Wanganui’s oldest bookshop our newest member

Ask Sheena Wager to describe her Post Office Bookstore and she is wonderfully candid. “Close your eyes and visualiSe an Old English Sweet Shoppe… then mix that with Arkwright’s in Open All Hours.”

Sounds like charm with challenges, so it is just as well Sheena Wager is a people person with can-do attitude and lots of energy. For a start, she is open seven days a week and on weekdays there’s a 6.45 start, because early rising professionals from nearby legal firms are in for the Wanganui, Wellington and Auckland newspapers.

The new owner – she only took over on May 24 – thinks her store is possibly the oldest bookshop in Wanganui. One set of previous owners had the store for 40 years, and a regular customer has been buying magazines at the store since 1967.

Currently Post Office Bookstore has a vast selection of around 500 greeting cards “even through to ones for the death of a pet”, says Wager. The business’ other strength is its exceptionally wide range of magazines, “The stock runs from archaeology to zoology,” she quips.

The premises are roomy, with the front part of the store roughly half and half magazines and cards, with a children’s book selection in another room and what Wager calls the quiet room, a place where the inherited ‘pre loved’ books are on offer. She has an office too.

Wager is possibly the first person to become a member of Booksellers New Zealand for the express purpose of adding books to her bookshop. She would like, as soon as budget and other practicalities allow it, to add fiction best sellers to her range.

Mind you, there are also premises to revamp, a website to develop and a mountain of dead stock to be disposed of; she has found calendars dating back to 1991 in storage and outdated diaries. They’ve gone in a freebie box outside the door. Disposing of old card stock was helped by a 10c offer for a Bastille Day promotion. To their mutual surprise, owner and customer discovered one already written on!

So the business of the Post Office Bookshop was pretty run down when Wager took the plunge and bought the store. The former legal secretary and volunteer worker for the Salvation Army had always wanted to run a store and loves the everyday customer contact. Her ambition is to win a local business award for “most improved” in 2011.

Meanwhile despite the early starts and seven day weeks, with only part time help dealing with magazine returns, Sheena Wager’s energy hasn’t abated “It is like Christmas morning every day I go to work,” she enthuses.