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Jan. 12th, 2004 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clayhornikBookstore nightmares.
I had a dozy of one recently. The district manager, who used to work for a clothing company, announced that we were going to carry clothes at the bookstore. This was a dream, mind you, despite the fact that we have started carrying anime' t-shirts and sweatshirts. In the dream, we were carrying blouses and skirts.
Scary ass Lovecraft dreams, I can handle; tell me to sell blouses, I'm terrified.
Not all the nightmares at the bookstore are dreams. Reality is far scarier.
Periodically in some of the bbs's I frequent, I read threads dealing with bookstores, the unhelpful clerks and the lack of quality stock. Honestly, I believe the chain stores pretty much get the customers they deserve.
My recent favourite: A man wearing a ball cap, printed with the statement "I only date crack whores." He was carrying a toddler on his shoulders, accompanied by what seemed to be the child's mother, presumably a crack whore.
That's from the low end of the spectrum.
Last year I was trying to remember who wrote The Nutcracker - ETA Hoffman. I was talking to myself as I was doing this when a customer corrected me: it wasn't The Nutcracker, but The Nutcracker Suite. I told her, no ma'am the original work. Again she told declared it was The Nutcracker Suite. Her manner was the standard "what do you know, you're only a bookstore clerk." It was then that I remembered it was Hoffman, so I explained, in an even tone and a smile on my face that what I was referring to was the original story The Nutcracker, by Hoffman, whichTchaikovsky composed the Nutcracker Ballet for, The Nutcracker Suite being part of the larger work. The look on her face made it clear that I was wrong for correcting her. After all, what do we know?
My coworker A. had to deal with a fellow looking for a book called "Counting Coup," but he spelled it to her- "coop". He insisted actually that coop was the correct spelling, and even after we'd determined that the book was about Native Americans and not chickens, continued to insist on his spelling. His dismembered corpse was later found in a landfill.
It's not just the customers. The organization of a retail chain store has it's faults. Like I said earlier, my district manager came from a clothing background. She knows selling and marketing. But when we needed copies of a local cookbook this Christmas, we were unable to meet our customer's needs simply because the company said ‘no'. It was a Junior League cookbook, and I pass their offices twice a day. Simplicity itself to stop by and pick up a carton. But "no". Suggest something else, she told us. I told customers where they could find it instead, at a mom-and-pop bookstore a couple of blocks away.
The company on the upper levels is a chore sometimes too. They declare a book something no longer carried, and we can't have it on our shelves. The best example of this is Neil Gaiman's graphic novel The Books of Magic. It's perfectly targeted at adult readers of the Harry Potter series, but because it didn't do stellar years ago when it was first issued, it's no longer part of our regular stock, DESPITE the fact that the Sandman series has picked up reader over the last few years and that Gaiman was actually promoted within the company with the release of "Endless Nights" and "Wolves in the Walls" last fall.
The solution to the company problem is to get better in touch with what individual stores need to carry as opposed to the nationally mandated titles that have no draw locally. Another factor the company needs to consider is the timeliness of the stuff we carry. Flu epidemic? Order copies of Gina Kolata's Flu. Mad Cow Disease in the news? Deadly Feasts. Radio Reader on NPR should be another red flag for the corporate buyer- when the new title is announced, each store should get a copy.
Aggressive, proactive marketing is an approach we need to take, meeting the customers needs, instead to trying to tell them what we think their needs are.
I had a dozy of one recently. The district manager, who used to work for a clothing company, announced that we were going to carry clothes at the bookstore. This was a dream, mind you, despite the fact that we have started carrying anime' t-shirts and sweatshirts. In the dream, we were carrying blouses and skirts.
Scary ass Lovecraft dreams, I can handle; tell me to sell blouses, I'm terrified.
Not all the nightmares at the bookstore are dreams. Reality is far scarier.
Periodically in some of the bbs's I frequent, I read threads dealing with bookstores, the unhelpful clerks and the lack of quality stock. Honestly, I believe the chain stores pretty much get the customers they deserve.
My recent favourite: A man wearing a ball cap, printed with the statement "I only date crack whores." He was carrying a toddler on his shoulders, accompanied by what seemed to be the child's mother, presumably a crack whore.
That's from the low end of the spectrum.
Last year I was trying to remember who wrote The Nutcracker - ETA Hoffman. I was talking to myself as I was doing this when a customer corrected me: it wasn't The Nutcracker, but The Nutcracker Suite. I told her, no ma'am the original work. Again she told declared it was The Nutcracker Suite. Her manner was the standard "what do you know, you're only a bookstore clerk." It was then that I remembered it was Hoffman, so I explained, in an even tone and a smile on my face that what I was referring to was the original story The Nutcracker, by Hoffman, whichTchaikovsky composed the Nutcracker Ballet for, The Nutcracker Suite being part of the larger work. The look on her face made it clear that I was wrong for correcting her. After all, what do we know?
My coworker A. had to deal with a fellow looking for a book called "Counting Coup," but he spelled it to her- "coop". He insisted actually that coop was the correct spelling, and even after we'd determined that the book was about Native Americans and not chickens, continued to insist on his spelling. His dismembered corpse was later found in a landfill.
It's not just the customers. The organization of a retail chain store has it's faults. Like I said earlier, my district manager came from a clothing background. She knows selling and marketing. But when we needed copies of a local cookbook this Christmas, we were unable to meet our customer's needs simply because the company said ‘no'. It was a Junior League cookbook, and I pass their offices twice a day. Simplicity itself to stop by and pick up a carton. But "no". Suggest something else, she told us. I told customers where they could find it instead, at a mom-and-pop bookstore a couple of blocks away.
The company on the upper levels is a chore sometimes too. They declare a book something no longer carried, and we can't have it on our shelves. The best example of this is Neil Gaiman's graphic novel The Books of Magic. It's perfectly targeted at adult readers of the Harry Potter series, but because it didn't do stellar years ago when it was first issued, it's no longer part of our regular stock, DESPITE the fact that the Sandman series has picked up reader over the last few years and that Gaiman was actually promoted within the company with the release of "Endless Nights" and "Wolves in the Walls" last fall.
The solution to the company problem is to get better in touch with what individual stores need to carry as opposed to the nationally mandated titles that have no draw locally. Another factor the company needs to consider is the timeliness of the stuff we carry. Flu epidemic? Order copies of Gina Kolata's Flu. Mad Cow Disease in the news? Deadly Feasts. Radio Reader on NPR should be another red flag for the corporate buyer- when the new title is announced, each store should get a copy.
Aggressive, proactive marketing is an approach we need to take, meeting the customers needs, instead to trying to tell them what we think their needs are.
