Real v. Net
There’s been a lot of waffle recently about the threat to “real” businesses from the Net, which makes a change I suppose from the usual waffle about how the Internet is an irrelevance.
A couple of things in particular have made me think about this a lot. The major stimulus was John Smith’s decision to close their St. Vincent St. and Byres Road branches. Two reasons were given for this: competition from the new, huge bookshops which have opened in Glasgow in recent years, and the competition from Net-based companies like Amazon and BOL.
An aside for those who know nothing of Scotland: John Smith & Son is possibly the oldest firm of booksellers in the world, having been founded in 1751; one of their advertising campaigns a few years ago made prominent use of an encomium from Robert Burns, which is pretty unique. The St. Vincent St. branch in the centre of Glasgow has been their main branch since sometime around the turn of the century, I believe. Smith’s was part of the Glasgow scenery, and I think most people always thought it would remain so.
Things certainly started to change a few years ago. Waterstone’s opened a huge branch in what had once been the La Scala cinema in Sauchiehall Street — serious competition. The new store was spacious yet contained about 100,000 books. More recently, an even bigger bookshop, a branch of Borders, has opened in Buchanan Street.
There’s no doubt these shops can stock much more than Smith’s ever could. Against that, though, is the interesting fact that, while no one I know has ever said anything negative about Waterstone’s, everyone I know has said how much they dislike shopping at Borders. This is not because the staff are in any way unhelpful, far from it: it is simply that it is incredibly difficult to find a book you are looking for.
How did Smith’s respond to the competition? As far as I could see, they actually reduced their stock.
It struck me every time I went in how meagre the selection was, not just compared with Borders and Waterstone’s, but with the crammed shelves of Smith’s itself several years ago. As for ordering books for customers, a wait of six weeks is pretty pathetic when a book ordered from Amazon or its competitors is likely to arrive within 24–48 hours.
Most irritating, though, was the bizarre reluctance of the staff to serve anyone. I have been in there and found a book I wanted only to end up putting it back on the shelf and head for another shop because none of the staff were interested in taking my money. It was not that the shop was busy — I was almost the only customer at the time. I gather from other people’s comments that I am not alone in having difficulty in actually buying a book in Smith’s.
Any shop with such determinedly lackadaisical staff, which must say something about the management, has a damn cheek blaming their competitors (Net-based or not) for any reduction in business.
I don’t think there is a threat to real-world bookshops from Amazon et al no matter what the doomsayers insist. For one thing, it is actually fun to browse in a bookshop. It’s also difficult to judge from the Internet whether or not you actually want to buy a book you know very little about. On the other hand, in a bookshop holding the actual object in your hand, you can judge whether you want to spend money on it even if you have never before heard of the book, or the author.
Where the the Net will really score is in ordering books people already know they want — textbooks, the new Pratchett, etc.
What bookshops, Internet or otherwise, need to do to succeed is provide a certain level of service. In fact, my impression is that the major Net-based retailers are providers of excellent service. It’s the “real-world” retailers whose service can be sloppy or desultory.
Take the matter of ordering books. I have, once, ordered a book from a shop and had it in my hands within two days. Once. On every other occassion it has taken weeks, usually more than six — and on one occassion the shop didn’t bother to inform me when the book arrived. (That, come to think of it, was Smith’s.)
Internet booksellers, on the other hand, have never taken more than two days to get a book to me — even when the web site stated that the book in question was likely to take up to three weeks to obtain.
Or take the question of getting information. I happened to be in a branch of Waterstone’s and I enquired when the new Iain Banks book was being published. They checked their database, and assured me that there was no new Iain Banks book imminent.
When I got home, I checked out Amazon and learned that Look to Windward was to be published exactly one week later.
I’ve been talking about books, but I could just as easily have been speaking about DVDs or videos (for which Blackstar provides excellent service) or anything else sold over the Internet. Net companies which provide good service have the chance to do well. The same goes for “real-world” companies; but will they provide good service or just whine about competition from the Net?
© DC 2000. All rights reserved.