The 79th in this occasional series of reprints
from Quote Unquote the magazine is from the December 1994 issue. With
Whitcoulls
pulling out of its big Queen Street store in Auckland, to be replaced by a
Farmers, here is a story welcoming the launch of that store in November 1994.
The
intro read:
NIGEL
COX looks over the new Whitcoulls superhypermegastore in Auckland’s Queen
Street.
ISLANDS OF BOOKS
Okay,
cards on the table: I’ve always hated Whitcoulls. Big, loud and thick – and
that’s just their carpets. As a bookshop, a fine place to buy fluffy dice, My Lobotomy by some ex-All Black,
confetti, or Jilly Cooper’s Advanced
Jodhpur Spanking. Messy, confused (Wild
Swans in the pet section), ill-informed (Pepys’ Diary? “Sorry, sir, this year’s diaries aren’t in yet”) but
with enough clout to bat away the independents which I favoured (and worked
for) like so many house flies. The book trade’s nicknames said it all – Big
Brother. The Sleeping Giant.
It
wasn’t always this way. When I was a kid I used to hang out at Whitcombe &
Tombs (there were no malls then), fondling the books, deciding what to ask for
for Christmas. Clean, well-lighted places, those old stores, and if there was
an atmosphere of brown paper and string, well, that was because they knew you
wanted to make a kite when you got home...
The
mess developed gradually during the 70s when, after the acquisition of printers
Coulls, Somerville, Wilkie, stationery became the chain’s big moneyspinner.
“More than a bookstore” was the 80s slogan, which said it all, really: If only
we could forget about books altogether.
The
giant shuddered from its slumbers in 1991 when it was bought by the Rank Group,
who already owned the Government Printing Office. Soon Rank was buying Croxley
Collins Olympic and other stationers and then, with the see-no-evil assistance
of the Commerce Commission, London Bookshops. The big brother jokes turned to
dark mutterings.
But
even the mutterers were silenced when in late 1992 it was announced that a
massive new bookshop – “the biggest in Australasia!” – would be opened on
Auckland’s Corner (the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets). “One of the best
retail locations in the country,” enthused the Herald, and on it would be a bookshop so big that it would stock,
surely, every book ever wanted by anyone. Cynics like me growled that, okay,
maybe the books will be in there, somewhere. . . if you can find them.
If
you don’t count a slight case of being burnt down in 1899, the building which
stands on the Corner is over a century old, a three-storey version of it rising
in 1893 to house the Direct Supply Company, who were general merchants. John
Court bought it in 1912, and in 1916 another three levels were added along with
the Italianate facade. It was John Court’s Department Store until 1972, when Cornishes
had it for two years, before getting into financial difficulties.
From
1974 it traded as Auckland Corner Limited, home to Gordon Dryden’s Book Corner.
This great independent (although all independents were great as far as I’m
concerned) flourished for many years, but was finally allowed to degenerate in
the late 1980s.
When
Whitcoulls bought the beleaguered shop in 1988 it was a corpse that even
corporate money couldn’t revive. Much the same had happened to the Corner
itself, a mighty edifice reduced to a rat palace.
But
that was before Big Bro started throwing dough.
October 20: Walking through the place with
Whitcoulls’ general manager Greg Howell, I can see that nothing is ever going
to be the same again. It’s 22 days to opening and there’s not a book in sight,
but there are 70-odd men, sweating men, all wielding power tools with the kind of
urgency that suggests that the penalty clause on this one is seven storeys high.
Howell
steps briskly through the mayhem, shouting pictures at me. “Along here,” his
arm sweeps, “there’ll be a giant fiction section, and over there, a huge New
Zealand department.” The books I care about most, I see, are going to be on the
ground floor’s prime space: interesting.
“In
total, the new shop will have 65 percent more books than the old one.” He
points to the mezzanine. “Up there, on this side, the biggest video store in
Australasia; on that side, three times the magazines we’ve got in our present
Queen Street store, and the Bookuccino Cafe.”
We
clamber over sawhorses and cables. Up on the first floor, some of the shelving
and stock are in place. The carpet, I’m forced to admit, is a great leap
forward from the burnt-orange headache-inducer of old – it’s royal blue, with
tiny white stars, and is divided by polished wooden walkways. The effect is
(gulp) elegant. Howell says, “Up here we’1l have a thousand square metres of
non-fiction, and children’s, plus a play area, and an information kiosk, with
three staff members dedicated to providing the absolute latest on any book
you’re interested in.” His enthusiasm, is contagious, even to one heavily
inoculated against Whitcoulls’ charms.
We
step outside. From across the road the repainted facade looks marvellous.
“There’ll be two flagpoles, with flags, and,” he says, pointing to a little
spire, “the eternal flame that used to burn in memory of John Court will be
rekindled”, on the day the new shop opens. Nice.
Many
New Zealand writers are worried that Whitcoulls’ dominance of the book trade
will mean their books will have a short shelf life, or none at all. “Well,” he
says, “we’re putting in 130 square metres of New Zealand books at ground level
in the best retail site in the country – that’s quite a commitment.”
Okay,
but won’t the big shop crush the independents, where new New Zealand writers
are nurtured? “Well, finally, the customer decides that,” he says. “But in the
main we expect the new shop to create new business.”
I
come away from the tour excited and impressed but worried for the bookshops I
favour. Unnecessarily, as it tums out. Jo Harris of Unity Books, unfazed by the
prospect of a giant new competitor, says, “Even more miles of royalty, rugby
and Jeffrey Archer – and you can buy a biro: terrific.”
Roger
Parsons expects it to improve his business, by bringing more book customers in
from the suburbs. “To a certain degree”, he says, “Dymocks have already done
that.” And John Todd of Dymocks, describing his main competitor as a “variety
store”, says that business has been “extremely good” and that’s how he expects it
to stay.
Everyone
seems to expect the new store to be just like the old Whitcoulls, only bigger.
But walking over it, and talking to Greg Howell, I gain a strong impression
that this is the beginning of a new era, with better decor, more depth of stock
and sharper staff.
November 18: The carpet’s red, not blue, and
the stars were in my eyes – well, it’s hard not to be dazzled by three floors of
brand-new books. But then a hard look begins to show the light and shade. “The
biggest video store in Australasia” turns out to be pretty small, but who cares
about video? The Bookuccino Cafe isn’t going to worry the style-czars of High
Street, but this is Queen Street; it’s not bad.
The
New Zealand section isn’t large, but that’s only temporary – after Christmas,
I’m promised, an area the size of a big lounge will stop selling plastic holly
and poets like Curnow, Smither and Ireland will be in stock (at present they
aren’t – a bit of a worry).
In
fact, this isn’t a good shop to seek poetry in (Kipling, Keats, sure, but no
Bishop or Larkin or Pound) or lit crit or other artnik-oriented items. Nothing
much from small presses or that’ s a bit hard to get. But on the other hand
there’s a generous and nicely presented range of all the main paperback
imprints, will real depth in Picadors and Penguins and a solid range of the
latest hardbacks. Solid, that’s an accurate word.
The
store is well-signed, so you can find your way, and once you start looking
through the various departments, all the non-fiction that you’d expect is there,
in depth – health, business, reference – and mixed in, the odd really nice book
at a good price; I saw an attractive-looking biography of Goethe at $10.95. But
this isn’t a bargain store. There’s a few good opening specials (Once Were Warriors at $9.95) but clearly
remainders will not be a feature.
The
information kiosk is marvellous. Its staff hadn’t necessarily heard of the book
you were enquiring about, or even its author, but there it was on screen so it
could be ordered with ease, and yes, I could have a print-out of everything
he’d written – 4½ pages of detailed bibliographic information, for no charge.
Impressive.
The
nicest thing was the lack of clutter. A Whitcoulls with room, and with the
books presented as though someone who liked them wanted you to see them too. In
fact the sense of attractively-filled space is one of the impressions you come
away with – islands of books in light and air. As several book-trade old lags
muttered, among the books themselves there’ s not much that surprises, which is
a limitation. And the Whitcoulls’ slogan for the 90s – “always something new” –
correctly suggests that the shop is light on backlist. But the average customer
will, I think, be delighted by a clean, modem, general-stock-in-real-depth
bookstore, and even margin-hugging cynics like me will be forced to admit this
is a big step forward for the giant.
From
out on the footpath, you can see that, yes, the eternal flame has been
rekindled. Here’ s hoping.
FOOTNOTE: Nigel and I thought this was a
very positive story but after publication Whitcoulls cancelled all its advertising – it had been
a regular on the outside back cover – which was quite a blow for a little
magazine. Fortunately, Dymocks and occasionally Random House came to the rescue
for the next two years, bless them. And
Wild
Swans being put in the pet section of a Whitcoulls store is a true story.
