Meet the folks at Mighty Ape Books

Mighty Ape’s lair is no lush jungle, just a bland warehouse in the Auckland’s Albany industrial area, a warehouse with conference room and offices above.

A designer may have had a hand in the conference room with its lit alcoves and massive crafted table. No such luck for the worker bees in utilitarian grey cubicles.
Still, who needs a seductive retail environment in real life when business is online?One visit to their online store adn you'll quickly see the ambience is different.

Skip to Mighty Ape's top ten books for the last month.

It’s a breezy, cheeky website that invites you to call “our friendly team of trained service monkeys” for help or to make an order. Gorillas, apes. chimpanzees, monkeys – the genuses are not defined – are all there to add a touch of the zany to the customer experience.

IMAGE: Shaun Outhwaite, trained service monkey part of the customer service team

And at 8.30 on a Monday night, there are 937 customers online checking out half a million products, covering games for PlayStation, Nintendo, Xboxes and more, movies on DVD, music, toys and computer and electronic items. With insouciant self promotion, you can also buy Mighty Ape logo t shirts featuring Little Monkey or Albert Ape.

Mighty Ape grew out of a previous e-commerce site, GamePlanet. This in turn grew out of retail shops for games which shed the bricks and mortar and went 100 percent online.

IMAGE: Justin Churchman in the warehouse

Head Gorilla, missing on after school parent duties when The Read called, is Simon Barton. His BCom gained two decades back – and passion for computer games - led him first to stores, then to online retail.

No matter. Able deputy Dylan Bland - no title, it is not that sort of place – gave me a breakdown of the company’s business. Games are the No 1 sellers, with DVD’s and books equal second. In fact, books – only added in 2008 with the adoption of the Mighty Ape name – are the fastest growing segment.

Self confessed geek Dylan – he owns a Kindle because he wanted to know what it was like – turns out to be a fan of ink on paper books. “Given a choice, I always want the real book in preference to the electronic.”

Yes, this is an online book supplier with - so far - not an e-book on offer!

When we get to meet Simon, an iPhone is never far from his hand, but guess what? He bought one e-book for his iPad, but didn’t like the reading experience and prefers hard copies.

Dylan quizzes the interviewer: what kinds of books are their fastest movers? I’m too slow but when the answer comes it is obvious: “Fantasy and science fiction.” Seems gamers are readers too.

For a book industry person, the other shock is a “We like books, we get a better margin on books than anything else,” comment from Dylan. The industry standard markup for games is only 20 percent on cost… but they can be big ticket items in the $80 to $170 bracket for Xboxes.

But back to books… Rose Miller has been buyer over all categories from the early days of the company. Just two weeks back she switched to concentrating on books, because Mighty Ape see it as a growth area and want to expand the categories they offer.

Rose couldn’t be happier. “I’m a passionate book person, not a gamer,” she confesses. She is a fiction reader and a cookbook fan.

And yes, she prefers hard copies too!

Like most in the industry, she is an Annabel Langbein fan. She loves the cookbooks, but Mighty Ape loves the sales. They took the maximum number of The Free Range Cook for Christmas past; they didn’t discount because they wanted stock to last - but still sold out early.

Mighty Ape likes to buy from local suppliers as they get better service and receive stock more quickly, they told The Read. They only resort to Ingrams, Baker & Taylor and Gardners for titles unavailable here. Currently they’ve got 12,000 different titles in stock, and aim to grow stock holding in line with sales growth.

IMAGE: The Mighty Ape warehouse where good organisation is crucial.

Discounts: Simon Barton says the present Mighty Ape policy is to strategise discounts to bigger selling book titles but admits that’s ‘roll of the dice’ at the moment. In the future, they plan to discount (by varying degrees) all titles

IMAGE: Packing books for shipment.

The geek bit: Mighty Ape is one of the smartest online retail services around. Their development team does everything in-house from web design through to systems.

Their back-end team are ahead of most in the business – for instance, they get stock data from suppliers and incorporate so that when the book is not in stock but available from the publisher, the website automatically tells customers that the book will ship in 2 - 3 days. For titles which will have to come from overseas distributors, it shows as 8 – 10 days.

There’s a database of everyone who has ever bought off Mighty Ape, and with all departments, customers are notified when relevant new merchandise comes to hand.

With books, they do an advance announcement and an offer to dispatch the title on arrival - one for the new Sookie Stackhouse title is going out shortly. It will be followed up with a further mail out to those who didn’t respond to the first offer once stock arrives in the warehouse.

Also taken seriously is the six or so titles that are presented to the customer who enters a book title.

IMAGE: screen shot of the 'recommendations panel'

We make sure the item most likely to be bought, the mainstream book, comes up first not the audio or other versions,” explains Simon.

“You don’t have to discard all the products you don’t want.” A simple strategy for the programmers, but effective for customers.

One person in the Mighty Ape team is full time on marketing, with emphasis on social media.

Great real-people customer service is another strength, with seven people dedicated to customer support – but they do keep retail type hours, 8.30 – 5.30 Monday to Friday.

Another seven or so keep picking, packing and dispatch humming, and they like it best when goods go out in Mighty Ape’s branded packaging.

IMAGE: Packages of books in the mail bag.

Despite three of the Mighty Ape team opting for the real book experience, they are too smart to ignore e-books. “We will be into them later this year,” says Simon.

“We’re an underground website, currently concentrating on just doing what we do better. We need to get our name out there,” says Simon

If the public are still latching on, at least those in the field know better. Mighty Ape picked up a 2009 Net Guide Web Award for Best Online Shopping Site.

IMAGE: Mighty Ape's NetGuide awards

Mighty Ape’s Top 10 for last month:

1. The Wise Man's Fear (Kingkiller Chronicle #2), Patrick Rothfuss
2. A Kingdom Besieged (Chaoswar Saga #1) hardcover, Raymond E Feist
3. The Land of Painted Caves (Earth's Children #6) hardcover, Jean M Auel
4. Dragon Age II Collector's Edition
5. Afterlife (Evernight #4), Claudia Gray
6. Sing You Home, Jodi Picoult
7. Heat Wave (Nikki Heat #1), Richard Castle
8. Quaky Cat, Diana Noonan
9. Annabel Langbein: The Free Range Cook (even while waiting for further stock to become available)
10. New Zealand's Hottest Home Baker, Dean Brettschneider