Rocket Bomber - article - business - retail - Unique Experiences: An introduction - & the first of five case studies

I’m writing a set of articles — a mini-series if you will — nominally part of the Rethinking the Box columns, but also something special — hence the subject line above: “unique experiences”

Previously:
Study your History. Recognise your Motives. Location, Location, Location. Know your Customer Base, and your Staff. Hire folks who love books. Find your Niche. Consider your Product Lines, Stock Your Shelves, Set your main-aisle displays, consider Alternative display strategies, take a second look at What the Customers Want and Why Even Annoying Customers are Important. Answer for yourself whether raw dollars or customer service is more important to your store, and its future. Stare again in dismay at the Profit Margins. Try calculating your upper-limit affordable rent and affordable salaries along with revenue from inventory (with a side of coffee) and compare your numbers to average industry per-storefront sales.

Chronologically: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15 – 16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 26 –

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In the new, post-e-book era, it’s not going to be enough to just sell books. You can stock your exhaustive shelves, hire bibliophiles, put out comfy chairs and sell a fine cuppa out of your café. You can host author signings and book clubs, do story time with the kids and “coffee talks” with the moms, reach out to your community: work with schools, churches, clubs, conferences, charities, chambers of commerce…

You can work your ass off, and still have people say, “Well, I love that you’ve been able to spend this time with me, to help me focus on just what I needed and heck, I didn’t even know about the book you recommended until you mentioned it and it’s perfect … but since you can’t beat Amazon on price I’m afraid I won’t be able to buy it from you.”

Whether it’s a single person looking for a single book, or an institutional order — or a big special event where we’d order dozens of copies of dozens of books, help you sell them, and process the returns of unsold books for you — doesn’t matter: First and often last words are “Well, why does this cost more than the price I found online?”

[facepalm]

Expertise costs money. Experience costs money. Sure, some people give it away for free but those people are nuts. In the hallowed, oft cited name of “Customer Service” I have to entertain many, many demands from visitors to my fair store, some of whom are downright snotty — and the worst of which don’t even come into the store; they insist on hassling us over the phone.

Sure, I can do computer searches that you could easily do yourself. Sure, I can order that for you. But: Just because I’m a person, someone you can actually talk to, and not an online sales site or automated voice at a toll-free number, doesn’t mean that I’ll be cheaper or faster. I can’t haggle. This isn’t “Let’s Make a Deal”. $22 worth of overnight shipping extended for free just because I didn’t happen to stock a book isn’t a “service” – it’s extortion, and you should be embarrassed for even asking.

Most folks who take advantage of my time and expertise in the name of “Customer Service” really like to stress the service part but ignore the Customer half of that: I’m willing to go the extra mile for paying customers but you are not a customer just because you have my telephone number. And this isn’t a relay: I don’t run my ass off and bend over backwards to help, just to hand the sale off to a website.

THE WEBSITE IS CHEAPER BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TO PAY BOOKSELLERS! The nice folks who help you find things? The ones who put up with your crap? Remember them? I’d love to pay them more than minimum wage, but more and more the customers refuse to recognise the benefits of service, or to compensate us accordingly:

It’s not even like we charge extra for this — all we’re asking is that you pay the actual, listed price of the book. It’s right there on the cover.

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As a bookstore, there is only one way to compete: Go Big.

More books on more shelves. Books in stock today — not available from a warehouse, but here — heck, turn the warehouse into a bookstore if that’s where the books are.

Become a landmark. Build a reputation. And of course, hire staff that help you achieve those goals.

In a world where books can be downloaded, though, and where some websites seem to be selling physical books way below cost [if I can’t explain basic retail to customers, I’m not even going to attempt a discussion of used books and secondary markets] — just having a book in stock isn’t going to be enough. When a customer can scan a barcode with her smartphone and pull up the “same” “book” for a tenth the price – and can buy it from her phone, no problem – then even the act of putting physical stock on shelves is suddenly turned on it’s ear: a book, in store, becomes just another “service” we provide to “customers” free of charge. All our careful organization, our research, our buying decisions, our merchandising; the attempt to generate a convivial atmosphere and inviting aspect, and enjoyable shopping experience — well, all that is secondary to price and booksellers (individuals, storefronts, and corporations all inclusive) might as well give up now.

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Once upon a time, being a bookstore was enough. Bookstores were unique experiences; your town likely only had one (and maybe you had a library, too, but the bookstore was different) and very few wandered in looking for a title (a specific title, only this one will do) instead we went shopping for a new book — of course we all have our favourite authors, and genres, but it was enough that there was a book we hadn’t read yet, and we could buy and take it home today.

The internet has ruined this. I might even go so far as to say the hobby of reading — or perhaps, of reading books for the sake of reading books — is dead. 95% of customers aren’t looking for a good read, or a new book, they must have “this specific book” — it was on Glenn Beck, or reviewed by the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, or mentioned in passing by Oprah.

Almost extinct is the process of browsing shelves and the accidental discovery. It’s not that patrons and customers don’t want bookstores — while not everyone buys books, those that do love bookstores — it’s that other factors are slowly killing us. We can’t compete on price, and if one insists on buying based solely on lowest price, we’re dead. We can’t compete on selection — or if we can, say we run our own massive warehouse and website, suddenly the issue becomes speed: “What, you can’t have that here tomorrow? What, aren’t you a bookseller? Frak, man, you’re not even trying.”

Customer expectations are unrealistic and non-negotiable — and they defect to Amazon, and other web sites, all of which suffer from the same limitations of logistics — but since it’s all click-click-click and instant gratification very few stop to think that, hey, wait, it takes a week for Amazon to get that book to me, and the bookstore said the exact same thing — why didn’t I just buy the book from the nice bookseller who recommended it to me?

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So: it’s not enough to be a bookstore. It’s not even enough anymore to be a landmark, destination bookstore, the sort that stocks hundreds of thousands of books, and sells CDs and DVDs besides, and has a cafe with National Brand coffee — and the chairs and tables and the hands-off approach to, you know, the actual-sales-of-books-thing.

The two major and at least two regional chains all do that already, and even in communities where the major chain bookstore outpost is beloved, indeed, is being fought over — that’s still not enough to keep the doors open.

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The New Model Bookstore

criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy ‘events’

What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.

18 months ago, I posted five case studies outlining specialty, niche concepts that I felt would still be viable bookstores, even moving forward into the internet era — but now e-readers throw one more monkey wrench into the works. The last five

— Cookbooks
— Mysteries
— Travel guides, photography essay, and travel writing.
— Foreign & domestic newspapers & newsweeklies, politics, current affairs, and other select non-fiction (* with a coffee shop/bar)
— and large format, full colour art, design, & photography books on all sorts of topics; the so-called “coffee table books”

are all still valid (& I plan to revisit #4 in that list) but just selling books is no longer enough.

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A Unique Experience: Books and Brews

Concept: Either a gastropub with books on the walls, or a bookstore that has a pub/restaurant in it instead of (or in addition to) a café
Related: Well, whatever type of bookstore you want: Call the bar MI-6 and only stock spy novels – Agatha’s could specialize in cozy mysteries and English pub fare – The Bar at the End of the Universe could be sci-fi themed (with Romulan Ale and Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters) – Straight-up Irish with something like Ulysses’s, or Joyce’s – or maybe even Dodgson’s Pub, with a Lewis Carroll theme
Relevance: Folks gotta eat. Folks like to drink.

Here, Let me sell it to you: Actually, it was a conversation I had with a friend/co-worker while we grabbed a quick meal before a Emily Giffin book-launch party, at a local gastropub called TAP [warning, flash site with music] [aside: lovely place] – being book geeks and booksellers, of course the conversation over lunch was about books, and the business; but the venue — and the fact that we were off-site for an author event — also shaped our discussion. Books & Brews as an idea took shape that afternoon. Of course, I’m pretty sure I’m already on record as saying I’d love to open up a bookstore with a bar in it (rather than a café) but here is the new thing: a bar, where books are just a ‘theme’ and decorations on the walls, and a handy hook for events: book signings, launch parties? Hey, we’re already a hot spot, just come on in.

Killer App: Beer & Liquor
Alternate Profit Centers: Well, in this case, any book sales are the alternate — we keep the doors open and make the payroll off of the sales of beer, wine, and food. The “Book” side of the business can be as large as the market allows, or as large as our given storefront — even just putting a bookshelf on any and all available walls would be enough. Ideally, this would be more of a bookstore than a bar — but the reality is that one can make a lot more money off of a restaurant. This isn’t a “corporate” idea and it’s not scalable – but as a single, landmark location: this not only works, I think it would pay for itself in under a year.

[and this is 1 of 5 case studies for this topic]