January Opening Hours
Throughout January we’re reverting back to our reduced hours of:
Mon/Wed/Fri/Sat
10am-4pm
EDIT: We are now in tier 4. As such the shop will only be open for purchases of food and household products and for click and collect services. Books can still be ordered here and collected at the shop or delivered if you are shielding.
Hours will remain as advertised.
We understand this might inconvenience some customers who have been enjoying the return to a six day opening hours. We are doing this because:
The pandemic isn’t over. Whether or not we’re in lockdown again in January, or Southampton falls into a higher tier we know Covid rates will remain high for a while yet. Rather than attempt normality with the risk and potential uncertainty of suddenly having to revert or change our plans we have decided to take control of the situation so we can know what we’re doing in advance.
January is usually a quiet month for us, with reduced footfall in the high street because of the pandemic it is likely to be even quieter than usual and so it makes financial sense to reduce our opening hours and furlough some workers to save money during this time.
We will also be using the time to update things including installing new epos systems, computers and an online ordering system for university course texts. This should make for a better and smoother shopping experience for you, our customers. We’ll also be taking advantage of the reduced opening hours to catch up on things that weren’t done in their usual manner this year, such as stocktake.
It has been a difficult and strange year and Covid has meant an increased work load and stress for those staff not furloughed, even when our shop hours have been reduced. We hope that by February we’ll be able to revert back to our six days a week opening hours and that as the year progresses we’ll gradually be able to get back to normal.
We ask for your patience during this time and hope that our customers understand the reason we’re putting these reduced hours in place and continue to support us.
October Books will continue to serve our community throughout January. You can order books directly through us by filling in our online form here or buy online through our bookshop.org store front here. You can browse and buy our non book items through our click and collect store here.
If you have any additional queries, concerns or requests please do get in touch by emailing info[at]octoberbooks.org or calling 023 8058 1030
