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Country Bookstore wins TOP SITE iM Award Awarded by 'Internet Monthly Magazine' Issue5 1999 |
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Quaint British bookshoppe finds the web brilliant by 'Steven M. Zeitchik' |
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As some booksellers gear up for Book Sense, a small store in northern England is showing how the Web need not be a scary enterprise, nor must it be a space reserved for glistening, well-capitalized stores. In fact, it downright proves that there's no store immune to the Web's influence, much like one of those commercials that shows, say, cocoa-growers in Latin America turning around their business with a little techno-flick of the wrist. The appropriately named Country Bookshop sits in the Peak District of northern England (three hours from London) near the former Hassop rail station. Though we've never been there, newspaper stories say that an attractive locale and a laid-back attitude make the 3000 sq.-ft. space the epitome of a quaint village bookstore. But for all the curiosity the store has attracted over the last ten years, owners Geraldine Rose and Sridhar Gowda recently found themselves struggling. ("We've seen so many village shops die," is Gowda's familiar comment.) So in March, the store went on the Web (http://www.countrybookshop.co.uk) with an unusual strategy. It began by plucking designers from such unlikely venues as local stores. Then it instituted a free-shipping policy to all customers in the U.K. It also offered to match Amazon.co.uk.'s prices for select bestsellers. Then it sought to develop a more conventional appeal: its layout is accessible; its database (which draws from Whitaker's) boasts 1,000,000 titles, complete with customer reviews; and it features an associates program. According to a story in the Derby Evening Telegraph, "the Country Bookshop is on the way to becoming the largest independent on-line bookstore in the country." One year ago that may not have saying much, but with formidable competition like Amazon.co.uk and BOL, and British denizens quickly morphing into netizens, this distinction is no longer something to scoff at. So far, the approach seems to have paid off. Gowda says the store now receives between 500-1000 orders per week. (The number of orders that bring in a profit is another matter. Gowda says that "our business model is not like Amazon's where we can carry on with losses.") The 64,000 pound question, then, is "How do they do it?" Gowda says they must be creative handling the site development in-house, using the Linux Operating System ("we don't want to have to pay Bill Gates "), and holding down marketing costs ("we'd rather pass savings on to our consumers"). Given this lack of marketing, it's shocking that the Country Bookshop sells more outside the U.K. than inside it. Gowda says that no less than 65% of the orders come from away. Nor do the owners see any reason to shift course. "BOL gave away hundreds of thousands of books. They are thinking that by throwing away money they can buy customers", Gowda said. "I think that book customers cannot be bought." Then again, when it comes to the Web, even a quaint store isn't averse to a little discounting...." |
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Indie matches online discounts from 'Bookseller Magazine' |
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Country Bookshop, a small Peak District-based independent, has decided to play the Internet bookselling giants at their own game and has launched its own deep discounting Internet bookselling site. Bookshop owners Geraldine Rose and Sridhar Gowda are calling on other independents to follow their example. The site (www.countrybookshop.co.uk) will offer more than a million titles, with descriptions of more than 250,000 titles, book jackets for more than 100,000 and bestseller lists. It will match discounts of up to 75% offered by its Internet-based rivals and will deliver free. It will also provide online order status information, e-mail confirmation of orders and a Freephone number for UK customers. A sophisticated search engine and a service for tracking out-of-print books will further bolster the service. The bookseller plans to set up a terminal in the terrestrial shop, enabling customers to compare countrybookstore prices with those of rival online booksellers. Ms Rose, admitted that most of the heavily discounted titles would be remainders. |
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Internet bookselling: for a few dollars less by 'Philip Jones' |
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Sridhar Gowda www.countrybookshop.co.uk "We don't want to become another Amazon, we just want to keep our local customers and make sure that they don't have to worry about price." "We don't want our local customers saying that they can buy books at lower prices than they can from us, whether they are looking at Asda or Amazon. com. We are now trying to integrate our systems so that the prices are the same in the shop and online. We will also be putting an Internet terminal in the shop." "Amazon.com says that physical bookshops cannot have more than 20,000 titles in them. With our Internet computer we'll be offering access to one million titles from inside the shop." "When you are small you have advantages as well as disadvantages. We don't want to become another Amazon.com, we just want to keep our local customers and make sure that when they shop with us they don't have to worry about price." "People have estimated that in the next three years, 10% of sales will be online. We have to make sure that we get a share of that. We don't want to lose our physical business to the other Internet book retailers." "Publishers should support the independent booksellers: it would not be good for them to have one dominant company to do business with." "I look on the pricing strategy as long term. We may lose £1 when we sell Hannibal at a 50% discount, but we retain the customer. Furthermore, we are building a local brand." "I don't think Amazon.com would go to 70% discount it would not fit into their business model. Price has to be good but there are other things you can offer, such as service and speed." |
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Online orders overwhelm bookstore by 'Rob Burgess' |
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An independent bookshop, the Countrybookshop (www.countrybookshop.co.uk) is swamped with orders placed through its new transactional website. The offline shop operates out of an old railway station on the outskirts of an old railway station on the outskirts of Bakewell in the Peak Natonal Park Since going online,using the same Whitakers' database of UK titles in print as do online giants such as Amazon and the Internet Bookshop, the site has seen "very surprising" demand, including a rise in visits to the physical shop generated by the website. Director Sridhar Gowda said that the firm was now trying to ramp up its fulfilment systems and take on extra staff. The store is taking another leaf from the Amazon manual by offering other websites associate status, giving them upto 15 percent commission on sales generated via links. So far, top sellers are academic and professional titles. |
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Bookstore is keen to attract new browsers by 'Colston Crawford' |
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A rural bookshop in the Derbyshire Dales is becoming a leading player in the marketing of books through the internet. About as picturesque as a bookshop can be, the Country Bookshop at the former Hassop Station near Bakewell has delighted passing tourists for years.
It attracts curious passers-by as well as plenty of devoted local customers from Bakewell and surrounding villages. Yet its deserved image as a peaceful rural bookstore where you can while away an hour or so easily is only half the story. For the Country Bookshop is right up there at the forefront of the information revolution - internet users can call up the shop's website, find out the latest bargains, read reviews and biographical details about the books and authors and order and pay for titles without leaving their home. In fact, the Country Bookshop is on the way to becoming the largest independent on-line bookshop in the country, with a targeted database of over one million books. And that makes the Derbyshire business a genuine rival to the established world leader, Amazon.com, which has recently launched its own Amazon.co.uk online bookstore in the UK. For directors Geraldine Rose and A.S. Sridhara, however, the "internet bookshop" is just one idea they have come up with as they battle to stay in competition with the large bookshop chains. And already evidence would suggest that they are on the right track - any notion that internet browsers may not be the staunchest of bookworms is clearly outdated, for the web is now available to a broad range of people who are beginning to use it, as envisaged , for shopping. Geraldine and Sridhara already have customers like, for example, a local student who, now she knows they have the facilities, is ordering all of her workbooks through the Country Bookshop's website. "Setting this up has taken and is taking an awful lot of work," says Sridhara, a former engineer who joined sole trader Geraldine as a Director of the company in 1996. "It is not just increasing the database; we are aiming to provide content, too, like descriptions of local authors and news from the book industry such as bestseller lists. " Though taking the plunge on the internet is proving a costly investment for the Country Bookshop, the owners believe they are capable of stealing a march on big players like WH Smith. Internet or in-store, the Country Bookshop believes it will continue to offer the traditional advantages of a small bookstore. There is much more to it than that - at a time when many independent bookstores have either disappeared or are living on the edge, the Country Bookshop has contrived to increase turnover by 20 percent in each of the last two years. One reason is that the two directors are always trying something new. They have held a series of successful evenings or afternoons with local authors speaking about their work and, in an almost unprecedented move, designed and published their own catalogue in time for the Christmas just past, having it delivered by post to 20,000 homes within a 15 mile radius of the store. They made sure the titles included were very different to those in big store catalogues and had the order coupons returnable by Freepost. Naturally the internet address was on the bottom of every page, but the directors have also been delighted to discover that many responses to the catalogue have come from people who live close by who still didn't know the shop was there. The shop itself is, they hope, ever more customer friendly. There are carpets all around the sales floor, and a friendly request at the door for hikers to remove muddy boots. And, although it does not give the impression of falling between two stools, the shop, with its several small rooms off the main sales area, neither looks "library-ish" or as frivolous as a stack-em-high remainder shop. Situated adjacent to the Monsal Trail, and with a large car park, the shop is set to host a literary festival in the summer. New visitors will find that the shop is unlike any other bookstore they've been to and therein perhaps, lies the secret of its success. |
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Tale of country folk is world blockbuster from 'Derbyshire Times' |
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Hi-tech bookworms are transforming a small Dales store into one of the world's biggest book-sellers, boasting over a million titles. The Dales shop, Britain's biggest independent on line bookstore, lets customers search for books by title, authors or isbns - and browse numerous categories including Peak and Derbyshire titles. "Reviews of the books by the customers will also be included in the site", said co-owner Sridhar. "We have also secured the rights to publish the UK best-sellers in fiction, non-fiction and children's books on our site and they are updated weekly. "Award-winning titles and author information will also be included on the site", he added. Already the site has proved successful by attracting orders from the USA, Europe, Canada and Asia. The Country Bookshop site is at www.countrybookshop.co.uk. |
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