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Bookshop update
The improvement in sales figures meant that the Weldmar powers that be made the decision to renew the shop lease for 12 months and to appoint a permanent staff member (as opposed to ‘bank staff’ which is what I was doing).
As I’ve been suffering from costochondritis, which could last for many months yet and leaves me very tired and unable to lift things, we decided it would work better for Richard to have the job and for me to volunteer. (Until that point, I’d been the paid person and Richard the volunteer)
They interviewed both of us and we were able to convince them that Richard had the necessary skills. He’s not got as much charity book experience as I have, but he does have quite a lot and he’d been with me at least two months in
So, Richard is now working five days a week in the shop (including Saturday) and I’m usually with him for four of those days. We’re slowly gaining new volunteers – our most recent one is excellent. She’s only been with us a couple of weeks, but has already mastered all the basic jobs on the till - which is a lot more complex then you might think. The oldest stock has hand written prices and the recent stock is bar coded (so can be scanned in) and there is some hybrid stuff with a bar code for category and a hand-written price. Plus there are different tricks needed for greeting cards and again for Christmas cards. She can also handle incoming stock and set up new gift aid accounts, sell raffle tickets and I’ve now got her pricing basic paperback fiction.
None of our volunteers apart from me do more than a half-day a week, but they free us up to do the more complicated jobs like pricing old books and sorting the back stock.
Most of my time at present is spent on the till. The costochronditis means that anything else is too tiring/painful. Poor Richard currently has to do all the carrying of heavy boxes – and there’s a lot of that. As the shop has improved, our incoming donations have increased. Half a dozen bags of books a day is pretty typical.
Sales have been improving slowly, but steadily. The running mean for the last month is nicely above last years figures (though the sunny weather may have helped). Last week was a new record, aided by an auction sales of a postcard collection for £160 and a £90 book sold in the shop.
It will be interesting to see how things work when the weather gets worse. We’re doing very well off the tourist trade at present –
We’re now doing weekly window displays with regular changes of subject. This week is knitting and craft books. We had some good donations in this area and they’re selling well. Last week was fishing. Popular subject, but poor books – we didn’t sell many.
We’re also putting specific subjects on a table outside the shop. The aim is to sell books where we have a lot of back stock that is of relatively low value, but reasonable condition. We tried it with travel writing last week (books worth a max of £2.50 as there’s always a risk of them getting wet when we have a shower) and they sold well. Books that had sat for ages on the travel shelf sold really fast on the outside table. We’ve now shifted most of the excess travel back stock and are starting on biography instead.
The only occasional problem is that we also have a £1 basket for fiction outside and every so often (in spite of a printed notice above the table saying that books there are individually priced) someone will take a book off the table assuming that it is also £1 and get annoyed when it isn’t.
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I can imagine such a lovely and pleasant place where a tourist can explore...especially in a rainy day.
I am sorry to read that you are still in pain - it is quite a serious problem, isn´t it?
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