After years spent battling a declining book market and defying prophecies of doom, Indigo is back in growth mode, said founder and CEO Heather Reisman, leading a guided tour of a new store at Sherway Gardens on Tuesday.

It’s the first store the chain has opened in more than five years, and follows a series of high-profile Indigo closures that included the Runnymede Theatre store, the World’s Biggest Bookstore and the location at John St. and Richmond St. W. in downtown Toronto.

“So many people were writing Indigo off,” said Reisman. “The key is to reinvent, to create a new vision and to go to that vision with real conviction.”

Reisman said sales of physical books grew eight per cent last year, which is creating a cautious optimism among Canadian booksellers.

In 2015, the number of books sold nationally increased to 52.6 million, up from 52 million in 2014 and 2013, according to data from Booknet Canada.

“We’ll see how 2016 unfolds, but it seems we may be reaching a settling in market,” said Kate Edwards, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers.

Shaken by a steep decline in physical books sales following the introduction of e-readers and competition from online retailers like Amazon, Indigo has been searching for new footing. It has added toys to the mix and brought the American Girl doll brand to Canada to boost traffic and related sales.

The company has spent the last five years transforming from a bookstore to cultural department store for book lovers. The new location at Sherway Gardens is the first to fully encompass that new vision.

The store is similar in size to the stores at Toronto Eaton Centre and the location at Bay and Bloor, but because of the layout, it carries 80,000 titles, the most books of any location.

The new store features curated shops-within-a-shop, with books on common topics mooring a selection of related merchandise in open-concept rooms. Books on well-being are merchandised with electronic fitness trackers and water bottles.

A section called A Room of Her Own features books by women about women and books on fashion and weddings and merchandise that includes totes, knapsacks and jewellery. There are elegant chairs and a giant ottoman where guests can sit while they decide what to buy.

A digital screen features an art installation of peonies by artist Diana Thater.

“We lived and breathed this store for over 18 months. There is not one single element that was not deliberate. That colour – that particular shade of ballet pink, for example,” said Reisman, pointing to the bookshelves.

“I have been involved in every inch of this store – joyfully involved.

Books make up 60 per cent of merchandise in the new store, said Reisman.

“All of our stores are moving in this direction and we will, over the next couple of years, transform the entire collection of stores to be like this.”

She’s optimistic about the future of books, because young readers – the demographic typically glued to their mobile phones – are driving sales of physical books, Reisman said.

“Tweens and teens – that category is on fire. They’re spending so much time glued to their screens, I think they intuitively know they need that rest, that moment to disconnect, because they don’t disconnect much.”

E-books, which at their height, bit into physical book sales by 20 per cent, have dropped down to 17 per cent, Reisman said.

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Recent research that has also shown that people retain more information from the printed word than from a screen.

She believes that while there will always be situations where e-readers are preferred – packing for a holiday, for example – physical books have a future.

“There will be other challenges. But now we have that muscle-building – the organization ahs built muscle in understanding challenges and how to think through them,” said Reisman.