Saturday, June 13, 2009

How the book trade is turning a page
NZ Herald - Saturday Jun 13, 2009
By Maria Slade

Doris Mousdale opens Anthology in August, among the fashion labels and designer homeware of Teed St in Newmarket. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Doris Mousdale is taking the plunge.
No, that's not her Facebook status, it's her next move in a respected book trade career that includes top positions with Whitcoulls and Dymocks and a host of radio and television review programmes.
Made redundant from her role as retail business manager for Dymocks in April, she has decided to look the recession squarely in the eye and go it alone.
Her new bookstore - Anthology - is on track to open in August among the fashion labels and designer homewares of Newmarket's Teed St.
"I'm feeling quite confident about it," the book doyenne says. "I think the independent bookstore has a lot to offer the surrounding community. There are still people out there who want the next best read, and they want it recommended to them."
It's a statement that must be examined in the light of the closures of three Dymocks outlets within the space of two months.

The new Smales Farm franchise on the North Shore went into liquidation on May 12, less than a year after opening. Six days later, the landmark store on Lambton Quay in Wellington followed.
Then two weeks ago Dymocks announced its company-owned store at 246 Queen St will close for good on June 27.
All of this followed hard on the heels of Dymocks' decision to close its small New Zealand administration office and centralise operations in Australia - hence Mousdale's change of direction.
It's not the only corporate bookstore owner to start singing Waltzing Matilda. REDgroup, owner of the 90 Whitcoulls and Borders stores, has announced it is merging the support structures for all its Australasian retail operations into one transtasman division.
So is the book trade suffering from recession flu, and has Mousdale got rocks in her head to consider hanging out her shingle amid the pandemic?
Basically, no.

Of course no one in retail is immune and booksellers have been affected, says Graham Beattie, a former publisher turned reviewer, industry consultant and blogger.
"Not hugely though - I wouldn't have thought to the extent that people are closing down," he says. "There's stuff going on as well as the recession, I think."
Each of the Dymocks closures had their own set of circumstances, he says.
Queen St was a huge store with a rent bill to match, and Dymocks had long signalled it wanted to find another more suitable site on the strip.
"I think that [closure] probably would have happened whether there'd been a recession going or not."
Like most of his book industry colleagues, Beattie believes that Smales Farm was just a bad site, in the midst of a business park that emptied out at the weekends and with no street frontage or through traffic.
This is page one of four pages - Read the full story at NZH Business

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