Making books affordable and easily accessible to all families with children is what Bookchigo aims.

This as Cordova, Cebu Mayor Cesar Suan said “Welcome to Cordova Bookchigo Bookstore. Actually, this is one of the milestones in Cordova. Why? I have never seen in the entire Province of Cebu that there is such a thing of a bookstore that weighs books (per kilo) and can be brought for a lesser amount.”

Bookchigo started as an online live seller who was horrified to learn that books used as packing material were being thrown away and burned.

Kathleen Claire Alonzo told Esquire that she was horrified when she heard about the burning of the books that came with the shipment containers of surplus and secondhand goods from abroad. The books were used to “just fill up the containers” or serve as packing materials to protect items like ceramics.

The store sells books at P200 per kilo for a minimum purchase of 3 kilos.

“Seventy percent of our books are for children,” he added.

Chigo is Japanese for a young child.

Kathleen or Kath started salvaging books that could still be sold, which was just 20 percent of what she found in the containers.

The Alonzos used to run a surplus shop in Cavite. The goods were from Japan and United Kingdom. 

Kath started selling on Shopee and Facebook. Her titles were mostly children’s books and collectibles, published in the 1960›s to the 1980›s. 

The other books range from novels to nonfiction, from literature classics to modern romance.

The Alonzos estimate the books to number between 500,000 to a million.

The bookstore complements with a cafe with good interior design and several “Instagrammable” locations to encourage people to share the store online and increase awareness of Bookchigo Cebu. One location is a presidential table with shelves of hardbound collectibles while another is a book tunnel on the 2nd floor.

Atty. Alonzo said they targeted children “because the better educated the Filipino children are, the better for the Philippines.”

Dr. Resil Mojares, the National Artist and known Cebuano historian, had visited the shop twice.