Meet Take Note H&J Smith, Invercargill

One manager, three bookstores – busy days down South.

Lee-Ann McGinnis works for long-established Invercargill department store H&J Smith, but she is not selling fashion, homewares or furnishings.

IMAGE: H&J Smith Invercargill, date unknown. From The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Otago & Southland Provincial Districts] 1905, Christchurch as catalogued on Digital NZ.

Please note: further images will be added to this story - the photographer in the Take Note team was away owing to a bereavement.

What is not well known in other parts of New Zealand, is that H&J’s stores in Invercargill and Gore both house Take Note stores, and last year the company bought PaperPlus in Esk Street, Invercargill. It is Lee-Ann’s job to manage all three franchise stores, reporting to H&J Smith CEO John Green.

Alexandra PaperPlus was Lee-Ann’s training ground, but she had other jobs in between, and before starting her current role three and a half years ago. Running two stores was no doubt tricky, so how does she cope with three?

“I guess it is that two children don’t double your work load and three doesn’t triple it!”

Lee-Ann had well-established systems before adding PaperPlus to her portfolio and being able to use PaperPlus’ book database to help with the three stores has made administration more efficient.

Take Note Gore in H&J Smith’s store in that town now has its own manager who reports to Lee-Ann. It is a busy store because it is the town’s only NZ Post agency. Invercargill’s Take Note also had a full postal agency but that has now been downgraded to a postal centre - this doesn’t cover bill paying and car registration services.

Lee-Ann’s routine is to start at the Esk St store at 8am, then hand over to her second-in-command Suzanne McMurdo, before heading for H&J’s between 10.00 and 11.00. Thankfully the two Invercargill stores are only 300 metres apart – a distance Lee-Ann can find herself traversing up to five times a day! Her team of Suzanne, Take Note Invercargill’s second-in-command Hayley Hughes, and Gore manager Debbie Ackroyd, plus other full and part time staff, are just great, says Lee-Ann.

With her foot in both Take Note and PaperPlus camps, how does Lee-Ann manage the different models? “Both have strengths. With PaperPlus there are a lot more books and lines you must stock, but the group offers are really excellent. Take Note offers more freedom, you stock what you want to stock. I think PaperPlus is seen as being more corporate and businesslike, whereas with Take Note it is often known in the community by the owner’s name as in ‘Betty’s shop’.

“There are other crossovers, I find if we display Kerre’s Choices on the counter at Take Note they move well."

“I like being able to buy for three stores;
when you buy gift lines the extra volume gets
you better deals.

It is also good to be able to move stock between stores if needed.” The day The Read phones, Lee-Ann is busy finalising indent calendars and diaries for all three stores and arranging cover for staff on holiday.

Being part of a larger retail environment is also something Lee-Ann turns into a plus. There are not only the 12,000 department store cardholders as potential clients, but the 200 store staff are also among her best customers, she says. Her strategy is to take a reading copy or a new title up to tea break and ‘talk to the captive audience’!

The stores’ main competition is The Warehouse, and Whitcoulls, and when possible Lee-Ann
prefers to sidestep.

The stores couldn’t compete with Warehouse price-cutting on Annabel Langbein’s top-selling cookbook, but they adopted another title with distinctively Southern appeal, Speight’s Southern Man Cookbook. “We didn’t have to discount it heavily and we did very well with it at Christmas.”

Local, self-published The Tin Goose Café Cookbook – the café’s are in Cromwell, Alexandra and Frankton – by Jeanie Watson was another best seller. “Cooking does good business for us, even when you take out Annebel Langbein,” says Lee-Ann.

Memoirs and biographies also went well in December, particularly Keith Richard’s Life and Judi Dench’s And Furthermore. Wendyl Nissen’s A Home Companion has sparked the development of a whole section in self sufficiency.

The bookstore group supports the local Dan Davin Literary Foundation and the upcoming Readers and Writers Alive programmes.

They’ve had author visits from John Perriam of Bendigo Station for Dust to Gold (with Shrek in a trailer outside), Robert Long of A Life on Gorge River fame and rugby hero Mils Muliaina… for whom the signing queue for Living the Dream was endless! Other author visits have included Kelvin Cruickshank and Marc Ellis.

“We get behind and support author tours.
Our customers respond well to them,
and we have a lot of fun.”

Lee-Ann says she is a ‘mainstream’ fiction reader who has just finished Lesley Pearse’s Belle which she enjoyed, and is about to start on Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen ahead of the upcoming film. She and the team also place emphasis on discovering books that may not be mainstream, but which they have enjoyed and can be hand sold to their customers, like Hey Day to May-Day a great little local book on the history in Bluff.

In the near future it is WATCH THIS SPACE Invercargill, as plans have just got underway to amalgamate the two stores. It is likely that later this year a full fledged PaperPlus Concept 6 store will be created within H&J Smith. Lee-Ann may then have only two stores to manage, but it is likely she will be busier than ever!