Gardners looks to 'predict key trends' as distributors gear up for bumper autumn

Distributors say they are doing everything they can to enable them to cope with the autumn crush, amid concerns from some bookshops about the supply chain's ability to handle hundreds of new releases.

With a well-publicised avalanche of releases on the way, beginning with upwards of 230 trade titles hitting stores on 3rd September, there have been worries the supply chain might be hit in an industry still trying to recover from the effects of lockdown.

Richard Drake, who runs Drake the Bookshop in Stockton-on-Tees, said: “Given the turmoils and troubles the year has thrown up, the supply chain could be a huge concern. Can all the publishers and Gardners make sure everyone gets all of the books they need and more importantly when they need them?”

Nic Bottomley, of Mr B’s Emporium in Bath, said he was also concerned now that, following the demise of Bertrams, there was only one major wholesaler. He said: “Gardners is supportive of bookshops and very aware of their responsibilities to the trade — and of the commercial opportunity it represents to them as well — and so I’m hopeful that supply will hold up. It will be more important than ever for bookshops to have strong relationships with individual distributors as well, and for those distributors to connect and communicate well with bookshops, to think about how they can support bookshops this autumn when they need it most by improving supply speed and regularity to bookshops direct and at the same time keep to make sure the flow of books from distributor to Gardners reflects the likely unprecedented levels of demand at that end.”

At Gardners, sales and marketing director Nigel Wyman said, although there were still challenges to supply, stock capacity at his company was now almost back to pre-lockdown levels. The business was “pretty much on a par with where it was this time this time last year”, he said, and was gearing up to make sure it could cope with a busy fourth quarter.

Wyman said: “My buying department and buying director are working very closely with all the key publishers and being bullish on stock to make sure we have enough in the building to be able to cope with that additional Christmas rush. But at the same time it depends on how you predict what's going to sell. It's really a bit of a science and we're working with the big publishers to make sure that we're as bullish as we can be on all the stock. But as with all these things we're never going to be able to get it 100% right.”

Wyman said Gardners had seen additional domestic business following the collapse of Bertrams, but this had been offset by the pandemic's impact on exports, meaning his company was on an “even keel”. Although the firm is buying more titles than it normally would due to the number of releases, Wyman said it was a similar challenge to previous years.

He said: “It's about trying to predict where the big sellers are going to be because there might be more titles that come out but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get large sales in all those titles. Therefore it's trying to predict and work with the publishers and their authors to understand where they think the key trends are going to lie and making sure that we have supply of those titles to supply to our customers.

"Ultimately the best thing to happen is that there's a spread of good titles instead of a handful of exceptional titles because in that way you don't get into a situation when you're selling out all the time of those fast-moving lines. But the ones where we know there are key titles we are definitely being more bullish on supply.”

Lewis Dawson, m.d. of retail supplier Bookspeed, said the number of titles would not be a big problem for his company either, although it could lead to some titles missing out this autumn.

He said: “We curate ranges of books for our customers, so essentially what they pay us to do is to review everything that’s published and whittle it down to what’s right for them. So in a way, although there’s a bit of a challenge of simply getting through the volume of new titles coming out, it doesn’t really impact our outputs all that much.

“I am concerned that we are so spoiled for choice given the concentration of publishing over this next period, that we’re going to have to make difficult decisions about which books to feature and that some great publishing will inevitably get lost and not make it into our ranges. But what’s important to our customers is that it’s new to them and their stores – they’re less interested as to whether it’s a brand spanking new book to the market – so anything we really like but can’t find space for in our ranges we’ll push into sprimg-summer 2021."

Meanwhile, publishers such as Hachette UK, Penguin Random House and Pan Macmillan contacted by The Bookseller said they were confident of being able to meet the demand with their own distribution arms.

Rob Manser, group sales director at Hachette UK, which runs a high-tech distribution operation in Didcot, said it had performed well during the pandemic so far and the company had “learned a lot” from the past few months.

He said: “We’ve already been in touch with most of our customers to present our key titles and we’ll be managing our estimates and forecasts carefully based on changes to our supply chain, so availability remains very high. We’ve also made special contingency plans, such as preparing to run overnight from September to December if needed, so we can send out more books.

“Our sales and distribution teams will ensure there’s plenty of support on hand for our customers as we head into the busiest time of the publishing calendar, with one of our strongest Christmas lists to come.”

Bill Godber, m.d. of Turnaround Publisher Services, said many of his customers, especially US publishers, had pushed back titles even later to December and the New Year. Godber said those publishing in the autumn were more concerned about getting media and shelf space than supply chain problems.

He said: “There is no doubt that the increase of titles over this period is going to create some difficulties but having steered our way successfully through lockdown pretty well to date, we don’t see this as an insurmountable challenge and like to think of it as Christmas having come early."