Books a Plenty: entrepreneurial and with a not-so-secret weapon

Chris and Warren Baskett have owned Books a Plenty in Tauranga’s central shopping area for eleven years, so they’ve learned to surf the peaks and troughs of trading over that time.

While it is not obvious in their sizeable, 260 square metres, Grey Street store, Chris and Warren have textbooks as a component of their business.

As well as catering to the text requirements of students in town, Chris and Warren also opened a small store on the Windermere campus specialising in textbooks and stationery.

“Bay of Plenty Polytechnic has a split campus,” Chris explains.

“Half in the city and half at Windermere.”

The Windermere store, and the text business in town, are good adjuncts to their general bookselling.

“In a recession, text sales actually grow,” comments Chris. What’s more, further growth is likely as the University of Waikato is partnering with their Bay of Plenty (BOP) counterparts to extend the range of courses to include degree programmes.

As with most couples working in a business, the responsibilities are divided: broadly speaking, Warren is the finance and publicity person, while Chris does most of the buying and store management.

Books a Plenty (pictured above) is a long established Tauranga bookshop, beginning as a religious bookshop under a different name so many years back no one has an actual date. It has been in its Grey Street premises as Books A Plenty since the late 1970s, but the Basketts are happy to have settled recently with their fourth landlord and a part makeover. They were proud to see the store being described as the best stocked in Tauranga in a recent NZ Herald feature.

“We depend on the loyalty of our customers and people have been great,” says Chris of the ups and downs of recent years.

The store does have its own loyalty card system, but the service goes much deeper.

"We try to have not only the best book choice and the most depth in book stock, but we also aim to have the most efficient special order system and the best service.”

Helping Chris and Warren (pictured above) achieve this is a staff of four and one casual, plus the Windermere store manager, all with long careers at the store – Raewyn and Donna have been with them for 12 and 10 years respectively. Chris says that in her team, everyone one is a keen book reader, and they cover all genres!

Hence the not-so-secret weapon: staff picks at Books a Plenty.

They are displayed on a wall behind the counter, and that means shoppers can discuss the titles with the assistant helping them.

Chris reckons it is their best sales tool, even though they do a Top 5 and new releases elsewhere in the store.

Community involvement is another key to the success of Books a Plenty. Chris is always happy to stock – on consignment - the work of local self published authors and to host a launch in store. The only requirement she makes is the author is expected to generate their own publicity in local media.

Books a Plenty also sponsor the Readers and Writers part of the Tauranga Festival.

Another part of their promotion of Books a Plenty are book club nights where reps come and talk about recent releases; audience numbers go as high as 70 – 80.

Just as well that when they redesigned their children’s and Young Adult area that they made fixtures moveable so they could create a space big enough for functions!

IMAGE: The counter at Books a Plenty.

Books a Plenty have a large magazine selection, but the store does not cover stationery. They’ve cut down their card selection - “Everyone is doing cards as an add-on business these days,” says Chris – to use the space for increased book stock.

When Chris starts to describe the titles that are Books a Plenty’s current best sellers and new book directions, her enthusiasm as a reader is obvious.

“I’m usually a fiction reader, but I’m having a break to fact based fiction books, which, while they are fiction, are heavily based on real people and events.”

She has just read and enjoyed Edmund de Waal’s family history linked with the netsuke his forebears collected, The Hare with the Amber Eyes.

Paula McLain’s novel Paris Wife, a semi-factual account of  Ernest Hemingway’s first wife and their time in Paris is a top selling title for Books a Plenty.

“This is a prime example of the worth of advance reading copies. If we hadn’t been offered a reading copy it is unlikely we would have run with it as well as we have done and it is a treasure,” says Chris.

A Man of Parts is another fact based work of fiction: HG Wells is the subject for David Lodge’s novel, another Staff Pick.

Other current favourites: Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Henning Mankell’s final in the Wallander detective series, The Troubled Man and Goodbye Sarajevo by sisters Atka Reid and Hana Schofield.

The exciting future development Warren and Chris see as a natural extension of hardcopy bookselling is e-books.

Books a Plenty has a well set up website, mostly used for their textbook trade. “We’ve got the choice of staying largely bricks and mortar based or moving into the brave new world of e-book technology,” says Chris.

“We could ignore it and retire before it becomes a problem, but we can’t avoid the future, so we are looking hard at e-books and online business development options for our store.”