Just like for much of the world, 2025 was a rough year for Casita Bookstore in Long Beach.
The Latina-owned business celebrated its third birthday on Dec. 3, but the milestone was marked by the sad realization that the store wasn’t going to make it through another year in its current location.
Shop owner Antonette Franceschi-Chavez posted a video on social media over the weekend discussing the store’s hardship.
“These last six months — especially in the summer — have been really hard, not only as a small business owner, but as a community, as a society,” she said. “We’ve depleted our savings, taken on some debt just to make sure we can make ends meet, but we’ve gotten to a point where we’re just not going to make it anymore.”
She explained that her business experienced a nearly 20% drop in sales year over year from 2024 to 2025. This situation has left her with two options: shut down the operation permanently or scale down the store to save some money and give the business a fighting chance.
In order to save jobs and build back up, Franceschi-Chavez announced that the store would be moving into a smaller place attached to her husband’s Long Beach barbershop — which is located within a couple of miles from Casita’s current location.
The video also included a plea for people to donate to a GoFundMe campaign.
“If our casita has ever touched you, helped you make a new friend, open your eyes to a new story, we’re asking for your help,” she said. “We need your help to be able to move, to be able to pay our employees, to be able to bounce back.”
Franceschi-Chavez told The Times in a Wednesday phone interview that she began noting a marked drop in business beginning in September. In an effort to cut back on costs, she decided to stop some of the programming at the bookstore, including a cafecito club because getting coffee for people was becoming too expensive.
“We tried everything that we could to try and get more people in our doors,” she said. “We had to reach into our savings to cover those summer months. Then I started going into my credit cards. I had to start pulling small business loans. I was just digging myself into deeper holes because our sales were dropping and people were not walking in the door.”
The 38-year-old business owner hoped that her store and her two employees will be fully transitioned to their new location by around mid-February. She noted that the GoFundMe has helped ensure that her employees will be paid, even if the store has to shut down operations for a few weeks during the transition.
“The internet is a beautiful place sometimes — all these people that don’t know me, but they believe in our mission. They want to see women-owned small businesses and businesses of color continue in a world where Amazon can deliver something in five minutes and everything’s always on sale,” Franceschi-Chavez said.
“It’s really beautiful to see that people out there still really care about their community and about having a space for marginalized groups to grow, gather and connect to each other.”
Illustrating the levels of generosity from the public and financial struggle of the shop, Franceschi-Chavez said that in the four days since posting about the store’s troubles it reached the amount of sales that it did in all of December.
She explained that store hours will remain the same as usual as things get settled and cautiously expressed plans to have a couple of community events at the current location in the coming weeks.
The homey bookstore was featured in the De Los 101 guide as one of the 10 best Latino-owned bookstores and comic shops in L.A.
Amid the COVID-19 shutdowns, Franceschi-Chavez wanted to spend time with her daughter and decided to open a bookstore.
The former dual-language teacher often found that there were not enough Spanish-language books available for children to read, which is why the shop carries selections like “Papá’s Magical Water-Jug Clock” by comedian Jesús Trejo and “Tejedora del Arcoiris” by Linda Elovitz Marshall. The bookstore also prides itself on its selection of LGBTQ+ literature for children, including “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish” by drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess.
“It’s a little craftsman house that we turned into a bookstore, so it lent itself to the name,” Franceschi-Chavez said. “It makes you feel like you’re visiting your tia’s house. It’s so warm and that’s one of the biggest pieces that makes it really hard to let go. Our vision of that little dream is going away.”
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