John
Yes, this was an error on our part. Unfortunately we are not in a position to reprint the catalogues. However, as a good will gesture, I am happy to raise a credit for the catalogues if you are able to supply me with an invoice number from where you were charged.
Regards
Wayne Johnston

As for the Crown Retailers scheme: I’d love to hear from some of those who are signed up. Hello to any Crown Retailers out there: how’s it going? Have you received any commission on the web sales yet? Enough to cover the membership fee?

Gardners: yes. Back in my secular bookselling days we used Gardners daily: excellent service. I’ve just opened a Gardners account for LST and their customer service is still as good as I remember it, and the Gardners website simply makes STL UK look pitiful. Sorry STL UK dudes, but you are running a seriously sub-standard website… STL USA, on the other hand, is superb; so c’mon here in the UK: please get it together!!

May we never become Wesley Owen clones! It’s bad enough seeing the March of the St Andrew’s Clones (on which I see that they still haven’t fixed their keyword stuffing) — we can do without WO clones too! Vive la resistance!

Funny you should say about leaving the Crown initiative as I was looking at the Crown Brochure the day before yesterday thinking if it was a worthwhile initiative for me- and I must admit that what put me off was the corporate branding of Crown Bookshops being emphasized so much.
I acknowledge a need to some sort of marker and unifier to let people potentially know you are a part of a larger group of independent retailers working as a buying group for want of a better term, but I want to be unique! I don’t want to look like a franchise or concession shop, well not unless they are going to be paying for a whole new refurb for me, then I might consider it for a while.

On a side issue but tying in at the same time, my first batch of Select Promotion magazines came today – I had to chase them when I realised I should have already had them a week or so ago – seems I got lost in the shuffle and though set up for them they just never got sent out from the warehouse, ahh well it happens, especially to me at the minute it would seem.
Still 10 out of 10, I chased yesterday, got an apology from Wayne for the oversight and they duly arrived today. that’s pretty good follow through.

So I sit down to look through it – after all it’s my first chance to see what’s in the promotion and think about ordering stock in prior to doing my mail out and on the first page in the welcome blurb section, in the first line it said…

‘… Here at Wesley Owen we have many items’!

So maybe Kate you are onto something with your sneaking suspicion )

Now in terms of customer service I can’t complain as I phoned STLD and spoke to a very nice woman, Janette, who went and fetched out some past editions, as well as the crown version and the WO version – and sure enough this go around all versions have the same wording, when of course normally they have a suitable ‘other’ replacing the term WO she assures me. She also said she would pass my upset and concerns on and point out the problem – though of course there is nothing they can do now.
I ended the conversation at least feeling a little assured that its just the way my current week is running. 10 minutes later she phoned me back to say she had passed on the problem to her manager and they were aware of the problem and will credit me back the cost of this issue due to my upset – can’t ask for fairer than that really.

However, OK, I know it was a just a proof read oversight but it really got to me – not least because this is a promotion I pay into by buying the magazines for at least the next 12 months, I know there are benefits and reciprocations: I get better discount to off set the price promotion items, and I know that this edition shall not have cost me anything but that’s just as well because I don’t think I can actually use these ones now as it says the wrong thing, heck it looks like I nicked them from the next city overs WO! and gives the wrong impression to my customers. Well come on it tells the customers that I am a WO and that could cause a bit of confusion – it’s bad enough with me having to do the ‘no we are not anything to do with SSG/SPCK, we are entirely independent with it all being done as my personal mission etc etc’ without having to potentially add the WO bit to the spiel when a customer who had recieved one of the magazines comes in with a return, concern, complaint or issue.

So there we go, I just thought it somewhat fitting to share this after reading Kates post and her concerns – hope you all don’t mind. BTW I agree with Kates wish list: Good Discount of 40%+ on our Core stock, small level see-safe starting at 5 copies (though I would accept no see-safe and a high margin 47%+ on small scale firm sale lead new titles of 3+ copies), and yes good promotional material that don’t require lots of outlay and try to turn me into a WO.
You know to be honest that list bit sounds a bit like some of what Bertrams & Gardners offer to the small secular independent shops! Maybe we should start looking at our Christian Shops with a secular focus for a while, after all if they can do it in the secular trade when their businesses are feeling the same pinch Christian ones are, surely we with our christian principles of charity, trust and charis should be able to emulate their good practice?? Just a thought.

Although our ASM has offered us some See Safe since then, it always seems to mean taking 15 of something I know we can sell 4 or 5 of at most. Even with this kind of “See Safe”, the carriage costs wipe out our margins.

We would welcome STL developing an approach that really caters for the needs of the small independent – at the moment my sneaking suspicion is that we are a bit of an inconvenience in the market and suppliers like STL would like us to either become bigger, brighter, more branded, more Wesley Owen-like – and hence more profitable to them – or die.

So what would such an approach entail? Good discounts on our core stock, the way we define it – the stuff that we know keeps selling again and again in our little town. See safe on interesting new titles, without having to buy a ton of it. Information about what’s selling to customers rather than what’s selling to book shops (actually our ASM is quite good at this but it would be helpful on the web site). Promotional materials that don’t require us to buy £15,000 of stock a year to qualify (that is more than we actually have space for in our shop).

I appreciate the Christian market is bigger than the small independents and given some of the comments on the ‘Christian Bookshops – Who Needs Them?’ thread, maybe some people would prefer to see some of them disappear. But in a tough market we all need all the help we can get to survive, that includes STL, and maybe STL will feel the pinch too if small independents go out of business – after all every time it happens it’s about £12,000 pa lost revenue to them based on our own spending.

It’s nice on a number of levels – not least because it says this is a good forum (well done phil!) but also because it shows a great level of customer service and proactiveness.

Now c’mon everyone else: please stop dragging your feet!! I guess it’s too late for the Christian book trade to lead the way but why can’t we at least keep up to speed?

I am interested to hear about the See-Safe promotions as I have recieved no information on these initiatives at all – but then in the 6 months I have now been fully running my Christian Bookshop business( I have though had an account with STLD for longer than this) and utilising STLD at least weekly I have yet to see an ASM and perhaps it is only if one see’s an ASM that one finds out about these initiatives – or perhaps one needs to be a Crown Independent Retailer to take advantage of these?

I do of course get the Bulletin and order from this directly via the website – which by the way still seems to have a bit of a glitch when it comes to Discounts and matching them up to the stated discounts on the webpages and in the basket etc.
I have also just recently signed up to the Select Scheme as well – but that is not see-safe, though it carries extra discount to cover the discounts given to the customers,a nd of course does cost £5.00 per 100 magazines. My hope is this will be recouped by extra sales.

I do wholeheartedly agree with the premise that accurate stock control and stock management is essential in good, profitable and knowledgeable shop running – however I still think better margins/discounts and/or returns policies from publishers and wholesalers are also important, and I thank those publishers who do give good terms on all fronts, and also the wholesalers who give me automatic returns notes based on how much I have purchased in the quarter and good discounts each month on pre-pub titles – thus showing true support of small independent booksellers. This really does help boost the daily viability in our hard market.

While it is great to see that STLD is offering Synergi free to the trade, I think it only fair to point out that both Gardners & Bertrams are also offering their stock management systems free as well.
Though this may not be of interest to the majority of Christian Bookshops – to those with a wider range of stock carried then these can be good alternative system choices, also worth noting that they also support feedback to Nielsen etc.
Also on the Bertrams offer I note that they give an extra 2% discount on orders through the system before 1pm – a nice incentive for early ordering there!

To be fair I use none of these currently as I have a system that i have kibbled together myself from cheap library sourceware and a cheap laserchamp scanner – total cost less than £80.00, and it lets me keep track of my stock, book it in, print reports etc etc. I have been using this for the last 18+months and though not necessarily as wonderful as the systems on offer through the Wholesalers it does mean that it doesn’t cost me anything per month – and when utilised alongside pubeasy and suppliers websites it works brilliantly – though alas no nielsen feedback facility. Now if more Christian Publishers would sign up to Batch -not least Marston & Norwich Books, then I would be signed up, away and running in a fully tied up world.