Idea, Instagram's favorite bookseller, is ready to go offline

Idea, the fashion industry's go-to dealer for rare art books, is fed up with social media, so it's shifting to something more physical: a bookstore.< /p>

For Idea, a rare book dealer and publisher in London, the decline in printing has never been a real problem . If anything, it's been a boon for the low-key business that David Owen and Angela Hill built, largely on Instagram's early infrastructure.

But now, Idea is navigating yet another gap – the death of the Instagram timeline. In 2021, the social media platform moved from a chronological feed to a more opaque algorithm, which boosted videos. This meant less visibility for posts of, say, vintage fashion books, which made selling books on Instagram a real chore.

And even though With Idea having some 500,000 followers — W magazine called it an “Instagram phenomenon” in 2015 — the company is ready to experiment with a fairly old-fashioned idea that some may consider riskier than printing itself: a bookstore physical.

At the end of September, Idea will open a store spread over three floors of a brick building on Wardour Street, in London's Soho district. (The location is also the current home of Mr. Owen and Ms. Hill — they rent in the building — in a neighborhood crowded with David Bowie walking tours and lines for a nearby Supreme store.)< /p>

“What it really feels like is the perfect response to all the frustration we've had with Instagram over the past two years, compared to the joy and to the absolute amazement we had with it the previous eight years," Mr. Owen said.

When Mr. Owen and Ms. Hill launched their Instagram account in 2010, it quickly became a popular feed. Glossy scans of their collection – which included issues of Six, a Commes des Garçons magazine ($3,050); Guy Bourdin’s “Pentax Calendar” ($500); and Eve Babitz's “Fiorucci: The Book” ($365) — set against a sea of ​​heavily filtered selfies.

Mr. Owen wrote witty captions that helped establish Idea's boisterous presence among the hushed mores of rare book selling. On Idea's website, a standard checkout button says: "I will buy PAULA'S IBIZA so fast, say GO!"

But now, said the couple, the change in Instagram's algorithm allowed some of their Instagram Stories to reach as little as 1% of their audience. Selling vintage books in a vintage way is therefore much more appealing.

Idea is far from the only small business newly dissatisfied with Instagram as a commerce tool electronic. People who built their audiences on Instagram between 2014 and 2020 are starting to feel "betrayed" by the platform, Kyle Chayka, the author of the upcoming book "Filterworld," said of the pervasive influence of algorithms on culture. “They can no longer reach the audiences and communities they have cultivated all this time,” he said.

The idea played a role important in the creation of a certain type of book - combining high fashion and celebrity culture with bright colors, a country and singular style - a collector's item accessible to anyone with a little money to spare. spend (some titles cost more than $4,000). For many people, this book is simply an “idea book.”

“They have opened up a new book collecting market through their Instagram,” said Geoff Snack, the owner of Wrong Answer, a vintage print shop that occasionally sells artwork to Idea. "Their selection has helped expand the types of books people collect and covet."

Over the past decade, Idea has operated from a single floor of the Wardour Street building, working in an often crowded showroom.

Mr. Owen and Ms. Hill's keen eye for fresh imagery (fortified by their backgrounds in music, fashion and photography) has made them a valuable resource for designers like Kim Jones and