I had a good look at the two bookshops Waterstones and the book area in WH Smith which is fairly large.
I suppose I have more experience of provincial bookshops than most people and look at how they are surviving partly to give me ideas for improving Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate where I work.
Both shops were pretty quiet, which may have been due to it being late afternoon, Waterstones have made a profit the last three years but haven't managed to pay the "living wage" yet, see this article
I find the whole issue of the future of retail interesting and tend to see visiting places like Westwood Cross as more of a look at how our society is moving along, rather than a shopping expedition.
On the whole I think the shopping mall in the UK and moving shopping out of the adjacent towns hasn't been very successful, but just what the way forward will be is a difficult one.
With seaside towns I think people visiting for the day expect to find the shops close to the sea, most of our tourist customers are combining their day at the seaside with shopping and I think the demise of Ramsgate and Margate's shopping centres have had a negative effect on tourism.
For those visiting Ramsgate tomorrow, hoping to take in the sand, sea, cafe culture and perhaps buy a few books here is the
Link to the pictures of the books we put out yesterday
A few photos of Ramsgate this evening including the sad sight of Joline heading off with her live animal cargo.
Link to today's photos
Below a bit of a random selection of local photos including some unidentified and probably difficult to identify.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.