 |
|
 |
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||
|
||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
| Sunday Times e-League 
|
||
| Operating from Bakewell in Derbyshire as a normal bookstore since 1988, the company created an online presence in March of last year and now has 25 staff. It has managed to exploit its image as "your local bookshop" by a combination of cross-promotional deals with other websites, word-of-mouth marketing and clever segmentation, offering micro-sites aimed at specific areas of interest and community groups such as ramblers, cyclists, climbers, gardeners, naturalists, parents and tourists. Geraldine Rose, with knowledge of the book industry, and AS Sridhar, with knowledge of the net, are the co-owners of the company. They share a passion for Himalayan trekking and climbing, and together have done something rare - created a thriving and aggressive net business without outside capital. It may be another matter to keep this up throughout their planned expansion - they are greatly extending the company's warehousing capacity at the moment. They deserve a lot of luck. |
|
Bookshops turn over a new leaf |
||
|
A few days before the launch of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the children's book buyer at the Palmers Green Bookshop in North London, Frances Crawley, was able to tell me that the fourth J.K. Rowling book would be sold at £12.99, two pounds less than the recommended price of £14.99. At Waterstone's Piccadilly, the biggest bookshop in Europe, the response was: "We don't know: we're waiting to hear from head office." |
|
Bookstore's bold decision pays off |
||
|
It is probably not the first name that springs to mind when the topic of ecommerce comes up - after all you wouldn't expect to find a shop selling books in the Peak District at the cutting edge of information technology. But this is no ordinary shop - indeed the success of The Country Bookstore in its quiet location at Hassop Station, near Bakewell, is quite extraordinary. The business - co-owned by Geraldine Rose, who has an extensive knowledge of the industry, and technology graduate AS Sridhara - began trading from its present location in 1987 and developed very much as a community based bookshop offering something to interest every member of the family. When it went on line in 1997 offering 2,000 titles for sale it was a brave decision - for this was an independent bookshop competing in a market place dominated by one or two multi-national players. But the move proved a huge success and in March last year they launched one million titles - every UK book currently in print. Suddenly The Country Bookstore was the fourth most visited booksite on the web with a million views every month. The Sunday Times took notice and voted the company the 41st e-business site in Europe; recently they were runners-up in the DTI / Information Society Initiative regional ecommerce awards. The recognition was a step towards their goal of taking 25 per cent of the global on-line book market by 2004. The Country Bookstore has achieved its success by managing to combine the traditional bookshop philosophy with new technology and by appealing to specific groups such as parents and tourists, ramblers and cyclists. For visitors to the shop there are lots of attractions including recent book signings by authors such as Dickie Bird, Roy Hattersley and Whitbread Award winner Amanda Foreman. The two directors may be very successful but they still acknowledge that they need support, which is why they became Chamber members three years ago. Since then they have used a number of the membership services on offer. They have exhibited at the food and drink event and the corporate gift day, and they are regulars at the networking business lunches. The directors are currently working with the Chamber's e-business team and have even started building websites for other companies. The Country Bookstore is keen to source everything they possibly can from local suppliers - underlining the directors' policy to try and recruit local talent to their workforce and the Information Team has helped them with this too. Said AS Sridhara: "We feel it is important to work with the Chamber as much as we can." |
|
Country cousins' e-ambitions by 'Andrew Stone' |
||
|
A year ago the Country Bookshop was a healthy and steadily growing independent bookshop occupying the old Hassop railway station in the heart of Derbyshire's Peak District. The business, owned and run by partners Geraldine Rose and Sridhar Gowda,
had been growing steadily, and attracted a healthy flow of customers, including visitors to Chatsworth house and ramblers walking along the disused railway line nearby. It employed eight full and part-time staff and sold a mixture of general, remaindered and bargain books. But despite the healthy state of the business, Ms Rose and Mr Gowda decided they needed to develop it further, and in 1999 launched their own bookselling Website, countrybookshop.co.uk. A year on, the bookshop has all but reinvented itself as an Internet bookseller. Turnover has more than quadrupled to over £lm, and there are ambitious expansion plans. Furthermore, unlike its big name competitors, it is also profitable. The site began selling books in March 1999, offering a million titles, Ms Rose says. "By August we had to take on more staff to deal with the orders. It got to the stage where we were getting really stretched." That growth rate has continued. Turnover on the Website in January was double that in December, and four to five times higher than it was in the bricks and mortar outlet. As a result a new warehouse is being sought, as the space at the back of the shop has reached capacity. Totally different Overall the business employs 22 staff, including programmers and a journalist to write content and book reviews for the site. It has been a hec-tic year, Mr Gowda says. "It's all going crazy. It's like a totally different business now." He adds: "We have huge plans. We want to be the number one dedicated online bookseller in the UK. We are ahead of Waterstones.co.uk in terms of Internet traffic and right behind W H Smith and others. We think we can give them a run for their money." Ms Rose set up the Country Bookshop in 1991. Having sold two bookshops in the nearby town of Bakewell, she took the current premises, a couple of miles down the road in Hassop, and began selling remaindered and bargain books. As it grew, the shop moved to more general bookselling. The well-lit and ventilated 3,000 sq ft shop has a large dedicated children's section, as well as sports and transport sections and an Internet cafe. "We try to make sure it is a bookshop for the whole family," Ms Rose says. It remains a popular Peak District destination for visitors from nearby conurbations including Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. Strong community links are maintained through sponsorship of a local literary festival and a poetry competition with the local library. Recent events have included a signing by Terry Pratchett and a talk by mountaineer Joe Simpson, who packed the shop and sold 100 copies of his latest book. A number of local authors also lend a hand with signings. The decision to establish an Internet business was partly defensive, Ms Rose admits. "We decided to do it because we had to. We have seen so many independents close over the last year. We went into it knowing nothing about how to do it but we saw it as a matter of survival." The advent of PubEasy made an Internet site much more viable, Mr Gowda says. "It's one of the reasons we've been able to set this up it saves us a lot of time. We deal with publishers direct and use the wholesalers as a backup so that we can assure speedy delivery." The site tries to dispatch instock books within 24 hours and aims for 48-hour dispatch for other orders. Post and packing is free for deliveries in the UK and comes on top of discounts on every title. Bestsellers are discounted by up to 50%. New marketing initiatives should take the business forward. A tie-up with Teletext means that Teletext customers who use the Country Bookshop link on its site will receive £5 off their first purchase. A similar venture with a leading magazine publisher is also being explored. The marketing budget is minimal, compared to those of big Internet players such as Amazon and Bol.com. "Instead of throwing money away on marketing we are trying to pass it on to the customer," Mr Gowda says. But competitive pricing is not everything, he adds. "We think we give better value all round to the customer." Regular customers who leave their credit card details can order a book quickly and easily, with three clicks of the mouse; and all orders receive an instant e-mail confirmation. The customer support team is also being expanded. It has become the first UK bookselling site to gain accreditation from Bizrate.com, an online quality rating marking Internet retailers on standards of customer service, delivery and user friendliness. Expansion A pressing issue now is how to finance countrybookshop.co.uk's rapid expansion plans. Ms Rose and Mr Gowda are considering all capital options, including venture capital and even flotation. "We've got a lot of decisions to make about which way we are going to go. We are learning more and more from every meeting and people are interested enough to come to us now," Ms Rose says. If the expansion goes as planned, it should create hundreds of new jobs. "We are going to be one of the major employers in this region." Sceptics might say they will have their work cut out trying to survive for long alongside big players with deep pockets, but Ms Rose is adamant that the same fundamental skills and disciplines apply whether on or offline, big or small. "In the end it will come down to who can run things most efficiently. We are not new to bookselling, and we know how to keep overheads down." And, as Mr Gowda points out, unlike its competitors the business is profitable. He admits that Internet bookselling is a fast-maturing market and believes it may already be too late for other independents to establish general bookselling businesses of their own online. "So many online booksellers are already established. Specialist booksellers should be able to occupy their own niches, but for generalists it looks more unlikely now, doesn't it?" |
|
Peak practice nets success by 'Don Atherton' |
||
|
A small business, based in a rural Midlands setting, may be about to become a serious challenger to a giant American enterprise. By using a much-praised website instead of costly press advertising, and being able to cut their costs, they have been able to attract a vast, new audience of customers. By using the site to "advertise" in-store events they have been able to attract both old and new buyers into the rural store. At a time when many independent bookstores have vanished, and many others seem to be living on the edge, Country Bookshop have increased their turnover by 20% in each of the last two years. Together with their commercial, success has come awards arid many compliments, particularly for their appealing website, designed in house by their own staff. From small country store to significant national business by using the Internet? Who says it can't work? See for yourself. www.countrybookshop.co.uk |
|
This is a local shop By 'Dan Oliver' |
||
|
Think local, act global. We've said it enough times in various features, and it's a philosophy that's shared by successful businesses across the Web. But some firms have had no choice but to follow this advice... The Country Bookshop is based in the Peak District in the north of England, and has been operating since 1863. You didn't get much more 'local' than Hassop Railway Station, where the first shop was built to cater for the Devonshires of Chatsworth House. And its unusual setting hasn't been a bar to success: the bookstore saw the benefits of the Net as early as 1988, and launched its first Web store in 1997: today it receives more than million page impressions each month. Good reputation The Bookshop can't afford the huge amounts that the likes of BOL and Amazon set aside for advertising, so it relies heavily on its reputation for excellent service and competitive prices to promote its site. It's a tactic that seems to be working. "Our real shop is not in the high street, so we rely on word of mouth, and once people come to our shop they buy a lot and are impressed," explains Sridhar Gowda, who co-runs the shop and site with Geraldine Rose. "We have listed our site with all the major search engines, and, where others charge, we give free UK delivery. We also have a price promise and up to 75 per cent reductions on our best-selling titles." "We also have a price promise and up to 75 per cent reductions on our best-selling titles." No less than 200,000 of the available books at Country Bookshop can be dispatched within 24 hours, and these include all the best-sellers; any books not in stock are dispatched between within three to five days of your order. "Our business model is different to Amazon's or BOL's", says Sridhar. "They want to establish a brand and we want to provide the best for our customers. They are spending more money on brand awareness, whereas we prefer to pass our savings onto the customer". Having seen a great many small, independent village shops disappear, Country Bookshop was eager not to see the same thing happen to provincial book-selling. To this end, it took the decision to get itself on the Web - where, Sridhar Gowda believes, there is room for both the small and larger organisations to co-exist: 'Because the real-time shop and Web site are linked, we can't really dissect profits, but our turnover has increased 20 per cent since the launch. We've taken on six new members of staff and we're confident in our business model. We're a local bricks-and-mortar shop that happens to be online, so we don't feel threatened by Amazon and BOL There's plenty of room for both sizes of shop." Market share On the Net then, Country Bookshop doesn't seek to be a giant in its field, but simply to take its own market share of the new medium. Sridhar's hope is that other independent bookshops will follow this lead and enter the arena, each adding its own unique flavour. He believes that the real shop and the Web shop should be considered part of the same business model, and is doing as much as possible to bind the two together: "We are mixing the bricks-and-mortar bookshop with the online shop by providing Net access in the former, where visitors can access 1 million titles. Also, people who see us on the Web will pop in to visit us when they come to the Peak District, By mixing the Web with the shop in this way we can see if both of these together are making a profit." Country Bookshop has now become truly international, with 65 per cent of its orders coming from outside the UK. In fact it's only problem is one many e-businesses would be glad to have: it's had to make a huge effort to keep up with the incredible demands being placed on its relatively small workforce. "In the last week," says Sridhar, "we have had to take on three more guys, and we've been working until ten every night to satisfy the demand from our customers. The response to the site has just been amazing". |
|
|
|
|
countrybookshop.co.uk
has been listed 14th top e-tailer in The Sunday Times e-league (July
2000) table of Europe's top 100 internet ventures, and was the East
Midlands region runner up in the D.T.I. e-commerce awards 2000.