rate or flag this pageTweet this
In the name of live events, one would typically associate bookstores with book launches and reading sessions. The audience — an assorted concoction of society's high-heeled, the literati and of course the quintessential book lovers. Few book browsers present at the venue would stick along. But that was then.
Picture this: It's a Sunday morning and a bunch of gleeful kids are engrossed in making props — Akbar's crown or a capseller's hat, which they will later put to creative use while enacting famous childhood tales. An art-cum-story-telling workshop, only that the venue is not a conventional private art class. Walk into a Crossword Bookstore on a Sunday morning, and you'll realise it's a regular feature here.
The activity is part of Crossword Children's Hour, something the bookstore started with its first store at Mahalaxmi, 14 years back. But what started as a mere story-telling session on a Sunday morning has now evolved into much more. The result, a gamut of activities — colouring contest, extempore story narrations, singing, drama, fancy dress and dancing contests to festive workshops around Diwali and Christmas...you name it, and they have it all.
"Our target audience is essentially children between the ages of 4-12 years. Through these workshops we want to inculcate reading as a habit. We are sowing the seeds now, so we can reap its benefits 7-8 years down the line," says Sivaraman Balakrishnan, manager marketing, Crossword Bookstores.
And since the stores are selling more than just books, read: toys, stationery, DVDs, there is a constant need to take on marketing initiatives to push sales in the respective categories.
"Landmark caters to not just books. We have large areas dedicated to toys, DVDs and games. Hence the promotional activities need to be balanced out," says Lijin Thomas, head marketing, Landmark.
From Scrabble to Squap contests and Hot Wheels Racing to Lego Block Building Challenge — Landmark conducts periodic contests. Many of the events are organised to get the products off the shelves. And kid's fare is a regular event every December. "Toy activation in a coordinated fashion started in 2008 and every year in the month of December sales go up by 25-30%," Thomas adds.
Besides tangible sales, these events also mean an increase in footfalls at the store. Children's Hour at Crossword for instance has no registration fee, but the attendance for the Sunday sessions have increased by 30% last year alone.
Thomas also contends that the toy specific events are essentially hosted in a challenge or contest format because, "children like to experience certain toys rather than just seeing demos".
It is of little surprise that when famed cartoon superstars, Spiderman or Dora visit the store, sales of stationery that includes these characters increases.
Moving outside the ambit of children-related activities, Oxford hosts a variety of non-children centric events as well. Panel discussions on social issues like LGBT and 26/11, theatre workshops, live music performances, tarot reading and occasional movie screenings etc, the store has ventured out to include a bouquet of events other than just readings.
Tathagata Chowdhary, a theatre producer, was looking for fresh actors for his play. And he chose Oxford (at Churchgate) as the venue to hold his theatre workshop. "The store is one place in town which is close to many colleges in the city. The crowd is young and there's a lot of connect," says Chowdhary who was happy with the response.
Earlier, Chowdhary had also organised a panel discussion on one of the longest running plays in the history of English theatre The Mousetrap based on Agatha Christie's novel. And for people who see these events as a distraction; Chowdhary holds that these activities, be it at coffee shops or bookstores are value additions. "A person who reads Agatha is more than likely to attend a related discussion," says he.
To each to his own. But for now, as bookstore shelves become all inclusive, and marketing minds dish out fun activities, customers aren't complaining. Not just as yet.
Raell Padamsee, head,
Academy for Creative Expressio
Preeti Vyas, CEO, FunOKPlease
Publishing India
Rajni Tandon, tarot reader at Oxford Bookstore
The next time you’re contemplating buying a novel from your neighbourhood bookstore, it would be a good idea to check its price across Indian online bookstores as well.You’ll be surprised by not just the competitive discounts each one has to offer, but also the availability and prompt delivery of that book.
That’s the pleasant reality of online bookstores in India, where the entry of new companies has meant that consumers can literally window-shop, until they arrive at the best deal. The pattern is similar to that of travel websites, where multiple players began to compete to provide the best airfares.
Amongst online bookstores, Bangalore-based Flipkart.com and Ahmedabad-headquartered Infybeam.com currently lead the pack nationally, in terms of market share. There’s also Tradus.in, owned by Ibibo, besides book sections on Indiaplaza.in, Rediff.com and Ebay.in which have been selling books for the past decade.
The new players, however, are competing with each other to offer better discounts and customer service. Flipkart, which was launched in 2007, says it has grown 10 times in revenues since March 2009 and has been channelising most of its efforts towards ensuring prompt delivery and reliability.
Sachin Bansal, CEO, Flipkart.com says, “When people come online to shop, they expect discounts. So discounts are here to stay and they’re not just launch strategies. But I don’t think cheaper prices alone will bring you customers. Customer satisfaction is very important.”
Rahul Sethi, president — e-commerce, Ibibo.com, says there’s good reason why the online shopping scene wasn’t as robust five years ago as it is now. “E-commerce has been abused for a better part of the internet’s existence in India. With terrible web connections, people don’t have great memories of their first online shopping experience.That scepticism still exists today, but we’re reducing his risk by giving him a discount.”
Overall, there are three factors responsible for the growing confidence of these enterprises in the Indian market. “Payments for railway and flight tickets have meant that online transactions are becoming more the norm than the exception. Further, internet speeds have improved significantly, thus allowing assured payment gateways. Thirdly, the increasing penetration of the web has meant that small towns can shop for even rare books, since retail is absent there,” says Himanshu Chakravarty, COO, Landmark Bookstores.
Landmark, for example, like other offline retailers, does not offer discounts because their high overhead costs do not allow them that liberty. Online bookstores, besides having minimal real estate costs, also eliminate middlemen from the book buying process, the benefit of which is passed on to the consumer, through a discount. “There’s a cost that adds to a book’s MRP at every level — publisher, distributor, sub-distributor, stockist, retailer and bookstore. The online model eliminates most of those middlemen,” says Sethi. Besides, an online bookstore employs only 25-40 people full-time.
Stocking of titles is also easier. Unlike a retail bookstore which can stock a limited number of books, an online bookstore can stock a much larger number. “We currently have 5.5 million titles —both national and imported. But this business is not about just having the widest range of titles, but the right partnerships. So we’re adding and partnering the right vendors who will supply books on time,” says Piyush Goel, co-founder, Uread.com.
“We have a real-time inventory. So if you order a book, I know immediately which of my partners stocks that book. We also stock titles in warehouses (located outside city limits, for cheaper real estate costs) and we have access to warehouse data of other distributors, as well.”
What’s more, an online bookstore enterprise can promise publishers sales in much higher volumes than a single bookstore, since consumers are spread across the country. Tradus.in’s Sethi says that it gets about 60% of its orders from cities that aren’t among the top 20. A key area where the Indian online bookstore market differs from the market globally is the immense popularity of the cash-on-delivery (COD) payment option. Uread.com’s Goel says, “In the US, for example, credit cards are far more popular, but in India people trust COD. We launched it last month on Uread.com and already it is responsible for about 70% of the transactions on our site.”
The popularity of online retailing is something even Crossword now wants to take advantage of. It currently doesn’t have an online shopping option on its website. “Online bookstores haven’t made much of a dent in our business, although they have slowed down growth in physical sales in certain categories, like bestsellers,” says Sivaraman Balakrishnan, manager-marketing, Crossword. “Consumers continue to shop for children’s books and merchandise at our stores, where touch-n-feel and visual delights are important.”
Retailers such as Crossword and Landmark say they don’t worry about the explosion in online retailing of books. Balakrishnan says, “We’re okay with the entry of new online bookstores or even physical stores, since it only increases our readership by giving more people access to books. The problem, however, is that the readership of books or the reading habit, is not proportionately growing.”
Footfalls increase as bookstores experiment
From children's workshop to tarot reading to theatre discussions, prominent bookstores are doing it all
In the name of live events, one would typically associate bookstores with book launches and reading sessions. The audience — an assorted concoction of society's high-heeled, the literati and of course the quintessential book lovers. Few book browsers present at the venue would stick along. But that was then.
Picture this: It's a Sunday morning and a bunch of gleeful kids are engrossed in making props — Akbar's crown or a capseller's hat, which they will later put to creative use while enacting famous childhood tales. An art-cum-story-telling workshop, only that the venue is not a conventional private art class. Walk into a Crossword Bookstore on a Sunday morning, and you'll realise it's a regular feature here.
The activity is part of Crossword Children's Hour, something the bookstore started with its first store at Mahalaxmi, 14 years back. But what started as a mere story-telling session on a Sunday morning has now evolved into much more. The result, a gamut of activities — colouring contest, extempore story narrations, singing, drama, fancy dress and dancing contests to festive workshops around Diwali and Christmas...you name it, and they have it all.
"Our target audience is essentially children between the ages of 4-12 years. Through these workshops we want to inculcate reading as a habit. We are sowing the seeds now, so we can reap its benefits 7-8 years down the line," says Sivaraman Balakrishnan, manager marketing, Crossword Bookstores.
And since the stores are selling more than just books, read: toys, stationery, DVDs, there is a constant need to take on marketing initiatives to push sales in the respective categories.
"Landmark caters to not just books. We have large areas dedicated to toys, DVDs and games. Hence the promotional activities need to be balanced out," says Lijin Thomas, head marketing, Landmark.
From Scrabble to Squap contests and Hot Wheels Racing to Lego Block Building Challenge — Landmark conducts periodic contests. Many of the events are organised to get the products off the shelves. And kid's fare is a regular event every December. "Toy activation in a coordinated fashion started in 2008 and every year in the month of December sales go up by 25-30%," Thomas adds.
Besides tangible sales, these events also mean an increase in footfalls at the store. Children's Hour at Crossword for instance has no registration fee, but the attendance for the Sunday sessions have increased by 30% last year alone.
Thomas also contends that the toy specific events are essentially hosted in a challenge or contest format because, "children like to experience certain toys rather than just seeing demos".
It is of little surprise that when famed cartoon superstars, Spiderman or Dora visit the store, sales of stationery that includes these characters increases.
Moving outside the ambit of children-related activities, Oxford hosts a variety of non-children centric events as well. Panel discussions on social issues like LGBT and 26/11, theatre workshops, live music performances, tarot reading and occasional movie screenings etc, the store has ventured out to include a bouquet of events other than just readings.
Tathagata Chowdhary, a theatre producer, was looking for fresh actors for his play. And he chose Oxford (at Churchgate) as the venue to hold his theatre workshop. "The store is one place in town which is close to many colleges in the city. The crowd is young and there's a lot of connect," says Chowdhary who was happy with the response.
Earlier, Chowdhary had also organised a panel discussion on one of the longest running plays in the history of English theatre The Mousetrap based on Agatha Christie's novel. And for people who see these events as a distraction; Chowdhary holds that these activities, be it at coffee shops or bookstores are value additions. "A person who reads Agatha is more than likely to attend a related discussion," says he.
To each to his own. But for now, as bookstore shelves become all inclusive, and marketing minds dish out fun activities, customers aren't complaining. Not just as yet.
Story-telling with a difference
I think it’s very exciting to use alternate spaces and not stick to conventional ones. The storytelling workshops we hold at Crossword include reading, story-telling and story enacting. And the creative workshops use art and craft as a medium to hook the children. Though the various media — internet, gaming, television — are stimulating, there’s very little left to the imagination. It is important to inculcate the habit of reading in children. And the art story workshops at Crossword is one of the ways we try to generate and retain children’s interest in reading.Raell Padamsee, head,
Academy for Creative Expressio
Stories, song, dance and more for kids...
We’ve been organising events around our new storybook series, The Adventures of Toto the Auto, at various Landmark stores and the kids have absolutely loved it. The bookstore is a great venue to connect with parents and engage the children in stories, songs, dance and drawing. We see the crowds growing with each subsequent event and now even have parents contacting us to do the same event for them at their kid’s birthday party.Preeti Vyas, CEO, FunOKPlease
Publishing India
Browsing books, how about a tarot reading?
I have been doing tarot reading at Oxford for three years. The energy of the shop makes a lot of difference. And the candles and bright table cloth attracts many walk-in customers. The bookstore also ensures that the footfalls comprise educated people. My clientele includes bankers, corporates, government officials, students and homemakers. Over three years many repeat clients have become my brand ambassadors. Earlier I used to operate from 5-8, now I am sitting there till 10pm. People like the idea that a tarot reader is sitting there and not running away the next day. They can always get back to me.Rajni Tandon, tarot reader at Oxford Bookstore
E-bookstores turn a new page
The next time you’re contemplating buying a novel from your neighbourhood bookstore, it would be a good idea to check its price across Indian online bookstores as well.You’ll be surprised by not just the competitive discounts each one has to offer, but also the availability and prompt delivery of that book.
That’s the pleasant reality of online bookstores in India, where the entry of new companies has meant that consumers can literally window-shop, until they arrive at the best deal. The pattern is similar to that of travel websites, where multiple players began to compete to provide the best airfares.
Amongst online bookstores, Bangalore-based Flipkart.com and Ahmedabad-headquartered Infybeam.com currently lead the pack nationally, in terms of market share. There’s also Tradus.in, owned by Ibibo, besides book sections on Indiaplaza.in, Rediff.com and Ebay.in which have been selling books for the past decade.
The new players, however, are competing with each other to offer better discounts and customer service. Flipkart, which was launched in 2007, says it has grown 10 times in revenues since March 2009 and has been channelising most of its efforts towards ensuring prompt delivery and reliability.
Sachin Bansal, CEO, Flipkart.com says, “When people come online to shop, they expect discounts. So discounts are here to stay and they’re not just launch strategies. But I don’t think cheaper prices alone will bring you customers. Customer satisfaction is very important.”
Rahul Sethi, president — e-commerce, Ibibo.com, says there’s good reason why the online shopping scene wasn’t as robust five years ago as it is now. “E-commerce has been abused for a better part of the internet’s existence in India. With terrible web connections, people don’t have great memories of their first online shopping experience.That scepticism still exists today, but we’re reducing his risk by giving him a discount.”
Overall, there are three factors responsible for the growing confidence of these enterprises in the Indian market. “Payments for railway and flight tickets have meant that online transactions are becoming more the norm than the exception. Further, internet speeds have improved significantly, thus allowing assured payment gateways. Thirdly, the increasing penetration of the web has meant that small towns can shop for even rare books, since retail is absent there,” says Himanshu Chakravarty, COO, Landmark Bookstores.
Landmark, for example, like other offline retailers, does not offer discounts because their high overhead costs do not allow them that liberty. Online bookstores, besides having minimal real estate costs, also eliminate middlemen from the book buying process, the benefit of which is passed on to the consumer, through a discount. “There’s a cost that adds to a book’s MRP at every level — publisher, distributor, sub-distributor, stockist, retailer and bookstore. The online model eliminates most of those middlemen,” says Sethi. Besides, an online bookstore employs only 25-40 people full-time.
Stocking of titles is also easier. Unlike a retail bookstore which can stock a limited number of books, an online bookstore can stock a much larger number. “We currently have 5.5 million titles —both national and imported. But this business is not about just having the widest range of titles, but the right partnerships. So we’re adding and partnering the right vendors who will supply books on time,” says Piyush Goel, co-founder, Uread.com.
“We have a real-time inventory. So if you order a book, I know immediately which of my partners stocks that book. We also stock titles in warehouses (located outside city limits, for cheaper real estate costs) and we have access to warehouse data of other distributors, as well.”
What’s more, an online bookstore enterprise can promise publishers sales in much higher volumes than a single bookstore, since consumers are spread across the country. Tradus.in’s Sethi says that it gets about 60% of its orders from cities that aren’t among the top 20. A key area where the Indian online bookstore market differs from the market globally is the immense popularity of the cash-on-delivery (COD) payment option. Uread.com’s Goel says, “In the US, for example, credit cards are far more popular, but in India people trust COD. We launched it last month on Uread.com and already it is responsible for about 70% of the transactions on our site.”
The popularity of online retailing is something even Crossword now wants to take advantage of. It currently doesn’t have an online shopping option on its website. “Online bookstores haven’t made much of a dent in our business, although they have slowed down growth in physical sales in certain categories, like bestsellers,” says Sivaraman Balakrishnan, manager-marketing, Crossword. “Consumers continue to shop for children’s books and merchandise at our stores, where touch-n-feel and visual delights are important.”
Retailers such as Crossword and Landmark say they don’t worry about the explosion in online retailing of books. Balakrishnan says, “We’re okay with the entry of new online bookstores or even physical stores, since it only increases our readership by giving more people access to books. The problem, however, is that the readership of books or the reading habit, is not proportionately growing.”
Australian bookstore combines wine and books
Australian bibliophiles have been offered a chance to combine their love of literature with their fondness for a quiet drink, with a boutique bookchain in Sydney adding wine to its shelves.
Berkelouw Books, in Sydney's trendy inner-city suburb Leichhardt, has created a combined wine barreading room featuring a range of Australian wines and cheeses.
Customers can curl up on a couch with a tasting plate, surrounded by shelves of antique or new books. Polished wooden floors, soaring windows and wine barrel tables complete the space.
Australia's book industry has recently been looking to drown its sorrows amid increasing competitive pressure from online bookstores like Amazon, often based overseas.
Berkelouw owners Colin Cappelleri and Gary Mullins said they had chosen a selection of season wines that were a perfect match with friends or fiction, with the store to also offer live jazz.
"Now that people are getting to know about us, we've had great success with our boutique wines and lots of positive feedback," Cappelleri told Reuters.
Berkelouw Books, in Sydney's trendy inner-city suburb Leichhardt, has created a combined wine barreading room featuring a range of Australian wines and cheeses.
Customers can curl up on a couch with a tasting plate, surrounded by shelves of antique or new books. Polished wooden floors, soaring windows and wine barrel tables complete the space.
Australia's book industry has recently been looking to drown its sorrows amid increasing competitive pressure from online bookstores like Amazon, often based overseas.
Berkelouw owners Colin Cappelleri and Gary Mullins said they had chosen a selection of season wines that were a perfect match with friends or fiction, with the store to also offer live jazz.
"Now that people are getting to know about us, we've had great success with our boutique wines and lots of positive feedback," Cappelleri told Reuters.
No comments:
Post a Comment