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Notes from the Retail Front Judith Rosen -- 10/2/00 Booksellers weigh in on CIROBE's first decade and the remainder market
At CIROBE being first counts; quantities are finite and stock runs out, often well before the show closes on Sunday afternoon. In fact, booksellers don't even know whether they'll get all the books on their orders until the shipments start arriving, some as soon as the following week. To lessen the confusion, vendors number and date their invoices and then fill them in the order in which they were received..
Mo Stewart, director of merchandise at Barnes & Noble, compares the show to "the bar scene in Star Wars," while Scott Proffitt, owner of The Main Bookshop in Sarasota, Fla., likens it to a department-store sale. "At the good booths, you're sort of elbowed, and you feel like you're at a sale at Macy's," he remarks.Carole Horne, v-p of merchandising at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., tweaks his description, saying, "It's more like Filene's Basement in that there's an immense amount of stuff. At every booth it's really like looking for nuggets of gold among the sand." While CIROBE has grown to accommodate 300 vendors this year, most of the recent changes have more to do with the amount of space each vendor takes, including suites off the main hall. "In the last four or five years, the show hasn't grown that much," concedes CIROBE president and cofounder Brad Jonas, co-owner of Powell's Wholesale Books and three Powell's retail outlets in Chicago, "but individual firms have taken more and more tables." The initial excitement of the show may have worn off, but it continues to be a part of the buying routine that many stores look forward to each fall. When CIROBE first started, notes Jonas, "it used to be kind of like Christmas. Now it's like work. I like to use the analogy of when you visit Disneyland for the first time. I'm sure the people who work in Disneyland don't think it's that special." A Matter of TimingFor Fred Eisenhart, director of remainder acquisitions at Barnes & Noble, CIROBE's earlier start date, which has been pushed up to the beginning of November, is still too late for Christmas. But less concerned about when it is held than that it is held at all, he says, "We look for good books all the time. Whenever they hold CIROBE, we would go. It's probably the best show for remainders. Part of the reason is that the people who started it are book lovers. We don't see a lot of 'product' at these shows." Similarly The Main Bookshop's Proffitt regards it as "a very important show." Since his store is located in Florida, which has the greatest influx of tourists from December through April, he says, "CIROBE's timed well for me, because it's just before Christmas, and then we roll into 'the season.' " Proffitt, who d s 90% of his business in remainders, closeouts and bargain books, also g s to New York to visit showrooms during the year. With 18,000 square feet to fill, his store is a regular rep stop as well. Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Miss., and past president of the ABA, calls CIROBE "a snapshot in time," because the books on display represent what's available at a particular moment in November. "The remainder industry," remarks Howorth, "has developed into such a dynamic and fluid business, and just like the rest of the book industry, it no longer holds to two seasons a year. But CIROBE gives you a chance to see who the new remainder companies are and to take a crack at the small publishers and university presses that offer white sales." He buys bargain books year-round to fill his 3,500 square-foot annex, Off Square Books, five doors down from the main store. "We opened it in 1993," Howorth tells PW, "on the hunch that the opening of the chains would pay off in a glut of remainder titles. Probably in the '90s there was more errant buying, if not publishing, in the history of American publishing." The annex is also where Square Books holds all its author events and d s its shipping and receiving. By selling discounted books at Off Square, Howorth is able to offer his customers value and compete with book discounters head-on: "What we'd rather offer our customers instead of the New York Times bestsellers at 40% off is a whole store full of interesting titles." Of course, the dollar value of customer purchases can sometimes be disappointing. "You get all excited when someone brings a whole stack of remainders up to the cash register, and then the total of the sale is $18.20," he says. Unlike most new-book retailers, Howorth takes an antiquarian approach to bargain books and is willing to warehouse them while they appreciate in value. "Consequently," he says, "when we buy we'll make a pretty bold stake. I've found it to be extremely beneficial. Once a remainder is out of stock, it's no longer available in any format. You can take it back up from $4.95 to $7.95, or even to the original price. Even higher for an out-of-print title." David Schwartz, owner of the six Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in and around Milwaukee, Wis., is planning to actively search out new vendors at this year's show. Because of changes at Random House in the wake of its merger with Bertelsmann, his business has dropped with Random House Value, once his largest bargain-book vendor. For him, CIROBE is especially well timed, because "it fills a niche for the end of December and January and February," when he holds his post-holiday sales.
Despite many years in the business, Charles Dee Mitchell, v-p of purchasing for Half Price Books, Records, and Magazines in Dallas, which operates a chain of 65 discount stores in 10 states and owns the Texas Bookman wholesale operation, looks forward to meeting new vendors at CIROBE. "It was CIROBE," he relates, "that got us into the plush toy business. We were at this large combined exhibit and saw all these plush dinosaurs. We sort of shrugged and bought 500 of each." Mitchell tells PW that he likes to bring an assistant to CIROBE. "We're busy until we get into the cab on Sunday and go back to the airport. We have to fill an entire chain of stores, so it's the major show I go to every year, and it's the one show I go to where I could conceivably place an order with every vendor." The only downside that John Strymish, buyer/manager of New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton, Mass., who plans to attend CIROBE after a two-year hiatus, has found is that there are too many books he wants. In addition to selling new books, New England Mobile wholesales remainders on a cash-and-carry basis--it discontinued its larger wholesale operation in 1998. "The problem I found with CIROBE," he says, "is that you see all these great books, and you buy them in November. You get them in December, and you pay taxes in January. Then you sell them off sometime in the spring. It's really easy to bite off more than you can chew." For Mark Rubbo, co-owner of the three Readings stores in Australia, money, especially the cost of goods, is a major issue given the weakness of the Australian dollar and the 10% goods and services tax. Even so, he finds that "CIROBE is terribly useful. In three days, I can see every major remainder dealer in the U.S. and U.K. Prior to CIROBE I used to have to spend a couple weeks in London and New York traipsing from showroom to showroom. It's such a cost-effective way of buying for me. I suppose in the longer term, more vendors will post inventory and title information on the Internet. But there is no substitute for seeing and touching a book or jacket or talking to our vendors face-to-face." In Australia, Rubbo is one of the few booksellers to commit a lot of time and energy to searching out remainders. Bargain books are also harder to come by there than in the States. "We used to buy quite a bit from companies like Penguin Australia and Random House," says Rubbo. "Lately they are buying more cautiously, so they have less to remainder." Even with CIROBE, Jerry Justin, a buyer at Harvard Book Store, which devotes a large portion of the selling space on its main floor to bargain books, estimates that he spends three weeks a year on the road looking for books. Part of what makes CIROBE "dire" for him is not only meeting with the reps: "I get to meet other people who do what I do," he enthuses, including buyers from other countries, like Rubbo. For Kim Fitzgerald, who opened the 15,000-square-foot Discount Books America in Madison, Wis., at the end of June after working with University Bookstore in Madison for 32 years, "Cirobe is a very important show." Since he buys assorted lots, rather than individual titles only, he plans to use the show "to sell wholesale to other stores and other dealers if we buy too many books in an area," as well as to shop. With ambitious plans to open more stores with "serious bargains for serious readers" in the Midwest, he is especially looking forward to this year's university press offerings. Trouble in Bargain-Book Paradise?
Her stores do especially well with cookbooks, but she worries about the "value" of some of these high-end titles as their prices continue to climb. "The cost of producing promotional books has gone up," she notes. "As they approach the price of trade books, they don't necessarily have the same quality." The Main Bookshop's Proffitt looks to CIROBE to fill gaps in his military, art and cooking sections. Still, he says, "More and more I get faxed jackets and descriptions and e-mailed descriptions in Excel. Obviously it's not like looking at a book, which is why CIROBE is so good." Howorth at Square Books is less concerned about the modernizing of the business than the long-term health of CIROBE and the book business as a whole. For him, it all boils down to "infrastructure. I worry if there are enough independent buyers. Numerous buyers with different needs make for a most active remainders show." Schwartz shares Howorth's anxiety over the decline in independent bookstores in recent years. "That's one of the serious things about CIROBE," he says, noting the need for a critical mass of book buyers to make it work. Fortunately another concern--that there wouldn't be enough good books available with the slowdown in openings of Borders, Barnes & Nobles and Hastings--hasn't panned out. "There seem to be a mountain of remainders," he acknowledges, although the supply of former New York Times bestsellers has dried up. According to Schwartz, "Those are going to the chains." At this point, e-books have hardly touched most bargain-book people. Echoing a number of bargain-book wholesalers, B&N's Eisenhart opines that "there are always going to be printed books. The people I know who have devices for e-books also have libraries." Nor is he concerned about diminished stock due to print-on-demand or e-books, both of which are available on the bn.com Web site. "I don't think that's an immediate worry at this point. There will be opportunities, and part of that will be reprints," he says, alluding to B&N's own active proprietary publishing program. B&N's Stewart seconds his thoughts, adding that physical stores will always have the edge over their Internet counterparts when it comes to bargain titles. "An advantage that we have is their position in the store. They are an impulse buy. When you shop they are up-front," she says. Proffitt, for one, is tired of hearing about the end of the remainder. "I've heard that for 12 years now. It's not like switching from LPs to CDs to change to e-books. It's going to be a long, slow process. But," he cautions, "you do have to watch the markets. Who wants to buy an encyclopedia when they come free with a computer?" Like many click-and-mortar retailers, Square Books promotes its bargain titles on its SquareBooks.com Web site. "We do post a new list of remainder buys on our site," says Howorth. "But we don't by any means put up all our remainder titles. Again, the remainder market is so fluid, you never know how long things will last." Similarly Harvard Book Store features a few bargain titles every month at Harvard.com with a caveat at the bottom of the screen: "Not searchable in database." In keeping with the tenor of the store, located across the street from Harvard University, its online bargains tend toward the scholarly, such as Spiro Kostof's The City Shaped andMartin Gilbert's Israel. Half Price Books, which will be wired for sales at HalfPriceBooks.com early next year, is looking into carrying e-books in-store and online. It's a natural extension from software, which "is our fastest growing category," says Mitchell. "We have separate computer books and software buyers, and we have samples coming to us all the time." Although e-books, print-on-demand and e-tailing could prove problematic for bargain booksellers, for now these innovations are no more than a smudge on a hurt-book jacket. If anything, they have only strengthened bargain-book buyers' resolve that there will always be a place for good books at a good value. The consensus on CIROBE's continued importance is a sign of the overall health of the bargain-book business. Thanks to CIROBE, booksellers can continue matching books and customers, at the right price, well into the millennium.
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Notes from the Retail Front
Oct 02, 2000
A version of this article appeared in the 10/02/2000 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline:
