Wesley Owen and the Mystery of the Missing Bookshop December 22, 2009
Posted by Phil Groom in Bookshop Ramblings, Knockabout.Tags: Administration, Christian Bookshops, Wesley Owen
11 comments
Yesterday evening I decided I’d better get on with updating UKCBD with details of the new shop ownerships that have emerged over the last few days. It proved a tad more complicated than I’d expected because, despite counting and re-counting, I couldn’t get the list of branches to tally.
Here’s where I’ve got to:
| Branches in Administration (or status uncertain) Aberdeen Bedford Belfast Brighton Carlisle Cheltenham Chester Croydon Dundee Edinburgh Falkirk Harrogate Harrow |
Inverness Leeds Liverpool Macclesfield Manchester Nottingham Southampton South Woodford Sutton Walsall Watford Weston-Super-Mare Woking Worthing |
| Branches Taken Over by CLC Bolton Cambridge Coventry Guildford Kingston-Upon-Thames Stockport |
Branches Taken Over by Koorong Bath Birmingham Bristol Bromley Coleraine Derby Glasgow York |
Looks fairly straightforward, doesn’t it? Until you start counting … and discover not 40 but 41 branches, not 26 but 27 either in administration or status uncertain (I say ‘status uncertain’ advisedly because one, presumably, isn’t in administration).
I went back to the press releases, to November and yesterday: definitely 40 branches, 14 sold and 26 remaining — evidently, I’d miscounted: Biblica’s senior management surely know how many branches of Wesley Owen they’ve been trying to dispose of.
I checked my copy of the Booksellers Association Directory of Members: 41 branches there too. Must be out of date, even though the online version concurs (screenshot of search result). Where better to check, then, than Wesley Owen’s own shop finder? Alas, too late: they’d beat me to it and removed all the non-Koorang acquired branches. No worries, mate: Google cache to the rescue – as cached 11th Dec 2009 (pdf, 258kb):
Wesley Owen Store Finder, as at 11 Dec 2009
With apologies to the good folks from Oz, but tie me kangaroo down, sport — would you look at that: 41 branches!
So if there’s anyone out there who can tell me which of the 27 remaining branches has somehow quietly disappeared during the last couple of weeks, please, I’d be most grateful so that I can update my records…
Now, what was that someone said about getting the facts right?? In all seriousness: is it any wonder that an organisation that can’t keep track of its own shops can’t manage its finances?
Of course, I could be wrong: maybe a branch really did close down and we all managed to miss it, in which case I apologise to the branch staff concerned for not updating UKCBD at the time… but in the meantime: don’t tell the administrators: someone might be about to acquire a shop free of charge!
From Dream to Nightmare to – where do we go from here? November 19, 2009
Posted by Phil Groom in News.Tags: Authentic Media, Biblica, Buyers Consortium, Christian Bookshops, Christian Retail, IBS-STL, STL, STL UK, Trade buy-out, Wesley Owen
10 comments
It seems only a short while ago that I posted about daring to dream. But sometimes dreams turn to nightmares and the whole world comes crashing in.
It’s not my dream I’m talking about this time: it’s the hopes and dreams of my friends and colleagues in the Christian book trade, particularly those working for STL, Wesley Owen and Authentic Media. Because everything fell apart around their ears this week as their parent company, Biblica, decided to pull the plug on their UK operations.
The announcement was made on Monday and you can read it in full over on the UKCBD blog as well as a whole host of other places including Christian Marketplace, the Church Times blog and STL’s own blog. It’s a sad story of incompetence in high places as some buffoons — they called them “IT consultants” — took STL UK on a one-way journey into a new software system called SAP back in October last year. Unfortunately it didn’t work and everything went pear-shaped in the warehouses, shops weren’t being supplied with goods, customers walked away and cash flow trickled down to … well, not quite zilch, but to the point where they couldn’t pay their suppliers so their suppliers stopped supplying which meant more bookshops weren’t being supplied … and I think you can see where this is going. Very, very sad: add a downturn in the economy and crunch, down comes the entire edifice.
The plan is to find a buyer “within the next few weeks”, otherwise things start closing down. Unpleasant for all concerned, to put it mildly.
I’m spearheading a blog campaign to stage a trade/community buyout which has generated a certain amount of interest, but whether or not the level of interest will be sufficient remains to be seen. At the moment I’m waiting for the latest accounts and financial reports from the company, which I requested on Tuesday. No response yet from either Biblica or Baker Tilly, the company contracted to handle negotiations.
So time will tell. We watch and wait. Please pray, please take a look at the discussions so far, throw in your own ideas, pray some more, think about whether or not you’d like to become part of a buyers’ consortium — let me know as soon as possible if so, please — then pray some more.
Some interesting ideas over at Clayboy’s place: head across and throw in your own thoughts there too, please; and watch this space…
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