Over the last few years, book lovers have got accustomed to wringing their hands (metaphorically), sighing deeply and writing nostalgic obituaries over the closure of yet another of their favourite haunts — whether it’s Fact & Fiction in Basant Lok in New Delhi or Premier Bookstore in Bengaluru. Stratospheric rents, competition from the online ecommerce giants and the passing on of that knowledgeable, idiosyncratic owner are the usual suspects for the downing of shutters. Even for used books, bibliophiles feel Flora Fountain in Mumbai is pretty much dead, the famous Sunday market in Delhi’s Darya Ganj not quite what it used to be and Kolkata’s College Street a sellout to academic textbooks.
All that gloom and doom only burnishes the triumph of Bengaluru’s Blossom Book House, the city’s much loved purveyor of used books on Church Street. The three-storey 3,500 sq ft bookshop with stacks of mostly used and some new books has not just survived but thrived. On Thursday, proprietor Mayi Gowda opened his second store spread over a massive 8,650 sq ft, just down the road from the first. The timing is interesting: the opening comes barely two months after online shopping leader Amazon launched its own used books section on its website and four months after offline rival Bookworm took up a similar space almost next door. Gowda has something else in common with the global shopping behemoth’s founder Jeff Bezos: the credo of customer obsession. Except that for Gowda, it’s a skill he picked up from his days of selling used books on the pavements of MG Road. It feels appropriate that the stage for this journey from the footpath to the high street should be Bengaluru, the new Mecca for young entrepreneurs.
Gowda, a slim, dark man with a moustache and the ready smile his customers associate with him, underplays his success, when he recounts it during a conversation in a corner of his new space. The vast new Blossom has the familiar row upon row of military green, slotted-angle racks full of books of the old store but also infinitely more space to root around, without having to bump elbows with the person browsing behind you. The warehouse-like ambience is somewhat at odds with the cosiness regulars associate with the original but it also means displays are better and one can actually find space to sit in the store and read.
http://m.economictimes.com/small-biz/entrepreneurship/how-a-bengaluru-bookseller-weathered-the-ecommerce-storm-and-opened-his-second-used-books-store/articleshow/54756795.cms
All that gloom and doom only burnishes the triumph of Bengaluru’s Blossom Book House, the city’s much loved purveyor of used books on Church Street. The three-storey 3,500 sq ft bookshop with stacks of mostly used and some new books has not just survived but thrived. On Thursday, proprietor Mayi Gowda opened his second store spread over a massive 8,650 sq ft, just down the road from the first. The timing is interesting: the opening comes barely two months after online shopping leader Amazon launched its own used books section on its website and four months after offline rival Bookworm took up a similar space almost next door. Gowda has something else in common with the global shopping behemoth’s founder Jeff Bezos: the credo of customer obsession. Except that for Gowda, it’s a skill he picked up from his days of selling used books on the pavements of MG Road. It feels appropriate that the stage for this journey from the footpath to the high street should be Bengaluru, the new Mecca for young entrepreneurs.
Gowda, a slim, dark man with a moustache and the ready smile his customers associate with him, underplays his success, when he recounts it during a conversation in a corner of his new space. The vast new Blossom has the familiar row upon row of military green, slotted-angle racks full of books of the old store but also infinitely more space to root around, without having to bump elbows with the person browsing behind you. The warehouse-like ambience is somewhat at odds with the cosiness regulars associate with the original but it also means displays are better and one can actually find space to sit in the store and read.
http://m.economictimes.com/small-biz/entrepreneurship/how-a-bengaluru-bookseller-weathered-the-ecommerce-storm-and-opened-his-second-used-books-store/articleshow/54756795.cms
