With independent bookstores across the country yelling foul over what they perceive as Chapters Inc.'s undue retail clout, it's refreshing to find one bookstore that has found innovative ways of reinventing itself in a competitive retail environment.
The Book Shelf, located in Guelph--a small university town in Southern Ontario--was not deterred when Chapters, Canada's largest book chain, opened there about three years ago, although they were dealt a financial blow. The store was doing a brisk business the year before Chapters opened, with a sales increase of 15%; they lost about 10% the year Chapters opened.
But owners Barb and Doug Minett, who opened the store in 1973, were never ones to take a harsh bookselling climate lying down, and they have always found ingenious ways to keep people coming to their store. They were one of the first in North America to open up a cafe, in 1980. By 1988, the Book Shelf had added a 140-seat in-house cinema showing 60 first-run films and art films every two months, a rooftop terrace and a bar and billiards room. Their cafe is now a full-blown restaurant, with an elegant menu and wine list, where the owners hang and promote local art. The store also houses office and editorial space to produce a 12-page bimonthly broadsheet of local news, movies and book reviews with a circulation of 30,000. In total, the store has 70 staff members and six managers.
"The industry has had a number of upheavals, and it has required a lot of energy and innovation to keep growing. Otherwise, we would have died years ago," Doug Minett tells PW. "We've had to adjust to very large competitors, whether it was three, or two or now one lurching around trying to figure out how to make money. It was their clumsiness, as much as their competition, that forced us to reinvent ourselves," he explains, referring to the Smith Books chain's insolvency years back that forced it to drastically reduce its prices. (The chain was eventually absorbed into Chapters.)
Minett insists that independents can compete with supestores without expanding into different businesses. "It's a misnomer to say that superstores have all the books. We have 10,000 titles that the superstores do not have in a store that is only 3,000 square feet. I think that is true of independents around the world. There are thousands of titles that you won't find in superstores; I don't care how big they are," he exclaims.
The Book Shelf was recently renovated. It reopened April 1 with a party they called "The Great Leap Sideways" due to the fact that they expanded the store into the building next door when their neighbor's lease was up. About 700 guests, including several publishing industry bigwigs, attended the party and got a chance to see the Book Shelf's expanded book section and bar, as well as enhanced eating area.
The Book Shelf's renovations were bankrolled by the 1998 sale of their Internet site, www.bookshelf.ca, to Indigo Books and Music. Doug Minett created the site himself and was eventually approached by Bell's Sympatico, which was interested in partnering with an online bookseller. It was purchased by Indigo about a month after going online. The store's deal with Indigo forbids them from going online again for two years, but that time is now almost up.
The Book Shelf's success can be largely attributed to the sense of community the Minetts have created. In a city of approximately 100,000, the store has entrenched itself in the town's cultural life. Customers are constantly stopping by to talk to the store's owners, whom they seem to regard as personal friends. "What makes independents good and interesting to their customers is what they're doing and where they are. I think these large advertising campaigns are a boondoggle. The key for booksellers is to figure out where they can go next in their own environment, and they'll find that customers will follow."
That mode of operation seems to have worked wonders for the Book Shelf, which disregarded naysayers all along. "Everything we have ever done we have been told by publishers and everyone else that 'it will never work'--but it has," Doug Minett claims. "Any neighborhood store could do this."
