MENDO is blowing out 20 candles

MENDO is celebrating its 20th anniversary. What started in 2002, founded in 2002 by Roy Rietstap, Joost Albronda and Ramon Otting, as an art gallery / bookstore in the Nine streets, has evolved in a household name in publishing and selling aesthetically pleasing books. Yes, that is what we are.

This journal is a visual journey through two decades of sharing the love for books. It is not a chronological story, it is not the entire story–it’s a random selection of people, places, products and events that characterise MENDO’s journey. We thank everybody who has joined us on this journey: MENDO men and women, publishers, partners, authors, artists, and of course you, our customer, who understood and supported us all along the way.

Berenstraat 11
Our Berenstraat store opened in 2002 as a bookstore slash gallery. In 2007, concrete architectural associates designed the store. They came up with the idea to build the bookstore with tons of steel, thousands of black books and leather walls.

MENDO.nl
Our first webshop, created in collaboration with Casper and Bastiaan of Perceptor, saw the light on March 15, 2013. The most enjoyed but least used feature: the “Buy all books” button. “For short-cut shopping we suggest you press the ‘buy all books’ button. You will be out here in a sec, you can expect a large box at your doorstep and a gaping hole in your bank account. How convenient. Enjoy.”

Instore promotion for the MENDO x Zenology ambiance trigger. Voyeurs are house friend Kapi Alem, former MENDO men Mikel van den Boogaard & Joost Bastmeijer and Zenology’s Jeroen Oude Sogtoen.

Books and exhibitions
Back to where it all begun: books and exhibitions. Recent exhibitions – always in connection with books – were with Bastiaan Woudt, Denisse Ariana Perez, David van Dartel and Erwin Olaf.

Above left: Rob Wagemans (concrete architectural associates) was responsible for the design of the Berenstraat store, built from black books. “Like a house is made of bricks, MENDO’s bookstore was built with thousands of black books”. Above right: mediocre soccer player and lifetime friend of MENDO Ronald de Boer.

Signing sessions
We’ve had the pleasure of welcoming some amazing artists for signing sessions, including Steve McCurry, Todd Selby, Daniel Arsham, Dana Lixenberg, Michael Bailey-Gates, Marc Lagrange, Viviane Sassen, Philippe Vogelenzang, Pie Aerts, Stephan Vanfleteren, Anton Corbijn, Erwin Olaf and many many more. In the summer of 2020, when we had to cancel a session & talk with photographer Tyler Mitchell, we drove to Paris to have Tyler Mitchell sign a bunch of books for our customers.

MENDO & citizenM
Together with our friends from citizenM we opened satellite stores in NYC and London. In addition, MENDO created two books for citizenM, including Do Disturb, in which urban travellers in Amsterdam, London, Paris and New York opened up to tell their moving stories to photographer Desiré van den Berg.

Shelf Sessions
We visited book aficionados in their homes and / or workspaces, including Narda van ‘t Veer, Abderrahmane Trabsini, Pieter Henket, Jason Denham, Jochem Leegstra, and Mark de Lange.

Publishing house
MENDO is a publishing house for visually inspiring books. We’ve currently designed a good 40 titles, that we either published by ourselves, or with partners such as Terra Publishing, teNeues, Kosmos and Carrera Culinair. It all started with Amsterdam, A Metropolitan Village, a bestseller to date.

MENDO at De L’Europe
Our current home: Nieuwe Doelenstraat 10, at De L’Europe Amsterdam. The design was done by our good friends from Nicemakers.