Emerging Plans
Time to let you have an update on the plans that are emerging as the new team settles into their roles and we have a little breathing space for pondering the next six months at least.
At our recent committee meeting we talked about the importance of keeping our ethos and values at the core of all our projects, plans and decision making. We know this is important to you our customers as you have given us some great feedback from our ‘Have Your Say’ survey. We’ll be letting you know results on that in a couple of weeks.
With our ethos and values as core, the committee discussed some proposed plans for how we can reduce outgoings and increase income over the coming months. Lots talked about and some of the key decisions were:
No change in shop hours for the moment but to ensure we have one half day closing a month for training and wellbeing for the team
To continue with our plans to review all our book stock in the shop and ensure we have community curated selections for all our main topic areas. Our first area for review is the children’s section
Review our hosted products range and discontinue lines that are high effort and low reward
Develop a strategic approach for enquiries from local authors as current process is time consuming
To continue with plans for a upgrade of the shop space and displays, looking at low cost options and repurposing existing units (also in breaking news we will be working with our friends at The Art House on some more creative display options, more on that soon)
There are some other plans for governance and decision making processes which we will outline in a future blog. We are looking for members and customers who would like to be on our Committee short term, particularly anyone with strategic overview, business planning, HR or finance skills. These positions are co-opted, so you don’t have to sign up to be a permanent member of the committee but just come along to a meeting and contribute. Do write to Clare at clare@octoberbooks.org if you are interested.
A huge thank you to Liz, Rob, Rosie and John, members and volunteers who have contributed significantly in helping to bring these plans together. We are definitely stronger together so keep connecting and creating with us.
