Meet Paper Plus Merivale

When Rodger Grant and sons Simon and James (pictured on the homepage) picked up Paper Plus Merivale’s award for national book sales at the group’s awards in August, three people seemed like a pretty hefty management team for one store.

But Merivale is only the flagship store for the trio’s other holdings, Paper Plus South City and Paper Plus Hornby.

IMAGE: Paper Plus Merivale picked up the top book sales award at the recent Paper Plus Awards. Pictured are: Mike Drummond, Regional Business Manager with PaperPlus Merivale team Simon, Rodger and James Grant, winners of the top book sales award, Rob Smith.

Rodger had been with Whitcoull’s for about 25 years as a store manager then area manager for the South Island when he was approached by the PaperPlus team in 1994 to buy Merivale Book Store, which the group had just bought from bookselling legend Pat O’Sullivan.

Under Grant ownership Merivale, which ranked number 40 initially in the group, is now consistently one of the top performers.

IMAGE: Paper Plus Merivale

The Hornby store was started ‘from scratch’ 11 years later and South City was bought off Philip King and his daughter more recently in 2007.

Simon joined his father as a part timer right from the start in ‘94. He had just begun at university, and planned to find another job when he completed his commerce degree in marketing. (He stopped looking for that other job a good while ago!)

James resisted the call of the family business somewhat longer. After a school year spent in Japan, he too did a commerce degree but then went on an extended OE, including working in Australia. He came back to run Take Note Greymouth (which at the time was owned by Rodger) but is now back in Christchurch and works over all three stores – according to his older brother that makes him General Dogs Body. No doubt James has retaliated.

Having both sons in the business frees Rodger to take more time off to do more fishing, play bowls and babysit the grandkids. But that’s only when he gets out from under the paperwork load passed over by his sons! 
  
IMAGE: Simon (left) and James.

The ’quakes and snow...
The last twelve months have been a hell of a year in Christchurch, but the Grants appear to have coped with the calm practicality that has made Cantabrians impress the rest of this country.

The 4 September 2010 quake came just after the completion of Merivale’s Concept 6 update. The damage wasn’t great – a crack down the shop flooring where floor pads parted, and the green vinyl on the exterior ripped apart – but depressing so soon after the fitout.

February saw Merivale closed for three weeks, mainly because the mall had no water and lost toilet facilities, and also a really messed up carpark.

In June, they had just finished picking up all the books on the floor from quake one, when quake two hit and it was “We’re outta here!” according to Simon.

Snow caused a further day’s closure in August.

Hornby store, in a more southern part of the city, was closed for only three days over all quakes, but there was much picking up and replacing of stock on shelves.

South City was in the red zone for a month. At the time, the Grants were also running a bargain shop in vacant mall space, and that store suffered reasonably major liquefaction. Their main shop which was opposite, had no liquefaction but is said to be a bit crumbly under the carpet!

Fortunately, neither of those mall stores had been upgraded recently, mostly because the malls themselves were in redevelopment at the time.

All three bookstores have had increased traffic and sales post the disasters, as two of the city’s other major malls have been closed since February. For instance, where previously Merivale would place an order with a major publisher once a week, this is now happening two to three times each week. To date, there has been no fall off in this increased trade.

IMAGE: Paper Plus Merivale

The South City bargain store became valuable retail space for the mall owners once liquefaction was remedied. Serendipitously the space has been leased for a branch of Christchurch Libraries. “It is great. It brings readers into the mall so in a sense that is working well for PaperPlus,” says Simon.

All three stores are big and bustling. Merivale is the most book oriented with a 50/50 split for books and stationery. For Hornby and South City the mix is weighted the other way with approximately 40 percent books, the balance stationery and other lines.
The impressive business the stores do is reflected another way – without postal, banking or lottery franchises, Merivale has about eight full time staff and the other stores six full timers respectively, plus part timers for peak hours and weekends.

All the Christchurch PaperPlus stores including the three Grant owned ones have a good uptake of group promotions, but Simon comments “If there are any gaps in the national marketing, we pull together do joint advertising – not that there are many gaps now.”

In Merivale, Hornby and South City they propel book sales with the PaperPlus ‘My Big Deal’ card and associated e-marketing. They have 6000 cardholders over the three stores.

At the moment all stores are selling plenty of Earthquake books and a lot of general Christchurch books of photos and history of the city pre-quake. Merivale though is a very literary area and sells more contemporary fiction than the other two stores.

“We really do try and go the extra mile for our customers on a daily basis and realise that in darker times, sometimes a friendly face or light-hearted conversation goes a long way towards making someone’s day,” Simon told the audience when accepting the PaperPlus Book Sales Award.

“A combination of embracing national book initiatives, passionate staff who love their books, and keeping a close eye on new book trends has helped us achieve outstanding book sales in the last 12 months.” He also thanked “Our fantastic customers who just keep coming back to support us.”

Post quakes, Simon is still wary of the immediate future. “Perhaps in another six months we will begin to get a sense of moving forward...”

We can only admire the effort and spirit of hanging in there shown by the Grants and their team.