Tea in the Library Page 8

  A couple of things. For a start, there’s no disguising it, we were in a basement. While a basement can be made cosy — and ours was — the problem remained that we had no street frontage, no shop window, no prominent display and no proper signage on the street. Sherlock Holmes himself could look for us and miss finding us.

  Secondly, the building we were in, while not in the heritage category (and not beautiful), was also not young, shall we say. It had “maintenance issues”. And our kitchen door opened onto one of Sydney’s unsavoury back lanes, which was occasionally used for various interesting activities. Our drain was in regular use as a urinal, and our garbage bins have been a drop-off point for thieves who favour expensive fragrances.

  Thirdly, there were no less than six other independent bookshops in the same city block. We were also one block away from Kinokuniya, Sydney’s largest bookshop, across the road from a Collins Bookseller’s shop and an ABC shop, and a block and a half from Dymock’s flagship shop. Even for a bookshop lover, that’s a lot of bookshops!

  So what possessed me to choose this location? With all the ignorance of the enthusiastic novice, I chose it on the basis that it was in an area I knew, it was convenient for my office, the rent was lower than comparable sized shops with street frontage, I liked and trusted the young agent who showed it to me, and I thought that all the bookshops clustered together could be an advantage. As time and bitter experience would tell, some of these reasons were woefully wrong; but, encouragingly, some were right.

  As to locating a shop in the CBD rather than the suburbs, I did pause at one stage to consider the burbs. I did some research on prices and other bookshops in Chatswood, which is near my home, so also familiar to me. Chatswood is a large centre, and rents were not much less than the CBD. Interestingly, it has very few bookshops for its size. I wondered why. Was there something I didn’t know? Chatswood is dominated by a couple of huge malls, so most retail premises are inside these malls, which is a quite different model of leasing than simply a one-on-one arrangement in “the high street”, bringing its own challenges.

  As to opening in a smaller suburban shopping strip, the problem for me would have been being closely involved with the shop, as I wouldn’t have been able to visit it during the week if it were far from my office. I was so emotionally bound up with this project that the thought of a “set and forget” investment left completely to a manager wasn’t what I had in mind. I wanted to enjoy the shop too! My own home suburb already had the excellent Lindfield Bookshop, so again I would also have been venturing into an unfamiliar geographic area.

  In the end, the city centre called. I did the rounds of some available retail premises. I looked at one in Carrington Street which had actually been used as a bookshop in the past. It didn’t have a kitchen, but could have supported a simple café. It was about the right size. I very nearly went for this. I imagined it fitted out. I visualized the street signage. I almost asked for a lease.

  I drooled over a beautiful heritage premise that became available, and talked to the agent. This one was way out of my league, not only in terms of the rent. The agent gave me to understand that I’d have a lot of trouble getting a lease because I had no retail experience — a landlord wants a tenant who is going to run a successful business. This seemed a very reasonable point to me, and discouragement crept in again. After all, I didn’t even have an experienced manager at this point.

  It was also revealing to plunge into the murky profession of the real estate agent. I visited several different possible premises with the engagingly named Mr. Crook from a city agency. On one outing, we chatted about Kinokuniya, the Japanese-owned shop. “Did I tell you my wife is Japanese?” he said, being friendly. On another outing a few weeks later, apropos of what I forget, he said “Did I tell you my wife is Hungarian?” Next time we talked, she was from New Zealand. It didn’t inspire confidence.

  Then one day I was walking by a then-empty basement shop in York Street. It had been a restaurant, under several different names, for years (I had frequently eaten there), but had been empty for some months. The front gates at the edge of the pavement were locked up with attractive black wrought-iron gates, and looking past the landing and down the stairs, I could see the small front door and a bit of window. I copied down the agent’s number from the sign board and called.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Team in the Library

  It’s time to talk about the people on the bus, the rest of the royal “we”, the individuals (and they were very individual!) who made Tea In The Library what it was. To The Team goes so much of the kudos — and arguably so much of the blame. Though in the spirit of the ultimate responsibility of a leader, I accept that the buck stops with me.

  To begin with, my recruiting methods were crude, to say the least. Instead of placing an advertisement, interviewing and selecting the best manager for the job, instead I “asked around” and “kept my ears open” for likely candidates. The result was our inaugural team: Louise, a friend of a friend, who had run her own antiquarian bookshop with a partner for twelve years, was a gorgeous-looking mature lady who had a wonderful quiet sense of humour and a deep love of books.

  Todd, a perky young man I met at a publishers’ trade fair, manning the stand of a niche book distributor in the “new age” field, gave me lots of free advice and quit his job as a book rep to join Tea In The Library.

  Jo, another friend of a friend, and a great cook who did wonderful catering jobs for her acquaintances, was thrilled at the thought of running her own kitchen.

  I adored all three of these people. They were wonderful personalities, each unique and unusual in their own right. Each separately confided to me on the quiet that the job they had been given at Tea In The Library was the culmination of a dream, a chance to do something they had always imagined and loved. Each of them embraced my Vision with passion, commitment and enthusiasm.

  As each played such a great part in our early days, and as their stories are worth telling, let me describe each in more detail:

  Louise was a very beautiful lady. She was Welsh by birth, and retained a refined accent. Her love of books was palpable. She had come to the book trade while living in Glasgow, where her husband was working as an architect, and she was raising their daughter. One day, in the window of the local organic veggie shop, she saw a flyer calling a community meeting to start a local library of used books. She joined the community group taking on this project, and eventually found herself amid boxes and boxes of begged and borrowed pre-loved books. She found that she had a sixth sense for valuable editions, and recognized a rose among the thorns, that is to say, a valuable first edition among the junk. The feeling of instant appreciation turned out to be a special skill, and eventually led to Louise’s involvement in the antiquarian book trade, and to her becoming an accredited valuer of old and rare books.

  I was aware that the antiquarian trade was quite different from the new book trade, in terms of selection, suppliers, merchandising and customers. I reasoned, however, that someone who had run their own business for many years, including customer service, employing staff, keeping financial records, indeed making money, must have good skills and insights that would be useful to Tea In The Library. Louise’s resume was a well presented document, she had worked with the “Art On Paper” event, could talk about fiction, the classics and current affairs fluently and with charm. Her enthusiasm for the project was joyous.

  I had visions of Tea In The Library carrying a few shelves of beautiful antiquarian volumes, of offering to value customers’ “treasures”, of holding events that focused on the antiquarian market, reasoning that booklovers would lap this up. I signed Louise up with no qualms.

  Louise was a petite lady with blond hair, so beautiful that I saw strangers try to chat her up in cafes while I went to pay for the cappuccino. She had a quiet, well-spoken manner, and was one of life’s staunch pessimists. When I once asked her why she looked on the bleak side of things — she was very apt to call m
e up and start sen-tences with “we have a problem” — she was surprised. She claimed that in her Welsh family, she was considered the flippant optimist! I tried to get her to change “problem” to “challenge”, but I’m not sure it helped.

  I met Todd as he promoted the business of his then employer, a distributor of “new age” publications, including those of the well-known Hay House. I came across his stand at a publishers’ trade show, where I was wandering around soaking up any information I could find. At Todd’s stand, the gimmick was to reach into a barrel and extract a Louise Hay “inspirational card”. Mine said: “Everything I touch is a success” . I took this as an excellent omen. The flip side was even more encouraging:

  I now establish a new awareness of success. I know I can be as successful as I make up my mind to be. I move into the Winning Circle. Golden opportunities are everywhere for me. Prosperity of every kind is drawn to me.

  This put me in just the right frame of mind. I keep the card on my bedside table to this day. In addition to this cool card, Todd also gave me lots of advice. As I had with stand-holders all day, I explained that I was a “new bookseller”, and he responded with lots of practical advice about return rates and negotiating “discounts”. I was suitably impressed. This was another example of the practical advice almost any bookseller or indeed book industry person seemed willing to provide to a novice.

  I remembered Todd later, when I needed to ask about dealing with publishers, and rang the number on his business card. After cheerfully answering my questions, and wishing me well, I put it to him that he might like to consider joining Tea In The Library. This was bold, since by this stage I already had Louise signed up. However, it seemed to me that Todd’s knowledge and expertise in the new book trade would beautifully complement Louise’s personality fit with the Vision — that is, he would know what he was doing.

  Todd was in his mid twenties, recently married, and a ‘sandgroper’ from Western Australia who had moved to seek his fortune in Sydney. He was a mature young man, a very hard worker, who had won awards in his job as a rep, which involved driving all over a large area, pushing titles to bookshops. He had established a wide network among the booksellers of Sydney. I rang Derek, one of those whose judgment I trusted (on the immutable bases that he was running a successful bookshop and was a lot of fun) and asked about Todd. After some initial uncertainty because of Todd’s age, Derek concluded that he could probably do the job of managing my new shop as well as the next guy. Todd’s personality was extremely sunny — he was one of the most cheerful people I have ever had the privilege to work with. He was like a big puppy that everyone loved. His email name was “toddles” and it soon stuck.

  And then there was Jo. Ah, Jo! Our chef-cum-café-manager was a recommendation of a friend, who said “I know someone who can cater beautifully”. Foolishly as it turned out, my principal focus was on producing wonderful light meals in our café. Little did I know that this is the least of the ingredients — pardon the pun — in a successful hospitality business. But more of that later. Jo could indeed produce beautiful food — I know this because I threw a party at my home for all the now-legion people who had been helping/sup-porting/advising the Tea In The Library project. Jo catered for the party with selections from her proposed Opening Menu, and it was delicious — rice wraps with Chinese BBQ duck, three cheese tart, char-grilled fillets of lamb with lime mayonnaise, vegetable frittata, lime mini muffins with crème fraîche and smoked salmon, mas-carpone and berry tartlets. Mmmm. The party went off beautifully, everyone agreeing that Jo was a wonder.

  Jo liked to say that she had “fallen through the cracks” of life. She had a marriage behind her, a grown son and daughter, frizzy hair that stood out in a halo that increased in size as her stress level rose, blue glasses, a penchant for partying and an absolutely suicidal capacity for hard work. Our plan was that she would act as the principal chef, plus manage the café — menu, ordering, staffing, and supervising the floor. I learnt later that her son, who had experience running a café, had told her from day one that this would never work (he was quite correct both in theory and in practice) but I knew no better at this stage, and Jo so desperately wanted “her own café” that she chose to disbelieve him.

  Others joined our inaugural team also. Jo and Louise and I interviewed assiduously for people to wait tables and help in the kitchen. Jo advised that on her calculations, in order to cover the proposed roster (we opened initially from 7.30 am for breakfast, through lunch to a 6 pm close, with shorter hours on Saturday and Sunday), we would need “two and a half chefs”, so we interviewed for chefs. We had a coffee cart at street level, to catch the passing take-away trade of office workers in the mornings (surely lucrative!) so we interviewed for a personable, energetic person to run that for us. We also interviewed for junior booksellers.

  Our advertisements attracted a wide and eclectic selection of Sydney’s hopefuls. One older chappie had worked in the Matthew Talbot Hostel for the Homeless, and claimed expertise at making fruit salad for three hundred. We talked to kitchen hands and students, travelers and teachers. Then along came Chloe, a lively and confident British drama student on a traveler’s visa, who had run a 250 seat TGI Friday’s restaurant in London as supervisor. She definitely beat the homeless-shelter chap. Chloe was hired to wait tables, supervise the floor, and back up Jo in the kitchen. We also hired a variety of young ladies and gents to wait tables on a casual roster basis.

  A couple of days after we opened, we had a young lady walk in off the street to ask if we had any waitress jobs. She was recently returned from a year or so working in England, and had extensive experience, principally in “silver service” waitressing. This was Kate, a Botticelli beauty with a smooth professional manner, an astounding capacity for hard work, and an inexplicable love for hospitality, her chosen career. We signed her up.

  Of the people I spoke to who wanted to sell books, one candidate stood out. Emma had answered an advertisement I had run in a book industry publication called Weekly Book News. She also was British, although had been living in Australia for some time with her Aussie partner. She had worked at a couple of bookshops around Sydney, and was keen to move up from garden-variety bookselling to a mana-gerial position. I explained that I already had two managers, which was one manager too many, but offered her the “junior” bookseller position. She was an elegant and serious young lady (who could be quite a hoot when relaxed, as I was to find out) who seemed to me to have a strong knowledge of how the book trade worked — someone else who knew what they were doing! Excellent!

  In the spirit of being way too over-staffed (read: ignorant) I also decided we needed another part-time bookseller to cover Thursday nights and weekends. By chance, an experienced bookseller named Paul was recommended to us by Adyar, the new age shop around the corner in Clarence Street. Adyar had recently had to shed one staff member, and Paul had been “it”, although when I rang the manager she seemed genuinely regretful that this had been necessary, and gave him a glowing reference. Paul was an extremely tall man, in middle life (old enough to remember the sixties, anyway!) with a very long, grey ponytail. In addition to this already striking look, he had the most constant cheerful grin. He was an artist at heart, who wanted just some part-time work to live on while he pursued his artistic passion. He also adored books, and knew them very well. His rapport with customers turned out to be legendary, and he took coffee orders and served meals as cheerfully as he hand-sold books. It was not unusual for customers who had known him in his Adyar years to look him up at Tea In The Library, or even stop him on the street.

  Paul’s sense of humour was dry, and resilient. He had a wry comment for most situations, was a devoted Green, and once told me to make sure that my enthusiastic managers didn’t “take over” my dream shop and leave me a mere observer. A keen observation on his part. Paul had seen many a bookshop rise and fall over his bookselling career. His trade mark response when people requested his attention, remembered by many even tod
ay, was “Yes, indeedy!”

  With four booksellers on the floor, we would be able to comfortably cope with the expected enormous demand for our product. Little did we know that after a year our average sales would amount to only about twenty books a day. On a good day.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The fit-out

  The “Vision” for Tea In The Library — that is, its physical appearance — now had to be created. This was definitely going to be the fun part. The project involved taking the bank’s money and spending it to make the little basement in York Street a beautiful, welcoming haven that would attract booklovers like a magnet. Before me was the picture of an English country house library, a club on the US East Coast, Wayne Manor. Now was the moment to really get creative and produce reality! It was a very inspiring thought.

  In attempting to estimate the likely cost of the fit-out for the Business Plan, I had consulted various shop-fitting companies, talked over the project on the phone with several, and chosen one to visit the premises and provide indicative costs. This company employed in-house designers, and their approach in the initial advisory period seemed very professional. They provided examples of shops they had worked on, clear stages for the project, with cost estimates that seemed realistic.

  Then there was Ed and Craig.

  I count my choice of shop fitter as Big Mistake Number One, although it was not for want of goodwill and hard work on all sides. This is how it happened.

  Quite reasonably, Dale — the small business consultant who was helping me pull things together — suggested that I should seek a second quotation for the shop fit. This seemed eminently sensible. Ed was an experienced shop fitter who ran his own company. He gave me a very much more detailed estimate, which looked (at the beginning) to be somewhat cheaper (although not by much). He was a tall, friendly Dutchman who became as enthusiastic about the project as me. He strove hard to give personal service and have satisfied customers. The work produced by his sub-contractors was good quality on the whole, and he tried hard to give me value for money. He had the personal touch, as did his Project Manager, Craig, who worked so closely with us for about four months that it felt like we were related. Before accepting Ed’s company for the job, I did the “right” things — I sought a personal reference, I checked that Ed’s insurance was up to date, and I called about five previous customers, all of whom were satisfied with his work.