When is a Trojan horse not a Trojan horse? When it is a branch of Waterstones. So says managing director James Daunt, eager to reassure retailers and readers after the chain came under fire for opening three unbranded branches in the past three years – Southwold Books in Suffolk, Harpenden Books in Hertfordshire and The Rye Bookshop in East Sussex. Handwritten signs in the windows were the only overt indication the three belong to the bookselling behemoth.
Southwold shopkeepers told the Telegraph that Waterstones had “crept in” on the quiet, accusing the company of dishonesty. One said that if the shop had a large Waterstones sign on the front, “the whole town would have been up in arms.”
Is the retailer trying to pull a fast one? “No, absolutely not,” says Daunt. He claims that the motivation isn’t subterfuge, it’s size. Because in the world of brand retailing, size matters.
In comparison to the rest of the chain, the new Waterstones branches are tiny – Southwold’s new shop is a mere 700sqft, barely room to swing a cat in hat. In comparison, the smallest Waterstones is 2,500sqft. “What people expect when they see the brand is a lot of books, but when you walk into something no bigger than a London bus, then it has got to be different,” he says.
The new shops have opened in previously empty properties, he says, in towns long abandoned by the book trade. This may be why rivals are relaxed about the practice. “Anything that keeps shops on the high street occupied is a good thing,” says John James, who co-owns Aldeburgh Books in Suffolk, a few miles south of the unmarked Southwold outlet. “As long as they don’t come anywhere near my manor.”
Robert Topping, an independent bookseller who has been less than complimentary about the chain in the past, is equally laid back. He says Waterstones should fear customers mistaking their unbranded shops for independents and walking out disappointed. “Independent bookshops and their readers are, in essence, independent-minded people,” he says. “That is why readers shop with us and not chains.”
The lack of concern among independents reflects the healthy state of the sector. After a torrid time thanks to Amazon, supermarkets and rising ebook sales, independents looked to be in terminal decline. By 2014, the number of independents in the UK had fallen below 1,000. But in the past two years a revival has taken place, fuelled by rising print sales and declining digital book sales.
Unbranded branches, says Daunt, will not threaten independents and he would “shake his fist” alongside other locals if the likes of Starbucks tried to sidestep local resistance, taking over high streets. But perhaps the way he should win round locals is by appealing to their wallets. “It is quite good for property values to have a proper bookshop in a town,” says Aldeburgh Books owner James. That’s likely to be true even if the shop isn’t quite as it appears.
