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BUSINESS Thursday 6 december 2018
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Moms start companies to fill demand for Spanish books

By ALEXANDRA OLSON been looking for a baby
Associated Press brand when she was intro-
NEW YORK (AP) — You duced to Canticos at an
might have heard of the industry conference. When
three blind mice or the itsy- she showed the videos to
bitsy spider who went up her Hispanic colleagues,
the water spout. But have some teared up.
you ever heard of the little "I thought, OK, we have
cold and hungry chicks? something here," Kaufman
If you grew up speaking said. "We are excited about
Spanish, the answer is prob- it because it is authentic."
ably yes. But Susie Jaramillo Nickelodeon, which also
wants everyone to know added a Spanish-language
"Los Pollitos," a bedtime hub to its video subscrip-
song about a hen taking tion service NOGGIN in the
care of her hatchlings that's spring, is planning a line of
as familiar in the Spanish- Canticos toys, clothing and
speaking world as "Twinkle, decor for next year.
Twinkle, Little Star" is to Eng- With sales picking up, ma-
lish speakers. jor players in the traditional
The song is the heart of Can- book industry are expand-
ticos , a series of bilingual ing their Spanish-language
books, companion apps business. HarperCollins
and singalong videos that In this Saturday, Nov. 3, 2018, photo, Celene Navarette poses for a picture at La Libreria book launched a new Spanish-
the Venezuelan-American store in Los Angeles. Associated Press language division in 2015.
mother of two dreamed Chicago-based distributor
up after she couldn't find Two other mothers, Patty when they noticed the Spanish-language im- IPG, already a key distribu-
enough Spanish-language Rodriguez and Ariana Stein, spotty Spanish-language prints after sales fell short tor of Spanish-language
books to read to her chil- founded their own publish- selection. They persuaded of expectations during the books, added two pub-
dren. The brand, which ing company in 2014 when Mexican publishers to send Great Recession, and as lishers from Spain and one
debuted in 2016, had its Rodriguez couldn't sell some titles, set up two ta- the industry struggled to from Mexico to its list in No-
biggest breakthrough this mainstream publishers on bles and quickly sold out. adjust to the Amazon era vember.
year when Nickelodeon her concept of a bilingual They founded their busi- that squeezed traditional Arroyo and Navarette,
adapted it to develop a se- board book series featuring ness five years ago, selling booksellers. owners of La Libreria, said
ries for toddlers on its digital Latino icons and traditions. books at other school fairs In an internet-driven age the rise of dual-language
platforms. The company, Lil' Libros , and then online. of fractured consumer programs in schools is driv-
Canticos capitalized on a landed a partnership with By 2015, they had opened markets, Jaramillo and ing interest in children's
growing market for Spanish Target just five months af- La Libreria , a store in cen- Santamaria Wolf said stra- books originally written in
books in the United States, ter publishing its first book, tral Los Angeles and na- tegic partnerships have Spanish.
which the traditional pub- "Counting with Frida," now tionwide distributor of been key, particularly with The trouble is keeping up
lishing industry has ad- the best-seller on Amazon books from Latin America brands and retailers like with demand. Latin Ameri-
dressed in fits and starts. among children's counting and Spain.U.S. sales of chil- Target, which considers His- can and Spanish publishers
Small companies are step- books. The books are now dren's Spanish-language panic mothers a key cus- tend to have printing cy-
ping in to fill the void, le- sold at 1,300 stores nation- books rose 6 percent over tomer base. cles that are too slow and
veraging social media and wide. the past year to 1.5 million Pam Kaufman, president of small for the U.S. consumer
strategic retail partnerships "We didn't expect this reac- units, according to NDP global consumer products market. Often, by the time
to target key customer bas- tion. We were doing it for BookScan. Overall Spanish- at Viacom/Nickelodeon, a school orders a title, the
es, often ones they them- love. If 100 kids picked up language books jumped said the company had books will have sold out in
selves belong to. our books, we would have 15 percent. But that still rep- the original country, Arroyo
"When I had my first child, been happy," said Rodri- resents less than 1 percent
I went online and thought: guez, a senior producer for of the overall book market
Where are all the board the radio show "On Air With in a country with more than
books of these songs that I Ryan Seacrest." 41 million Spanish speakers.
grew up with" said Jaramil- Friends Chiara Arroyo and Major publishers and dis-
lo, a former co-founder of Celene Navarette were tributors have pursued the
a Latino-focused New York on the book fair commit- Spanish-language market
advertising agency. "We're tee of their children's bilin- for years with mixed results.
always singing the Ameri- gual school in Los Angeles Some closed or downsized
can songs in Spanish, and
our songs are great. Why
aren't people singing them
in English?"
Jaramillo teamed up with
fellow mother Nuria San-
tamaria Wolfe, a former
head of multicultural strat-
egy at Twitter, to launch En-
cantos Media Studios, an
entertainment company
that released Canticos as
the first of its planned bilin-
gual brands.