Jaffe & Neale to open second bookshop

Jaffe & Neale is set to open a second bookshop in Stow-on-the Wold next month.

The shop is a joint venture between Jaffe & Neale owners Patrick Neale and Polly Jaffe and one of their customers, avid reader Jo Virgin, who will be running the shop.

The store will be based on busy Park Street in the “thriving” Cotswolds town, is 1,000sq ft with a café, and is set to open at the end of October.

The couple, whose first Jaffe & Neale Bookshop is based in Chipping Norton, had opened a second bookshop in Chipping Camden but closed it in 2012 due to poor turnover.

Of this new location in Stow-on-the-Wold, about eight miles from Chipping Norton, Virgin said: “It is a beautiful Cotswolds town, but it is very different to Chipping Norton. It is much more touristy and location-wide, much closer to Cheltenham. It is a thriving market town and I am confident the bookshop will do very well there.”

The shop will replace an outlet selling vintage items and will sell the Jaffe & Neale “famous” carrot cake, hold author event and sell frontlist titles.

Virgin (below) is a former marketer at HarperCollins Children’s Books who has also sold manuscripts and second hand titles at Christie’s in New York, before embarking on career teaching primary school children in Oxford.

She was a regular customer at Jaffe & Neale, where the idea for the joint venture came about.

Virgin said: “I have lived in the US for some time, going to university in Minnesota and then working in New York, where I have been influenced by modern retail So the shop will feel quite modern, it has exposed brick which looks quite cool, we hope to have scaffold bookshelves, for example.

“I do feel quite confident about opening the shop, having worked in the school in the area I know the parents who are big book readers. I think it is something about living in a town as opposed to the city, you feel the need to get out in the local community and see people and visit the shops."

Patrick Neale said he too felt confident about the new venture, despite opening during uncertain economic times following the UK's decision to Brexit in June.

“I think the lifestyle bookshop is a thing of the future," he said. "I think a passion for books, an exuberance, a flair for customer service, all these things mean I am definitely optimistic.

“I was very disappointed about Brexit, I thought we were in for an immediate economic downturn, but so far I have been proven wrong.”