of that school, given what they’ve gone through recently, is evidence of that community.”
Tattered Cover is about more than space, too. Before Spearman and his partners bought the company, the last owners had decided to close the store at 1628 16th Street in favor of a smaller spot in the new McGregor Square. Meskis had opened the mall location back in 1994; a dozen years later, she closed the Cherry Creek flagship and moved it to the Lowenstein complex on East Colfax Avenue. “The Colfax location is, all in, about 24,000 or 25,000 square feet,” Spearman says. “It’s a really large space. There is this existential question about what the ideal size of our largest location might be. So yes, our lease is up pretty quickly, but it’s less about a reluctance to sign and more about ‘Is this the right spot?’”

There are “tons of pros” to remaining in the Lowenstein, he adds quickly. “We just don’t know the answer yet. We’re still asking questions, and we’re in active conversations with the building’s owner to make something work.”

Meanwhile, Tattered Cover will go on with business as usual even as Spearman drops back to just being a majority shareholder in the company. Customers won’t see a whit of difference in the experience they’ve come to expect, he says, even as his own daily routine changes.

“I’m just realizing that I’ve been using the word ‘we’ to describe the Tattered Cover throughout this entire interview — I’m using that in the broader sense,” Spearman says with a laugh. But it also goes to show that while Kwame Spearman might be relinquishing the title of CEO…he’s not going anywhere.

Just opening a new chapter.