Clare's Reflections - the end of first month back
Has it really been a month already! So much has happened and there’s a feeling of the month being a long one and yet my sabbatical is still fresh in my mind. Sharing the stories of my time away with friends, members and the team here at the shop has really helped to maintain the experience of time away. I would thoroughly recommend a long step back to anyone!
On the practical side of things, after this first month back, it is clear we need to really focus on growing our book sales in order to maintain all the other activities that we offer. Whilst we have seen an increase in bulk book sales this last year, thanks to Suzanne’s growing connections with local (and not so local) schools and Jack’s book purchasing skills, we have seen a decline in our shop sales and we are keen to share the wonderful new shop layout (a big thank you to Amelia, Jack and Jacqueline) with new audiences. For me this means being out and about more in the city, sharing all that we do with other organisations who may be interested to find out why buying books with us is such a good thing. So if you know of a group, organisation or business that you think might like to hear about what we do, let me know at clare@octoberbooks.org
Other aspects of increasing our income are being addressed through Operation Thrive, a scheme which involves both Committee and team members in identifying ways we can increase our income from:
room hires
event ticket sales
bulk book sales
online book sales
shelf space rental and other new hosted products
Operation Thrive is also about deepening our connections with our community, our members and all those involved in October Books and growing new connections or reviving old ones. Amelia is working with the university with the aim of engaging students in the Autumn term and Suzanne is continuing her work with Reading Buddies and schools. Do let us know if there are other groups we can connect with.
Back to talking finance, I mentioned in a previous post that we are looking for someone to help us with our Financial management as Ellen will be stepping back from this role later in the year. We are looking for someone with some knowledge of accountancy, budgeting and predictive spreadsheets and a love of financial data analysis. Please do drop me a line if this is something you would like to help us with.
Until next week. Clare
