‘Something to give back’: Retired Naval officer expands low-cost, self-serve bookstore business to Westmoreland Mall

Griffin and Naomi Lotson have gotten used to weaving through stacks of books piled high in their Indiana Borough home.

Books line the walls of the Lotson’s three-car garage, allowing just enough room for them to park their vehicles.

“We could barely fit our van in there,” said Naomi Lotson, 41. “You have to park a certain way just to make sure we have enough room to move in and out.”

And that only scratches the surface. The Lotsons have five storage units filled with books to supply their self-service Sams Lotson bookstores in Indiana and Cambria counties.

A third store will open Friday in Hempfield’s Westmoreland Mall, nestled between Live Casino Pittsburgh and Kay Jewelers in the former Rue 21 space.

Griffin Lotson, 46, opened his first Sams Lotson Bookstore in White Township’s Indiana Mall about a year ago. The second store — in Richland Township’s Johnstown Galleria mall — shortly afterward.

Sams Lotson bookstores follow an atypical business model. The stores are largely unstaffed, relying on a self-checkout card reader and cash dropbox. Book costs are fixed — $2 for paperbacks and $4 for hardbacks.

Books sit on shelves left behind by the Rue 21 owners or salvaged for free from the demolished Century III Mall in West Mifflin.

Griffin monitors happenings at the store through security cameras, though theft is a rare occurrence, he said. A Ring doorbell is used as a “help button,” allowing Griffin to see and talk to customers who have questions through an app on his phone.

Customers can sit in the store’s chairs, charge their phone and enjoy a free coffee, tea or hot chocolate while shopping.

Sams Lotson Bookstore is not a lucrative business, Griffin said. Some months, the business generates just enough to pay rent. Griffin considers it a service to the community.

“We make this store for the little guy,” Griffin said. “This is for the blue-collar family that wants to go out and buy something for their loved ones, for their kids, for their nieces or nephews and they don’t have to worry about, ‘Oh, I really need to put gas in the car,’ ‘I need to get milk.’”

Independent bookstores like Sams Lotson may be on the rise.

The American Booksellers Association reported in 2023 that its members operated nearly 2,600 independent bookstores across the country — a 10% increase from the year prior. More than 2,800 member locations are projected for 2024.

Navy officer to entrepreneur

Before Sams Lotson Bookstore was born, Griffin sold books on Amazon starting in 2021 — just one year after he retired from a 24-year career in the Navy.

Griffin joined the Navy after graduating from high school in Brunswick, Ga., later rising to the rank of officer. He specialized in security, pursuing anti-terrorism and force protection missions — including a brief stint working with the Secret Service.

“When I was in school, I played around. I didn’t really value school,” Griffin said. “We didn’t really learn a lot. We played a lot, and I barely graduated high school. Barely. And I knew college wasn’t in the cards for me.”

Griffin joined the Navy to “do better and be better,” he said.

“I wanted to do something that was going to be fulfilling — something better, something greater than just graduating from high school like most of my friends did,” he said. “And a lot of them just got regular jobs, like working at McDonald’s.”

Griffin knew he wanted more for himself than working at the fast-food chain, which he did for a few years in high school.

“I saw people in there — 60 years old, wiping tables,” he said. “I was like ‘There’s no way that’s going to be me.’”

Though his military career gave him purpose, it also took a toll on his mind and body. Griffin described himself as “100% disabled,” and he recently received hip surgery.

“The military’s hard on you. They get all your good years, in your 20s and 30s,” he said, “and then we retire in our 40s and we’re beat up.”

Griffin did not realize the impact his service had on his mental health until his retirement.

“You do a lot of crazy stuff, and you don’t realize until you retire all the stuff you’ve done, how much it really messes with your mind.

“I didn’t know until I went to the shrink, and I didn’t go to anybody or talk to anybody about anything until I was retiring,” he said. “Then they were like, ‘Wow, you’ve been holding onto this for that long?’”

“Something to give back”

But with his family by his side, Griffin has directed his passion for serving his country to building bookstores as a welcoming space for his community.

The Lotsons rely on community donations to stock their shelves, Naomi said.

“The community’s generous enough to continue to help us with donations and everything, so it’s kind of like a team effort, really,” she said. “We just give it a platform for those books to not get thrown in the trash.”

Books of all genres are accepted — from school textbooks, to children’s books, to sci-fi novels to antique 1820s Bibles. Even damaged books are accepted for crafters who make art out of the worn pages, Naomi said.

The community will be able to deliver donations to the Hempfield mall’s service door entrance, located outside of the mall between Macy’s and Live Casino Pittsburgh.

The Lotsons also drive across Western Pennsylvania to pick up donations themselves — a practice that has tacked 60,000 miles onto their car’s odometer in the past two years. Griffin plans to outsource a moving company to help with future donation retrievals.

Griffin has his sights set on expanding Sams Lotson. He aims to open three more stores in 2025, branching out to Altoona and Philadelphia before taking on states like Maryland, Virginia and his home state, Georgia.

He plans to return to his hometown in the next two years, hiring managers to monitor the stores on a daily basis.

“I create this for the community, for my family, something to give back,” he said.