Mr B's Emporium

What happens when two lawyers abandon their careers to follow a bookish dream? Nic Bottomley and his wife Juliet found themselves in Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company on the first day of their honeymoon in 2004, captivated by a bookshop "full of opinion" and passionate curation. That single visit sparked a revelation that would transform their lives and the bookselling landscape in the UK.
 
Despite market research suggesting independent bookshops were fighting a losing battle against Amazon's rapid growth, the couple opened Mr B's Emporium in Bath in 2006. Within just two years, they'd claimed the title of Best Independent Bookshop in the UK, not by following conventional retail wisdom, but by prioritising genuine human connection and book enthusiasm above all else.
 
Georgie Stayches chats with Nic about how they got started, what they have learnt along the way, what sets them apart from other retail, their Customer Experience focus and what it is about them that has seen them named in the Top Ten Book Shops in the world.

To find out more about Mr B's Emporium, visit https://mrbsemporium.com/ 

Georgie Stayches, host of The Art & Heart of CX, brings a human lens to how businesses design Customer Experience (CX). She explores how every little detail impacts how a customer interprets, experiences and recalls a situation - from our senses to the built and natural environments - and how this can impact brand loyalty, word of mouth marketing and revenue.

Each episode she invites a special guess from all works of life and industries to share what they consider the art and hear of CX.

Want to hear more from Georgie? Her keynote presentations inspire audiences with real-world strategies to elevate CX, understand human behaviour and build lasting audience loyalty.

Find out more at georgiestayches.com

Transcript

Meeting Nick from Mr B's Emporium

Speaker 1 0:49

Hello. Well, I'm excited to be here with Nick Bottenley from Mr B's Emporium in Bath. Thank you, nick, for joining.

Speaker 2 0:56

Welcome, welcome. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 0:58

I am so excited. I have lived vicariously through a friend in the UK with Mr B's and Mr B's Emporium first came to my attention when she was gifted a Book Spa voucher and I was like what is this bookstore? So I'm so excited to be chatting to you today, and I know that you're not only the owner of Mr B's, you're also the executive chair of the Association of Independent.

Speaker 2 1:21

Of all booksellers actually.

Speaker 1 1:22

Of all booksellers.

Speaker 2 1:23

Yes, the UK Booksellers Association which, unusually, compared to some countries, we look after chains independents, anyone who sells books, essentially anyone who sells new books.

Speaker 1 1:34

Yep, and of course I wanted to chat to you because Mr Bees is such a leader in customer experience. But before we sort of talk about that, I want to go backwards a little bit to how you got started. Sure, and some business ideas come in all different places and times, and yours happened on your honeymoon.

Speaker 2 1:54

Yeah, yeah, it did, and so it's. The origin story of the shop is not like the most conventional one. We were doing something very different. I was a derivatives lawyer. My wife, juliet was also or just my wife, if we go to that honeymoon moment was also a lawyer by trade, doing some photography as well, but had been trained as a lawyer and was working in law. Um, and we both reached the point when we went on that honeymoon back in 2004, we'd reached the point where we knew we didn't want to be lawyers forever, but we hadn't really worked out what the path out would be. We didn't want to just go to something else that was, in that kind of same sphere, the most logical things that we could have done. It wasn't really what we wanted to do. We just kind of reached the point where we decided we wanted to do something where we got the work ethics. If you're going to spend a lot more than five-sevenths of your life doing something, then let's make it something that you love.

Speaker 1 2:50

Yes.

Speaker 2 2:52

But we hadn't figured out what that was. And on the first day of our but we hadn't figured out what that was, and on the first day of our honeymoon, we went to the elliott bay book company in seattle. So we were headed towards alaska for our honeymoon, but we were in seattle and, um, it remains one of the world's best bookshops. Uh, and it was a bookstore that was so full of opinion, like, like, whether it was just in the words that came out of the booksellers mouths, or the labels on the shelves, or just the books that had been selected for the table. It just had a lot of curation, a lot of opinion. And I went back the next day as well and we just got thinking about it.

Speaker 2 3:31

A few days later we were sitting in a terrace of a balcony of our bed and breakfast, and we was. We said, what about that? What about there aren't that many bookshops that do quite that that we were aware of? I'm sure there was some, but what if we did that? So that's, yeah, that was the genesis of it, because we loved, I should say. You know, there was a reason why we went to a bookshop in the first two days of our honeymoon we love books, we love reading. There was something we'd always had a big connection with. It's something we spent a lot of our. Any spare time or any holidays were always filled with reading and lunch times in our jobs and stuff, so yeah, well, that was going to be my next question.

Speaker 1 4:07

Actually, did you have a pre-existing interest in books?

Speaker 2 4:10

yeah, yeah, so it wasn't, it was an entirely. It was like searching. I guess it was just that was the moment where you know which of our interests and passions in life could also become a career. That was where, yeah, so there were various things we're into and various, you know, uh, but uh, many of which would be, you know, implausible to actually have as a career. Uh, because you can be interested in things but doesn't necessarily mean you've got any talent for them, uh, but that seemed like something and it felt to us, yeah, we were always reading, we had an interest and we loved sort of sharing recommendations of books, you know just like anyone I mean that's the when we recruit.

Speaker 2 4:52

Now the only things I need are someone who loves books yes and who knows how to talk about books.

Speaker 1 4:58

Yes.

Speaker 2 4:59

Everything else. We, because that's all we had. Yes, so if we learn, we learn everything else. So we can definitely teach everything else or other people can learn everything else.

Speaker 1 5:06

And I love when you know your customer experience starts on your website when it says Book Lovers, welcome to your spiritual home. Right, your customer experience starts on your website when it says Book Lovers, welcome to your spiritual home.

Speaker 2 5:16

And you feel like you're in this community already, so that was 2004?. Yes.

Speaker 1 5:20

And then you came back, started the plans.

Speaker 2 5:23

So it took like a year to, you know, make plans we lived in Prague, by the way, that's where I was lawyering at that time To relocate to the UK UK to find a house, you know, and what have you and do a lot of research about whether it was even plausible.

Speaker 2 5:44

And basically I did research and discovered nobody was opening bookshops because Amazon had been rapaciously growing, a lot of indies had suffered through the growth of the chains and that sort of the indie sector was a little beleaguered at that time.

Speaker 2 6:00

Yeah, so I did all the research discovered it was a terrible idea, but we decided to, you know, persist anyway with the sort of fueled by blind faith, and we came back to the UK in October 2005. I spent a month, um, driving around the bookshops of the north of england, living with my in-laws and driving around there, um, and talking to booksellers about the you know, to understand more about the trade and everything about it and what life was like as a bookseller, uh, which was great because it's the most collaborative industry. It really is so collegiate and collaborative across all types of bookselling. Of what life was like as a bookseller, which was great because it's the most collaborative industry. It really is so collegiate and collaborative across all types of bookselling. So I got a lot of information and then, yeah, we got a premises, sort of in April the next year, and we opened in June 2006 here in the central bath.

Speaker 1 6:50

And you opened 2006, 2008,. You um your first award, so you've um best independent yes bookseller in the uk. Yes, so two years after opening, yeah when did you know you were onto something special?

Speaker 2 7:05

I mean, I think, yeah, I guess I mean that was a huge sort of validation for what we were doing and I guess that was that was sort of yeah it, what we were doing, and I guess that was that was sort of yeah. It showed us we'd done far more than we could have imagined that we would do to win that award against so many brilliant established bookshops and a handful of newer ones. So, yeah, that was a big moment. I guess the thing that in terms of when did we think we were onto a winner you know, the first six months of owning a high street business can be a kind of lonely place, but we noticed immediately because just no one knows you're there because you can't afford.

Speaker 2 7:46

You know anyone who's been to our shop we're we're very central in Bath, but we're one block off the main drag because the rent's 10 times cheaper. Let's be honest, no independent business can afford to be on the main drag of their high street at the start. So you know you need to build the word of mouth, and so I think really, when we knew we were onto a winner was that even early on, people were just so supportive of the fact that we were here and anyone who expressed anything other than support was nervousness. It was nervousness.

Speaker 2 8:17

We often get people say, oh, you know, there's a Waterstones right around the corner. We're like, we know that that's fine, we have no beef with Waterstones. It means we're handy if they don't have the book in store. And so I think just the support that we got from local people for setting up a bookshop and then already in sort of 2008, we both through that award and through what we were hearing from customers, people loved that we were very we went in wanting to give a very high level of service. What I don't think we realized was how engineered we made the recommendation. Part of that service.

Speaker 2 9:01

We knew we were going to give really high service. That was absolutely the fundamental principle behind the business. But it was that. How do you? It was their recommendation, the fact that people valued those recommendations, which I guess we didn't have as much confidence in, because we started with just our own love of books.

Speaker 1 9:20

Yes, and when you talk about going around to bookstores, when you came back from Prague and chatting to bookstore owners, how much research did you do around sort of the behaviors of you know the customers and because you've got some amazing products, which we'll talk about in a minute, that really set you apart from a lot of bookstores I'm really keen to know how that evolved. Is it the research that you did before? Was it leaning into what your customers were telling you as they were coming through the doors?

From Lawyers to Booksellers: Origin Story

Speaker 2 9:53

So the principles we had some principles. We did do do some research, by which I mean I read some books. I have to confess we are very um, self, uh, I can't defined in this area. I guess we're not like we never did that thing where we start saying, oh think, think about customer sight lines and their journey. You know, I know big retail.

Speaker 2 10:17

I've been to so many conferences around retail and book selling and so many people spend so much time thinking about the ideal customer journey. Our shop is a labyrinth. The bees is full of so many barriers, blockades and confusions that most experts in customer behavior would say we're an absolute disaster. So we went more from a series of principles. I read a book called Hug your Customers. And I read, and this is going to sound so counterintuitive. And I read and this is going to sound so counterintuitive, I read Sam Walton's autobiography the Creator of Walmart.

Speaker 2 11:01

Yes, that's a problematic book and business in many different ways, but weirdly I took from that the effort he put in into just making sure his customers were looked after, or that his people were looked after and then his people looked after the customer as well, and the fundamental principle that if you get something wrong because you're not going to get everything right that you make it right you look after you know yeah, and so we?

Speaker 2 11:23

those were the kind of key things, and it wasn't really based on anything we read in a book. It was just based on what we inherently believed about the way a customer experience should be. And it's no coincidence that the spark of the idea was Elliott Bay in America, because, although it's much maligned the standard, certainly at that point the standard of customer service in retail in America was a lot higher than in the UK.

Speaker 2 11:56

I traveled in America an awful lot and although it often got parodied of oh it's just people parroting, have a nice day and all this sort of stuff, just the level of conversational, just having a normal conversation with people, engaging with people, asking if they need help, chatting to them, making friends effectively to the extent the customer wants. That that's kind of what we aim to replicate. It was always a very natural attempt to just create connections with our customers.

Speaker 1 12:30

Yes, and it comes through in everything that you do and, as I said, even just that comment on the website. Welcome to your spiritual home.

Speaker 2 12:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1 12:38

But there's also a phrase on the website which I love, which says it's about offering a memorable, if sometimes eccentric, experience to all visitors and about sharing our joyous book obsession with each of you. So it does feel like a community. You're not coming into a transactional store, you've built relationships yeah, it's not.

Speaker 2 12:58

It's. I mean, of course, you know, in order to survive as as and thrive as, an independent business on the high street, there is a transactional element and we're always looking to sell as many books as we can and bring as more and more people into our shop. But and I don't think any business, indie business, should sort of shy away from that necessity in 2025, but it is primarily uh, about just the conversation with books at the heart is the key thing. So we do it in various ways, but fundamentally, everyone who walks into the shop should have the opportunity to be recommended a book or talk about what, or be asked what they. So we're and lots of bookshops you know validly and it can fit different models take a much more stand back approach of course they're not.

Speaker 2 13:48

They ignore their customers, but they let the customers do the browsing and they let the books do the talking, and they're much more reverent. Our place can be noisy yes, it, uh can be. Um, you know, you come in on a friday afternoon in the summer and there can be multiple conversations sort of cutting across, with booksellers chipping in ideas into one conversation, another customer chipping in an idea, and that's frankly, I think, when it's at its best.

Speaker 2 14:14

And a kid's room, you know, especially as you're near holiday season or the beginning of a half term and you've come and we're kind of midweek and well, we're on a Monday and it's school's in, so you won't get to see that today, unfortunately, unless someone's skipping out. But you know that's the sharing the book obsession thing. When you get to share it kid a kid who's not yet found their way into reading all of those conversations they might be having, might be with with their parents, and you know so, there's a degree of eye rolling potentially going on. But when they get to come in and see one of my booksellers openly geeking out about a book and talking about books as if they're, you know, the next rock and roll, yes, then you can see that you can change a kid's perception. Oh, it's not just mum and dad telling me I should read.

Speaker 2 15:07

People seem to genuinely love this stuff. Yeah, and that's the great fun.

Speaker 1 15:11

Yes, and so you win an award two years after opening, but you also expand two years after opening.

Speaker 2 15:17

Yeah, so there was an IT office above our shop and they left. So we had the opportunity to expand a little earlier, I think, than we would have chosen for it to come, but literally all we had to do was open an internal door and renovate. But it was the yeah, we grabbed that opportunity and we did that and that gave us two extra rooms and yeah, so for the next decade that was the sort of full extent of the shop. These sort of five rooms. It gave us breathing space.

Speaker 1 15:49

Yes, yeah, and I mean you're expanding because the demand is there. Yeah, so words got out at this stage.

Building a Bookshop Philosophy

Speaker 2 15:56

Oh, yeah, and I mean the shop was entirely built, you know, on local customers and yeah, so definitely there was a lot of word of mouth and it. It always takes us a while to build, but our, our sales were just going up at a very steady and quite fast rate. So we had confidence enough to, you know, start it began with just Juliet and I and my brother-in-law, harvey and our shop dog and I guess when by the time we'd expanded we'd then got three members of staff.

Speaker 2 16:26

So it gave, it empowered us to do that, and we went through a long phase then of of kind of constantly needing to add people, like periodically to to, because we were just getting involved in so much activity.

Speaker 2 16:40

Because, the shop was busier. You needed more people on the shop floor. The way we sell books is very. You need a good shop floor presence. You can't have one person doing that because otherwise people there's no one to talk to the customers. And we were getting involved in looking after so many events for other people the literature festival, things like that.

Speaker 1 17:03

And you talked before about. You know businesses do need to make money.

Speaker 2 17:07

Yes.

Speaker 1 17:07

Absolutely, and I think sometimes people when we talk about the term customer experience they think it's a bit the warm fuzzy kind of fluff it's. You know, research has shown that people are more likely to come back and repeat business and loyalty based on customer experience over product or price. So it has that power and you obviously were very intuitive. You knew the customers and the shops evolved with that and I talked about before. You've got services that are very unique to.

Speaker 1 17:39

Mr B's and I would love to hear a bit more about those and sort of how they came about.

Speaker 2 17:43

Yeah, so we realised very early on that the biggest thing that customers told us repeatedly about what they loved from our shop was the sort of recommendation and the opinion, the fact that you know, and the fact that we really tried to tailor we always really tried to tailor things to what people love, which is not unique to our bookshop, but we just fronted that up, I guess in a very visible way, which we'd intended to do, but clearly that came across. Um, so we were sitting in the pub that's adjacent to where we're sitting now, called the salamander, right opposite our shop, and having a conversation about it in late to early 2008, I think, or yeah and um, we said, oh, how do you make that into something that people can buy? How can you? So we came up with the idea of a reading spa over a couple of conversations, whereby people would buy a voucher and then come and sit one-on-one with one of our booksellers at an appointed time, have tea and cake maybe, and talk about what they like reading and talk about what they didn't like reading, and it would be an informal conversation where we would try and get the names of lots of books that they enjoyed, lots of authors explore genres and things like that. But it would be.

Speaker 2 18:57

It was absolutely not intended to be anything therapeutic. Therapeutic, we call it, we use the word bibliotherapy, but we use it, we make it very clear, we use it tongue-in-cheek. Uh, it's supposed to be only therapy in the sense that you don't often get to sit around talking about how great books are, and that would be it's time and space to do that, and it would include with it a voucher to spend on books, yes, a little goodie bag. So we began selling those, uh, and they quickly became extremely popular and then, maybe three years on, you know they'd been very popular, but mainly, you know, with bath residents or local folk, you know, because that was where we were known and what have you. But, um, we then started doing a subscription version. We weren't, we didn't invent subscriptions, that's for sure, but we did kind of latch on to the fact that you know they could be refreshed and we started them, really started them early in the sort of revival of the subscription model, and we wanted our subscriptions to be just as bespoke.

Speaker 2 20:01

So, really, we thought of them as a distance reading spa, so a detailed questionnaire.

Speaker 1 20:05

Yep.

Speaker 2 20:05

And then you fill in all the details of your reading tastes and then one of us is appointed as your bibliotherapist to look after your reading for the duration of the subscription. We choose a book, we tease it to make sure it's not something you've read, and then it comes beautifully wrapped and it's been selected very much for your taste and it's a feedback process and we sort of through the subscription, we dance around the edges of your reading taste, hopefully. So.

Speaker 2 20:30

Those started maybe three years after, maybe 2011, 20, yeah, something like that yes and those two things have just sort of grown and grown and grown and are kind of cornerstones, I guess, guess, of what we do alongside the shop floor theatre.

Speaker 1 20:46

And how I mean. Customers are obviously huge advocates.

Speaker 2 20:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1 20:50

And I'm keen to know how you know that word spread when you first opened and even when the book spas started yeah. How word got out there.

Speaker 2 21:00

I mean, I've always been a huge believer in seeking any free publicity that we can because, again, independent businesses can't afford marketing budgets really in any form. So again, we've always I've been a big believer in the idea of super fans of your business and how you can, uh, how they can be such a huge weapon for you.

Speaker 2 21:21

So so I guess for us the spa was a unique thing. The spa and the subscriptions kind of contributed us to winning various other awards here for retail, for innovation, a second Independent Bookshop of the Year award in 2011, which sort of made us fairly unique to have won that twice and the Guardians listed you in the top 10 bookstores in the world.

Speaker 2 21:42

Yeah, so then it kind of feeds in the fact that you're doing something fairly unique in the spa and in terms of its scale and how bespoke it is something pretty unique further afield. So what we then found? If you look now, the people who come for reading spas usually they've traveled, Because people in bath have been aware of this gift for a long time. Of course, new people arrive and there's still lots of locals and lots of people from bristol and lots of people from the villages around, but also people travel a long way.

Speaker 2 22:13

so the fridays and mondays get booked up a long way ahead. They build entire weekends around, which is extremely humbling. Yeah, so yeah, you know, and times I guess in the mid 2010s, things like TripAdvisor and Google, you know, so there's that there's just opportunities for people to but the way you. It sounds like this is no magic bullet.

Speaker 2 22:34

We just try to deliver a really high standard of service and experience and, like it's a the spa is, the reading spa is is not a gimmick, it's just a call. You know, I often begin when I sit down with someone and say, look, you've come for a reading spa. It's got a fancy name, you've waited an age for it because it takes a long time to get booked in, but here's what we're going to do. We're just going to talk about books, yeah and um, and it's amazing how that creates connections. It then you creating more customers for life. Of course they then may go and buy subscriptions and spas for other people, so there's a direct spreading of your customer base. But really what it's about is you are connecting so closely with those customers that they keep you in their minds and they tell other people, but they also they're.

Speaker 2 23:25

They're going to come back and yeah, buy from you in the future and yeah and it said authenticity yeah I think you know you've got that gold in there and everything about your store.

Speaker 1 23:36

As I said, been on the website walking through it just now. I don't feel like I'm being sold books no I feel like you're trying to find my perfect book.

Expanding with Award-Winning Service

Speaker 2 23:44

Yeah, um, and so it's that relationship building that you've got, that you just don't get in other places no, and I mean I guess not, or guess, sometimes it can get hidden away in those places and I think, um, you know the thing you said about you're finding the perfect book. It's really important. The best way to create long-term customers is not just to sell them books, but to sell them books that they absolutely love, so that then they say, hey, those guys somehow, you know. So there is also a slow building of a hive mind of book knowledge. It's the absolute, anti-algorithmic kind of database of of just ideas that flows between the minds of all your booksellers.

Speaker 2 24:27

If you're a bookseller of mr bees, you're going to be doing reading spas, you're going to be looking after reading subscribers. So it's if only. If you only read historical fiction, you're going to kind of come a cropper occasionally. So you have to read historical fiction. You have to have touchstone books in other areas. It doesn't eat. Now you don't have to. We don't impose on our booksellers what they should read. We just impose that they should be readers. Uh, but so they may still not read books on popular science if they're purely, but they know what sam's been reading yes

Speaker 2 25:01

and they know how he talks about it. So, without pretending you know, they would never say, oh, I pretend to have read something, but they're able to take a customer to the science section or or talk in a reading spa, say, well, hey, now we've covered a lot of the fiction, but you like popular science, not my area. But here's the book sam's been talking about recently. Here's what he's been saying'm going to leave you to have a look at it properly. And so, again, it's authentically selling the books you love, but also the books that you know are valid, strong recommendations that have come from your colleagues.

Speaker 1 25:35

And that's really important because one of the key sort of rules of customer experience is how you look after your staff Right sort of rules of customer experience is how you look after your staff right and how you train your staff and how you nurture them, because if your staff feel empowered and equipped and they're happy.

Speaker 2 25:48

Yeah, it will flow on.

Speaker 1 25:49

Yeah, in the whole customer service and customer experience so what do you? You know how do you sort of share that knowledge amongst yourself? Because, as you say, you'll have people with all different reading preferences and yeah, so there's four more ways we do it, and as informal.

Speaker 2 26:03

First of all, the main thing is we never have a problem with people talking about books and sharing book knowledge on the shop floor. You know we never, you know there's never a situation where a conversation about books isn't like the most important thing. I mean if there's a customer waiting yes, it's important to be with that customer.

Speaker 2 26:24

But we also have weekly meetings where we share knowledge, and we do that sometimes just talking about recent books that we've enjoyed in an informal way, or the books that have been selected. We do a thing called the booksellers dozen, which is two dozen books each month that we're particularly excited about. We talk about why we're all invested in selecting those, those we talk about, why we ended up with that selection. Um, we uh talk about why. You know, when we create, curate our events program, everyone, it again, comes from the same place. We want to invite authors that we love or whose books we're very excited about, and we have often somebody will like do a little piece at that morning meeting on oh, here's five romantic books that you know, that I've read recently and I'm really excited about. Or have you here's five hardboiled crime books or whatever. So, yeah, there's a sort of there is a slightly more kind of formal knowledge building.

Speaker 2 27:25

But, the main thing is everyone's interested because they love books and because they know they might need to recommend anything.

Speaker 1 27:30

Yeah, and you talked earlier about the book spas. Coming from that, I guess, demand of people wanting recommendations and then how? You could turn that into a service and I love the blend of in-person and remote with the subscription option because you know digital is here to stay and it's how you blend them together. But connection is really key. Yeah, I'm curious to know have you found consumer behaviours have changed? Do people want connection more? And then how does that influence different services and the different way you sort of roll out the store?

Speaker 2 28:06

Yeah, it's difficult to think about that question without thinking about the pandemic, because obviously that was a very unusual time for customer connection, where customers sought it more and we needed it more, but you couldn't do it in the same way, so you were doing things we tried doing reading spas over, you know, over video. Uh, it wasn't effective. It was really interesting. I didn't. I don't think it was a great experience for anyone you know. So that wasn't it.

Speaker 2 28:36

Events online somehow worked okay in a slightly dispiriting way, but they did work okay, um, but it was interesting because then, as soon as you know, once we got out of the pandemic, we definitely noticed people were just desperate to come back and and seek out. They just wanted to have conversation. They missed the conversation. They missed their Saturday morning coming into the shop and talking with whichever bookseller was there.

Speaker 2 29:03

So it definitely heightened that and we've seen that in the numbers. Of you know, if I look at how our business is doing, there is maybe at the moment more growth in the physical shop than there is in the online space, which is interesting.

Speaker 1 29:21

Well, that aligns with a lot of data that's coming out, particularly with AI rolling in more and more, that people are actually craving connection more and we're going to reach that point. And certainly I come from an events background and there's a lot of talk that events are actually going to be more important than ever because, people are going to crave that outlet. They're not getting because of the onslaught of online and AI.

Speaker 2 29:41

I mean, we saw that with our industry conference, which obviously I'm quite heavily involved with, and I remember the first one back I guess that was 2022, late 2022, I think we did manage that.

Speaker 2 29:58

And yeah, it was incredible. It was like a kind of therapy session. It felt like a sort of you know, it was quite joyous in a way. People were just so desperate to have a sort of connection and yeah, and people it was very interesting because obviously everything we wondered what we would keep from the pandemic and of course, the hybrid format, events and things like that are wonderful for being more inclusive in some ways to people who can't travel, who can't go to those events or who find those events very difficult but still want the information.

Speaker 2 30:30

But that, those circumstances aside, we've definitely seen more of a. We've seen more and more that people really want. They just have you, absolutely want that connectivity. I mean, if you, if I go back to the reading spa, the core example, if you to answer your question a bit better about what we've seen from customer behavior our reading spas obviously all had to be cancelled with the pandemic yes, uh, most people.

Speaker 2 30:58

Some people rolled them into. We did a thing where you could swap it into a subscription. Others were rebooked and we then stopped selling them.

Speaker 2 31:05

We didn't sell them for a year in order to clear the waiting list and everything and make sure that those people who'd had that disruption was on it. So obviously it was not ideal for us not to be able to sell that product, so that all wraps up to sometime in 2022, I guess, when we and then we've restarted selling them. But there is more demand than ever, despite the fact that there is a longer waiting list than ever. But we still see the demand, even though we're very, very open about about the fact that there is a waiting list. And there is a waiting list because it's a very tailored personal experience that we can't just do five times more of without making it something that it isn't how do you keep people engaged when you've had it on um, I guess when you've reached that capacity?

Speaker 2 31:53

so you're clearing.

Speaker 1 31:54

Yeah, it's a terrible word, but you know you're working through the bookings you've already got. You're not selling more. How do you keep people engaged so that, when you do, restart selling them?

Speaker 2 32:02

I mean that there's that the day we restarted selling them your website crashed. Yeah, I mean not quite, but it was like there was so much pent-up demand I mean?

The Reading Spa Experience

Speaker 2 32:11

the answer is the subscription is not the same yes but ultimately, yeah, it was a kind of you know, it was something that people could go to if they were still looking for a gift, and we always say to people as well that what we do in terms of recommending books and everything um is it is a it's. We do a variant of that on the shop floor, so we also just sell vouchers to our shop and people come in and then, or people just come in and we recommend it is you know so?

Speaker 1 32:39

I was going to ask about that and I'm not sure what the UK is like, but in Australia there's a lot of talk of sort of a loneliness pandemic and people are lonely and they're craving that connection and so you've created a safe space that people can come in and chat. Do you find people the majority of your customers come in solo, do they come in groups or it completely ranges?

Speaker 2 33:01

I mean the majority still come in solo. I mean, ultimately, you know, the shop behavior is not, but we do see a lot of people using us as a meat point. Yes, we do see, because we've now been here 19 years. There are customers who know each other purely from Mr B's. You know, before the pandemic we don't actually run any book groups now, which may seem counterintuitive, but it's just purely on the huge range of activities we're covering Exactly, but until the pandemic, at one point we had five different book clubs.

Speaker 2 33:29

And so people would know each other from that as well.

Speaker 2 33:31

Yes, yes, and we just so and we often yeah, we often get. I would say, especially the people that you see come together are often the younger generation of customers and maybe those who engage with you know, who connect online about books. So we've, we're sought out by you know they arrange sometimes bookshop tours and things like that, but informally you and who've clearly kind of all decided to meet a mr bees and spend an hour here, and you know also, we're in bath. Uh, we have other great bookshops in bath. We have toppings, we have persephone, we have a brilliant one called a good one in lark, or bring one up in um morland road and a big waterstone. So there there is an Ella plus a Jane Austen Centre, lots of random literary connections. The great Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig lived here for six months.

Speaker 2 34:25

You can dig deep into Bath and its literary. So there's that.

Speaker 1 34:30

There's a book tourism thing.

Speaker 2 34:32

In terms of the other thing about consumer behaviour and how that passing it on, using your customers to spread the word, has helped us. For the first three years, tourists the two million, as it was then tourists a year in Bath didn't mean anything to us Because, other than starting to come very high on TripAdvisor rankings when they started, we're on a side street, so it took a while for them to come, you know, to find us, or it was ad hoc.

Speaker 2 35:01

Now in the summer we have a huge number of international visitors because people seek out good bookshops and they've heard of us and you were talking.

Speaker 1 35:14

I love just hearing you talk about the other bookstores around because, you said it's a really collaborative industry.

Speaker 2 35:20

Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 35:21

That obviously sounds like it promotes everyone is seen as a collaborator, not a competitor. Yeah, yeah. And then that must add to the strength of each bookshop.

Speaker 2 35:29

Yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 2 35:30

I mean, I think that's the case going to get a degree of competition, occasionally within a city, like if we're both pitching for an event, yes, or something like that. So there are moments where you are competitors still, but generally across the whole of the uk, bookshops are so collaborative. We talk a lot about the things that are problematic in the industry and we try to work out ways to resolve them. There's a there's so many little stories of of support. I mean, I'll give you one example. That's a low, you know, and that includes whether we might help out. You know a bookstore that's way away from here, but, um, an example from right here, I think jk rowling was releasing.

Speaker 2 36:18

Maybe it was the cursed child I think it was one of those post harry potter books uh, obviously a big release day and the fella who was the goods in guy at waterstones they've got a back door opposite our shop and he noticed that thursday morning that it wasn't in our window and he's like what? What's happening? How come you've not put the cursed child out, because it was one of those where the book industry actually gets organized and yeah, sell something all in one day.

Speaker 2 36:47

And um, yeah, we said, yeah, there was. There's been a problem like the. The publisher had cancelled our order because it had been on a long time and there was an error in the settings of our account. So we were getting them the next day, yes, but they'd failed to deliver our stock. So he just gave us a whole pack to fill that window with. And then, you know, we gave him a pack back the next day.

Speaker 1 37:12

So those kind of little examples where you know, it shows the power and the impact of relationships.

Speaker 2 37:19

It's about getting the books into the hands of the customers more than anything else. Exactly yes.

Speaker 1 37:22

Yeah, and we're sort of four or five years out of the pandemic.

Speaker 2 37:26

Yes.

Speaker 1 37:26

And we kind of all know that there was sort of this rebound out of the pandemic where we all craved things.

Speaker 2 37:33

And.

Speaker 1 37:33

I know, certainly in the events industry, every event was sold out. Everyone was rushing to events it things. And I know, certainly in the events industry, every event was sold out, everyone was rushing to events. It's now settled down and it's almost going the other way. People aren't sort of going like they used to. What are you seeing with your custom behaviors?

Speaker 2 37:47

yeah, even over the last sort of year, two years well in the context of events, because obviously we do a lot of those, either our own or ones we support other places with. The main theme is unpredictability.

Speaker 1 37:59

Yes.

Speaker 2 37:59

You used to know roughly what you might sell for a given type of event or what have you and now it's brutally unpredictable and last minute and last minute.

Speaker 1 38:09

In Australia it's very last minute. Yes, yeah, okay, across conferences, across music events. Yes, they book really late, yeah.

Speaker 2 38:17

That's interesting.

Speaker 1 38:18

And.

Speaker 2 38:18

I mean you can understand why that would be the case one year after the pandemic where everyone? Was still. You know, you never know. You don't book things too early.

Speaker 1 38:28

Everyone's just changed their behavior and it's not because they're worried they're going to get sick. Everyone has just completely changed their planning cycles and the way they approach.

Speaker 2 38:37

Yeah, there's also a lot, though, isn't there. There's just a lot on. There is a lot, there are a lot, you know, so for a while we had nothing on.

Speaker 1 38:44

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 38:45

And then now all events are back in full flow and full force, and so often you know, that can be a reason why a particular event doesn't sell, because there's something else great going on. We've got to remember, in Bath there's only I don't know what it is 110,000 people in this city. There's about 5 million visitors a year. I think it is now, but that's not actually like you know for the amount of stuff that's happening that we're all collectively putting out that's got to sustain.

Speaker 1 39:13

yes.

Speaker 2 39:30

So I think that's a change in customer behavior, just it being less predictable. But I think what else do I think? I think, in terms of I don't know what do I think about, it's a really good question. What do I think about? The general way just are more. I think the connections that we've got with customers are maybe kind of even deeper somehow like I think you see people connect.

Speaker 2 39:47

Maybe that's just what we're doing, because we've also done things like create merch and things like that, but I just see that people connect with us in many different ways so like they're buying subscriptions for other people. They're coming into the shop, they're buying t-shirts there. Then we see them at an event that's not out. You know, we just feel it feels that people are doing a lot as well, so that we're seeing those customers in lots of different contexts yes, I'm trying to.

Speaker 1 40:13

There's layers, almost to the relationships that you've yeah, but maybe that ageing as a business and not a new trend.

Speaker 2 40:23

You can see because we didn't start. We started as lawyers who just set up a shop, when I try and analyse it from a customer behavioural point of view, like thinking of it as a proper marketeer.

Building Bookseller Knowledge

Speaker 1 40:34

But you obviously listen to your customers because it works. You know you've continued to grow and when we were just walking around in the shop you were showing me sort of I guess was it the third extension that you've done? That was crowdfunded.

Speaker 2 40:49

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 40:51

And you've got the names of people who've donated money on the ceiling in all different font.

Speaker 2 40:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1 40:55

And I mean people feel a investment.

Speaker 2 40:58

Yeah, so my to any anyone who would ever ask us for a tip about anything we'd say never offer to put customer names on a ceiling, because that was one of the most physically painful and complicated things to actually do.

Speaker 1 41:15

I can imagine, yeah, yeah, says juliet.

Speaker 2 41:19

Juliet, who's recently walked in, was in charge. Yeah, yeah, do it on a wall yeah we thought it was a fun idea but, oh my word, that was disproportionately difficult. That crowdfunding was really interesting because obviously I think at the time there's a lot of crowdfunding going on I think maybe that's something that's I'd be interested to know, but it feels like it's slightly less common, or maybe it's slightly overburdened a little yes, so it was a bit of a sweet spot, timing wise, but our crowdfunding was very much from a position of growth and strength rather than.

Speaker 2 41:54

You know, not that there's anything wrong with people doing it when they're up against it but, that has a different motivation and creates a different thing in the mind of the customer.

Speaker 2 42:03

I think it's a different reason why they're going to give for that, and I say that as someone who would always, you know, try and help when other local businesses do things. Um, ours was we had this opportunity to expand, but we we needed to do it quickly. So, to be honest, it wasn't about getting free money, it was about getting uh support quickly so that we could quickly do things to uh and and what have you. So all of we did very complicated crowdfunding, which involved giving people a huge range of different things that effectively, they were pre-purchasing, so they could just donate and they could just donate a little bit and get a special tote bag. But also there were things like you could pay money to become a bookseller for the day. You could pay, you could pay us an amount and we would choose three books that were great for your holiday.

Speaker 2 42:56

That were based around the location of your holiday.

Speaker 1 42:58

So we did 70 of those.

Speaker 2 43:02

So people were Often getting a lot back. It was almost like they were pre-purchasing special things at a slightly overpaying in order to be participants in the crowdfunding. So, it was a membership and lots of special edition things and we did it because customers would have.

Speaker 2 43:23

you know, I had various customers and I'm sure other bookshops would tell you the same and, I'm sure, other indie businesses who said to us over the years if you ever want investment, if you ever want, they were striving. You know those who were lucky enough to be in that position. They would be striving to be more involved, to help more to make sure that Mr B's stayed and grew.

Speaker 1 43:47

Yes, and pardon the pun, but you've created so much storytelling around the shop and your customers become part of the story. Yeah, as I said, pardon the pun.

Speaker 2 43:58

No, you're right, and I mean for us. I mean, yeah, a lot of it. And, as I say, I struggle to think about, oh, what have I learned about changes in customer behavior and what really I've learned that just because we've been doing it a long time now, whereas you know, we were, went through the whole imposter phase and then won a bunch of awards, and it was like, oh, maybe we're doing something right. And then you kind of, you know, yes, start to believe in your own hype, and then, and then you kind of you know life and multiple financial crashes and pandemics kick in and there's all that hustling.

Speaker 2 44:29

So there's all these different phases of a business when I look back at the last 19 years of doing it. But this thing about customers being part of the story, it's a real thing now. That is just astonishing. So we've had we have a colleague who probably now left us three years ago, but she worked with us. Or two years ago she worked with us for four years. She went to now. She wanted to try out London. So she's working now at Faber in London. So she went on to work in publishing. Yes, but she came to us. But before starting we discovered during when we interviewed her that she'd been with us age 10 at our harry potter book 7 launch party.

Speaker 2 45:11

There's a photo of her at our shop dressed as a wizard at midnight on whatever day that was. Um jk rowling's getting a lot of that shout outs in this conversation unexpectedly. And um, yeah, so she'd been with us at that. And and then, yeah, 13 years later we hired her and now she's yeah.

Speaker 1 45:28

So you get those weird.

Speaker 2 45:29

So that legacy of yeah and all these people who bring in their kids now and say that they'd learned to read because they came to Mr. B's in its early days.

Speaker 1 45:38

That's amazing.

Speaker 2 45:39

Such a buzz.

Speaker 1 45:40

Yes, and you talked, and I'm just conscious of time. So my final question because I could ask you questions all day, but I know you've got a business to run is you did expand quickly because of demand and you've got lots of different programs on.

Speaker 2 45:54

Yeah.

Speaker 1 45:55

And I know, with businesses, there's almost a pressure when you become really successful. Well, are you going to do this, you're going to do this, you're going to do this, and there's this expectation that you just keep expanding. What have your sort of non-negotiables being of?

Speaker 2 46:10

you know, this is what we're not going to do well until I mean, I, I always think you you should never say like never to anything, because then you can soon look. Uh, we were talking about tennis earlier, it's like when people retire multiple times as sports people that's all I was just saying.

Speaker 1 46:24

I'd seen andy murray right and he, yeah, he literally took up coaching correct. He left the circuit for a hot minute and then was back in a different role so but we have.

Speaker 2 46:34

Obviously people have said to us we used to do a second shop and then lots of people have wanted that for a little while there was no shop, no bookshop in bristol. There are now like seven. Yeah, for a while there were none, yes, and people were sort of chivvying us. You know, yep, um, but we never.

Speaker 2 46:50

You know, juliet and I left high pressure jobs to run a high pressure business in some ways, but one that's our own and it's on our own terms yep and what we were clear to ourselves that we never wanted to do was spend random saturdays jumping in a car going down a motorway to some other shop when if? If, if people were off sick and you suddenly needed to cover a shift in a different, we didn't want to. We we aimed to set up a bookshop. We didn't have. We were ambitious for it but we didn't have a plan beyond getting past all those people who told us we were brave or stupid we just want it.

Speaker 2 47:28

We know we didn't envisage this is what it would look like. I don't. We didn't have a 20-year plan, yes, uh. But we definitely didn't go in thinking, oh, and then we'll do this and it will replicate it, because and if I ever did set up a second bookshop, it I have always said I don't think it would be called mr bees it would have a different identity and it'll be right for that and a different personality.

Speaker 1 47:49

But it's something that's never been on our agenda and it's not a completely non-negotiable as I say, but it's not a priority, but it's helped you stay true to everything in Mr B's.

Speaker 2 47:59

And I think that things like you know finding, and we've been able to do that by finding an audience that's just beyond our geographical- space through our website and our vouchers and our subscriptions. It means that we can expand. We can kind of take what's here and give it to people further afield without having to go for the higher risk and more high endurance thing of setting up lots of physical shops.

Customer Connection Post-Pandemic

Speaker 1 48:26

Yeah, perfect. Well, I think we'll wrap it up there, because I'm sure our listeners will be buzzing to just get onto the website and look at your services, whether they're based here, or whether they want to do something long distance.

Speaker 2 48:39

Yeah, we send those subscriptions everywhere. And what I was saying to you earlier I got to go to Australia last year and I've been to the American Booksellers Conference. These are things I never thought we'd end up doing when I didn't imagine there was much business travel and setting up a bookshop. But because of my sort of trade association role and because of just talking about what we do with customers, it's always great fun connecting with people wherever they are. Yeah, and also we're just sort of endlessly magpying for other great bookshops around the world.

Speaker 1 49:09

So we're doing it too. I love it because you never lost that interest and that comes through everything in the store.

Speaker 2 49:14

I love going to other people's bookshops and buying books. It's my favourite.

Speaker 1 49:18

Oh well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, and the website will be in the description so everyone can jump on Great.

Speaker 2 49:25

Excellent. Thank you so much.