Looking forward - a long road and a mountain to climb?

At our committee meeting this month, we acknowledged that there may be some tough decisions ahead. Our sales over the last year have been less than anticipated and we aren’t currently covering our costs. A lot of reasons behind this and we know that we are seeing around 10% less customers in the shop as well as a similar reduction in their average spend. It does feel a little like a long road ahead and then some mountains to climb too!

We can weather this storm for a while longer and we are planning some changes to our book stock, shop layout and our look on the high street to encourage more people into our lovely space. A huge thank you to the Co-op Foundation for funding to help achieve these changes.

Whilst we aren’t all about money and sales, we do need to be able to cover our costs so that we can continue to offer all the other services we provide to our community. What we want to do is to think about how we do this in a regenerative way, making sure that increased sales are generated from books that we feel align with our values and ethos. We are looking closely at our book stock and also looking at our offering to schools, young adults and children as a primary focus. There does feel like a lot of uncertainty and chaos in our society at present, but we hope we can continue to offer new ideas, stories and ways of being between the covers of the books we sell and in the way that we operate.

If you would like to get involved in our next steps and help to see October Books thrive then do call in for a conversation about the skills you can offer or drop us a line at info@octoberbooks.org