News, Local history and Thanet issues from Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate see www.michaelsbookshop.com I publish over 200 books about the history of this area click here to look at them.
The shop next door to my bookshop, which
has changed hands more times that I can remember in the last few years, has
reopened as a barber this time.
Interestingly their neighbour on the other
side is a barber that has been there for a long time, I hope this doesn’t saturate
the haircut business in this part of Ramsgate and cause them both to close.
Slightly further down on the other side,
the pet shop that closed some time ago has just opened selling washing machines
and other white goods.
I guess the problems of revitalising our
town centres are reflected here in King Street Ramsgate at the point where the
town contracted to after Westwood Cross, and now a very sensitive area because
of internet shopping.
What the solutions to our ailing town
centres are I don’t really know, my guess is that the change if it ever comes
will have to come from a mixture of government taking the taxation to a level
playing field and manufactures ensuring that their goods continue to be
displayed where people can handle them.
Walking around our town centres today, it’s my day off, I was struck by how few shops are actually real retail businesses, and how at some point the rest, charity shops, eateries, estate agents, solicitors and so on will work without the ordinary retail shops that brought them there in the first place.
I think this is a problem that is beyond local government, so I am considering a direct appeal to the national government.
Whops sorry about that I seem to have left his left lapel off.
With the recession biting more severely by the week one of the more active sections in my bookshop is the recession section where all of the paperbacks are 5p and all of the hardbacks 10p, the very low prices in this section cause some rather unusual reactions from some customers.
When I first started in secondhand bookselling most secondhand bookshops had a section something like this and most customers used them without comment.
I have just been up Ramsgate High Street where the old Woolworth shop is due to reopen as a 99p shop tomorrow and all things considered Ramsgate doesn’t seem to be faring too badly at the moment.
Interesting as Woolworth’s started out as a shop where everything was 6d 2½p in new money and in value probably fairly similar to 99p today, things seem to have come full circle.
Very cheap prices are not always what they seem particularly online.
Most popular paperbacks are available secondhand on Amazon priced a 1p, this is because of the fixed price postage charge of £2.75 that Amazon has for secondhand books that third parties sell through their site, as it costs the seller about £1 to post an average paperback if they sell it for 1p they receive £2.76 less the cost of listing on Amazon leaving them with about £1.50 so there is still a profit to be made from the sale.
This also means that about the cheapest you can buy a paperback online is £2.76 in the bookshop I overcome this competition by pricing most popular paperbacks at £2.50 or less. The same usually applies with Ebay where the staring bid and postage usually come to at least £2.50.
It also has the advantage that any title that is always in short supply I can price above the Amazon price to improve the range and quality of the shop stock.
Walking back along King Street with the camera I took some pictures of some of the shops that have opened recently click here for them I did a post about this recently and am surprised that it is still going on.
Pleasurama; I have finally got KCC highways to accept the fact that the new access road that was built without the flood risk assessment, on top of the sea defences from slabs laid on sand, may in fact be dangerous.
They are going to consult with the environment agency but they tell me that there is no money to put it to rights.
Meandering around the internet I have just found this video of the sound of music expedition at the Turner Contemporary in Margate’s old M&S building.
It certainly shows what can be achieved with a huge amount of public funding.
It’s been on Youtube for over a month and when I discovered it today it had had 2 viewings
When you put Sound of music exhibition into Google and search for videos it comes up top, I would say that this sums up public interest in this sort of thing.
The new Cost Cutter supermarket opens next door to my bookshop this afternoon, I am amazed at what a quality job they have done and that it looks like it will be a serious contender among the town’s supermarkets.
Food off-licence newsagent in fact a proper shop.
There is one simple reason why several new businesses are opening in King Street and that is rent and rates, the rental asked for the shop next door was £10,000 per year compare this with the empty Woolworth’s sop in the High Street on the market at £160,000 per year, ok it’s 3 times the size, but I do wonder what anyone could possibly do in it that could pay a rent like that.
The main problem for shops trading in this part of Ramsgate is that the council have removed most of the on street parking, I have come to the conclusion that this is a bizarre attempt by the council to try and boost Westwood Cross.
One of the more unusual occurrences this week was to do with Ramsgate Motor Museum although the museum closed years ago when it was open I wrote it a website see http://www.thanetonline.com/RamsgateMotorMuseum/ I occasionally get emails relating to the museum, usually from people with an interest in a particular vehicle.
The website was put together when my digital camera was fairly primitive so the pictures are fairly low definition even so there didn’t seem any particular reason to take it down when the museum closed.
One of the exhibits in the museum was a 1911 Swift motor car http://www.thanetonline.com/RamsgateMotorMuseum/swift_1911.htm this week I got an email from a chap restoring a 1914 Swift without an engine and I was able to put him in touch with chap in Australia with one for sale.
I am pretty sure this isn’t a new press release, as I believe I read it somewhere else the other day but I only just received it and put it up as it is illustrative of the revival that is going on here in Ramsgate.
Here in King Street we have seen a quite a few new shops opening recently the latest being a small supermarket due to open next door to my bookshop on Sunday.
Quite why Ramsgate is bucking the trend at the moment is beyond me, I am not talking about the plethora of middle of the road eateries and gift shops that are replacing the real shops in Broadstairs and Canterbury at the moment.
These are real quality shops in king street alone a fishmonger who catches his own fish, a cycle shop that does repairs, a domestic appliance shop that also does repairs.
Then today I heard a rumour, from a usually reliable source, that Tesco are considering returning to the town.
Although a few large shops have closed recently in the centre of Ramsgate, most notably Woolworth, where my bookshop is on the edge of the town centre quite a few new shops have been opening, the latest two being a cycle shop and a washing machine and domestic appliance shop.
The large shop next door to me, that was vacated by the chemist that moved to the Montefiore medical centre when it opened about two years ago and has been empty since is being fitted out as a general store.
The recession is a peculiar thing as it tends to work in favour of some of the shops, particularly when they are cheaper than the out of town shops.
Although King Street in Ramsgate is fairly scruffy and has quite a few closed shops it also has a good share of cheaper than the out of town shops, butcher, greengrocer, fishmonger, my bookshop, several secondhand furniture shops and Iceland.
Whatever it is that’s causing this I don’t really know I have been trying to puzzle it out, I wouldn’t have thought with all of the empty shops around that this would be the most desirable available place to start a new business.
Whatever it is that is happening it seems to be bucking the general trend anyone else got any ideas about this?
With Barretts shoe shops in administration, it looks like we will see the closure of their Westwood Cross shop.
I know that there has been a lot of concern over shops closing in the towns recently and I wonder how Westwood cross will fare in what looks like being an 18 month long recession.
I am wondering with there being so much spare retail capacity in Thanet, how the cards are going to fall on this one. Particularly I think how much of the out of town shopping expansion was reliant on credit will be a big factor.
I have published some pictures of shops and shopping in Ramsgate for you all to enjoy, they come from one of my reprints of old guides, Ramsgate and Broadstairs by Camera and Pen 1904-05 you can of course buy it post free from the michaelsbookshop.com website or come into the shop (closed Thursdays and Sundays) browse buy, as is your inclination.
I was talking recently to one of the local surveyors part of his job is to assess shop rents in Thanet and obviously we discussed the situation in Ramsgate and particularly Margate town centres, where there are too many empty shops at the moment. Now at the moment shop rentals are assessed on the position of the shop and the area of the shop part of the building, business rates are calculated from average the shop rental values per square meter in any given part of the towns.
For the most part this is all sill being calculated as though Westwood Cross hadn’t happened, this is also not helped by the fact that most shop leases stipulate that rentals can only rise at rent reviews.
It is obvious that something has got to give, pretty much the only thing that can survive and afford the current rents and rates are the bars and restaurants that make up our emerging café culture. However there is a big problem here, that is the café culture is dependent on the towns having interesting shops, both in terms of the shops attracting their customers and also a lively town centre having a safe and comfortable atmosphere.
My feelings are that both local and national government need to act on this issue, however I am really uncertain how, we currently have a situation where a betting shop, late night takeaway etc has the same overheads a towns bookshop while the libraries art galleries theatres are heavily subsidised. Now the bookshops in Broadstairs and Margate are closing so what is the solution?
Our society has got into a situation where a very large proportion of our earned income is spent paying for buildings and land, and another large and increasing proportion is being taken in taxation. We are, as it were spending too much buying our own country. All of this hangs on the small proportion of people engaged in the production and distribution of the goods and services that we all need.
I post with some trepidation as my last post on this subject prompted a senior councillor to comment that he thought Ramsgate was horrible place to shop, not particularly helpful in what are difficult times for town centre shops.
Perhaps some of you have thoughts on the local shopping experience both in the Thanet towns and the miracle that is Westwood Cross, yes of course I can sympathise I don’t imagine that the businesses in the ubiquitously abbreviated WC can be entirely happy with the infrastructure.
Car parking is an issue also raising some problems, free parking experiments for Margate, although not for Ramsgate as one would expect and at WC the shops not exactly teeming when all the parking spaces occupied.
You can also avoid the whole business of shopping and buy our local history books online post free. However personally I consider a good browse in a bookshop a much more gratifying experience.
The Christmas shopping rush is here again which is always pleasant in the bookshop as you feel most of the shoppers are buying people something that they actually want, or the person who will receive it as a present will want, this is especially so with the local history books. This is not particularly a money thing as from the customers point of view none of the books I produce are over £10 and from my point of view the profit margin is fairly small. However in terms of giving local people a bit of extra enjoyment over Christmas it is very satisfying.
I have just published some more old pictures of the harbour to the web with some interesting ones of the area west of the west pier where Moses’s shipyard was, I am hoping to get time soon to produce a book of pictures of the harbour, at the moment most of my time being spent either manufacturing enough copies of the books to keep up with the seasonal demand or helping people to work out which will be the best books for their friends and family. Something that is also interesting this year is that I am finding many people are coming to the conclusion that a secondhand book makes an environmentally friendly Christmas present.
Having just posted the press release about the opening of Harvey’s Fish Market & Oyster Bar on Ramsgate’s Royal Harbour at 
