More Than Words isn’t the biggest bookstore in the Fargo-Moorhead community, but at the start of spring, it was the most packed it had been since opening in early July. Just a little over eight months after opening, the owner Sydni Kreps hosted a signing event with local
author Jenna Miller. There was a line from the signing booth to the door and the rest of the store was echoing with overlapping voices.
Miller was excited to sign at More Than Words because she used to live in the Fargo-Moorhead area and believes they uplift what the community values. While she doesn’t live in the area anymore, Miller said she is always happy to come back and hopes to see the store grow.
After getting their books signed, customers roamed the store. A grandpa was waiting in line with his granddaughters who were excited to grab the cupcakes frosted in pink and green icing provided at the event. Children were sitting on the bean bags in the children’s section while their parents tried to catch the crumbs being dropped.
Seeing the amount of enthusiasm buzzing through all the customers was reminiscent of the large presence of people on opening day, July 2023.
“That was easily one of the best days of my life,” Kreps said. “Even dreaming about this day for a year and a half, I was so nervous, so nervous.”
Questions were running through her head leading up to the big day: “Is anybody even going to come? Is it going to be a kind of underwhelming day?” However, this was just anxiety creeping in. An hour and a half before More Than Words was set to officially open its doors for the first time, a line had started forming. By the time the doors did open, the line stretched around the entire building.
“We ended up having to limit how many people we let into the shop at a time because it was that overwhelming,” Kreps said.
Meghan Stinar, a high school classmate of Kreps and an employee at More Than Words, remembers the energy of the crowd on opening day.
“Sydni was like ‘I didn’t expect this’ and we were like ‘Well, we did!’” Stinar said. “It was a full, busy day, but one that you left with your bucket more full than empty because it just made your heart warm.”
The Start of It All
Although opening day was an overwhelmingly positive experience, Kreps’ journey of starting her own business has been a bumpy road full of big emotions. The idea for More Than Words came to her in the months following her father’s sudden passing.
“I was quite honestly very depressed, really not doing much and just trying to, you know, get through the days. As I was lying on my couch one night feeling sorry for myself, I looked at my arm and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’” Kreps said.
Before the concept of the bookstore ever crossed her mind, Kreps had gotten a tattoo to memorialize her father. It reads “More than words” in his handwriting.
“I truly had this epiphany moment. I sat up straight and I was like, this is the name of this bookstore that I’ve always been dreaming of in the back of my mind,” Kreps added.
Ryan Kreps, Sydni’s younger brother, remembers how their father was never great with expressing himself with his words or feelings and often showed his love through listening.
“Whenever our father really needed to say it though he would say, ‘I love you more than words.’ or ‘I’m proud of you more than words.’” Ryan said.
This was the moment Kreps’ childhood fantasy began to seem less like a pipe dream, as she described it, and seem more achievable. If anyone asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, Kreps always responded with “opening a bookstore.”
Now that her dream seemed within reach, Kreps started to plan.
“There is no guidebook for this, and I truly had no idea what I was doing,” Kreps said.
As a self-proclaimed “organizer to a fault,” this lack of concrete information was terrifying to Kreps. She started hunting for anything that might be useful and stumbled across a book called “Owning a Bookstore: The Essential Planning Guide” which she described as a broad overview of the bookselling industry.
While Kreps found the manual helpful as a first step, she craved more personal insights into the indie bookstore industry. She started reading memoirs written by booksellers to learn more about the ins and outs of owning a bookstore.
Kreps also started to reach out to friends and family to see if she could really pull this off. She had a friend who worked in marketing and could offer advice on how to ramp up interest in the store before opening by posting on social media and engaging with her audience.
When Stinar found out, she was excited to help out.
“She (Sydni) was like ‘I’m opening a bookstore,’ and I was like ‘Well, I’m going to work there,’” Stinar said.
Stinar was happy to have an indie bookstore in the local area and mentioned that supporting young women in business who are also from the area means a lot to her personally. She strongly believes everyone should help out in building the community that they want to live in.
Stinar also works as an English teacher at Discovery Middle School. Although it isn’t the most conventional, Stinar is happy to have two jobs because for her, working at More Than Words is part of building the community she wants to be a part of.
This enthusiasm was echoed by many of Kreps’ friends and family. Her younger brother also wanted to help.
“I told Syndi, ‘I can help however you need me to; I don’t care what I have to learn whether I’m learning how to put stuff into our inventory online or doing grunt work,’” Ryan said.
The siblings’ relationship hadn’t always been as close as it is now. However, their dad’s passing brought them closer together and working together has only improved their relationship.
“Working with my sister has without a doubt brought us closer,” Ryan said. “And being able to walk into work every day under my dad’s handwriting is something special.”
Throughout each step of the long process of establishing More Than Words, Kreps was surrounded by a community of people who supported her. On opening day, Kreps had a huge team of her friends and family present who helped her throughout, and it meant a lot to her.
“I definitely cried multiple times. Seeing all these people that love me come together to help out with my dream and I obviously had some feelings about my dad not being there to see it,” Kreps said.
Childhood Connections to Entrepreneurship
When Kreps decided to pursue More Than Words, she didn’t view herself as an entrepreneur and admits she struggled to accept the title.
“I just didn’t feel like I was that type of person,” Kreps said.
However, as she looked back on her childhood, Kreps could see clear connections to entrepreneurship that never stood out to her before.
When Kreps was an elementary school student, she participated in a program called Marketplace for Kids. It was a competition where children could create their own businesses or invent a product and enter to win. One year Kreps remembers creating a product she called a book buddy that held a book for the person reading it.
The next year, Kreps entered with a friend, and they developed a small business where they packaged gift baskets for customers based on the specific person they wanted a gift for.
That year Kreps and her friend won.
A Lifelong Love for Literature
Kreps claims she has always been a physical book lover who likes to be surrounded by books. At family gatherings or dinners out, Kreps could often be found reading a book.
Ryan Kreps, her younger brother, remembers that around high school his sister had a small library in her room with several bookshelves overflowing with books.
Ryan also remembers how obsessed Kreps was with the ‘Harry Potter’ series as it was published and as it was later made into films.
For the final movie, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two,” the Kreps siblings were camped out all day awaiting the midnight showing.
“She happened to be on the news. We were standing around or sitting around on the sidewalk waiting in line,” Ryan said. “It was a lot of fun hanging out with friends and doing things to keep yourself distracted from the fact that you had been there for eight hours.”
Kreps’ love for literature includes supporting other small businesses. Whenever she travels, she makes sure to stop by at least one independent bookstore.
“I just kind of love the curation and the charm and the character in independent bookstores,” Kreps said.
She has prioritized that same sense of personalization in More Than Words. Kreps handpicks every book on the shelves and feels passionate about making sure she knows what is in stock. If a customer comes up and asks if she has a specific title on hand, Kreps will often know the answer right away.
Kreps believes that her curation style is something that sets her apart from local competitors and is what sets most independent bookstores apart from big chains. There is a sense of who the owner is through what they choose to purchase.
“I like to focus on some smaller publishers and some books that maybe don’t get these huge media campaigns,” Kreps said. “I’m trying to find books that maybe your average reader or community member hasn’t heard about and give some shelf space to.”
Stinar also thinks this personal curation is one of the things that makes the store so special.
“Sydni is not afraid to branch out and get more niche things. She’s intentional about finding backlist books or translated books that might have missed a big wave. She pays attention to everything,” Stinar said.
It was little experiences like these throughout her life that acted as stepping stones for Kreps to eventually open an independent bookstore in Moorhead.
This decision was not made lightly. Kreps was aware of big competitors such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon when she started her journey with More Than Words. Through research, Kreps found that since the pandemic, indie bookstores have been on the rise, especially in Minnesota, which offered her comfort.
The choice to have the store in Moorhead was never up for debate.
“I knew right away I wanted to be in Moorhead,” Kreps said. “There wasn’t a bookstore in Moorhead and going to college here, and then working here after, I really felt that gap in the community.”
More Than a Bookstore
As Kreps began to put this idea into action, connections to family were surfacing left and right. The grandfather of Kreps’ dad helped construct the building she leases, one of her distant relatives is the landlord and her cousin helped with all the renovations that needed to take place to convert an old chiropractic clinic into the bookstore standing today. Ryan admits it’s what he thinks makes More Than Words so special.
“Everything just sort of fell into place,” he said.
Kreps is carrying on the legacy of family history by making More Than Words a small family of her own.
Mandy Oanes is another employee at the store and is half of the second sibling duo who works at More Than Words. Her little sister, Grete Oans, was a friend of Sydni’s in high school. Mandy didn’t become friends with Sydni until later on in life.
“We became friends when she (Sydni) was student teaching at West Fargo High School where I’m a science teacher,” Oanes said.
Oanes works a job on top of her time at the bookstore just like Stinar but neither of them feels overwhelmed by it.
“I have somewhere to work in the summer that I actually like now and I can get to know people in the community in a different way rather than just at the high school,” Oanes said.
Stinar has similar feelings. People from out of town will stop in and say someone in their life told them they had to visit. This word of mouth brings in a lot of business to the store and returning customers can begin to feel more like friends than customers.
“My favorite thing ever is bringing my dog, Macchiato, into the store. There’s this little girl named Ingrid who always asks if Macchiato is in and even named a stuffed animal after him,” Stinar said.
For Stinar, the opportunity to build a community within the store and get to know returning customers on a more personal level is what makes each day special.
Oanes also likes how much of Kreps’ personality shines through the design and feel of More Than Words.
“I just feel like the vibe of the store is very particular in our area. We don’t have that anywhere else in town,” Oanes said. “She (Sydni) has a very good sense of style.”
There are several spaces throughout the store where customers can sit down to enjoy the book they bought, chat with friends, or spend time getting work done. Every customer is greeted when they enter the store and is thanked for stopping by when they leave.
Kreps hopes that the store will continue to flourish as a community gathering space. Growing up in Moorhead, she was always looking for a “bookish” community of her own and never found a space that felt right. Now, she hopes More Than Words can be that space for others.
Ryan believes that their father would be proud of what Kreps has accomplished.
“Every step of the way there has been that family connection and that love. All throughout it,” he said.