Boffins swots up to meet changing market

WITH Boffins Bookshop celebrating its 20th anniversary, the owners of the city store have paused to reflect on their years in business and celebrate the specialist and technical bookshop's longevity.

Business security is, after all, something on a lot of people's minds at the moment.

"I started working in books in 1976 at Angus and Robertson's then-flagship WA store in the old Australia Hotel Building next to Boans in Murray Street, and then managed their Town Hall and Victoria Park branches before opening my own A&R franchise shop in WA in 1978," Boffins co-founder Bill Liddelow said.

"I sold this business in 1986, but realised very quickly that I loved the book trade and wanted to get back in.

"However, I desired a different kind of challenge to a chain franchise. Technical and non-fiction books generally have always been a passion for me, and I felt that this was a niche in which to build a business."

When Lou Pontarolo, Mr Liddelow and Kath Green opened Boffins in 1989, it was one of five bookshops within a stone's throw of each other in what has since become Perth's fashionable west end.

Today, it is the only one of those bookshops remaining and still operates from its original premises on Hay Street.

There appears to be no hubris at Boffins, with the current downturn expected to be just as challenging as did the drop-off in computer book sales following the dot.com bubble in 2000.

"When we started the business, we forecast that computer books would account for about 10 per cent of our sales," Mr Liddelow said.

"But they grew quickly as the personal computer gained wide acceptance in workplaces and homes. There was a great thirst for information on using new operating systems and new applications. For the first generation of PC users, nothing was intuitive; it was a totally new experience.

"Computer books sales were soon accounting for over 20 per cent of our sales."

From 1995, Boffins experienced another spurt of growth in computer book sales with the advent of the internet.

"At a time when search engines were far less sophisticated than now, we sold heaps of massive tomes with titles like The Internet Yellow Pages. Next, the popular view became that every business needed a web site," Mr Liddelow said.

"No matter whether or not you could view products or buy anything on the web site, you just had to have a site proclaiming to everyone how wonderful you were.

"Programmers would come in and buy four or five books at a time on how to set up a web site.

"This carried on until 2000 and our computer book sales were by then accounting for 35 per cent of our sales."

However, from early 2001 the trend reversed. Worldwide, computer book sales plummeted and with it prices as publishers slashed prices to try to retain market share.

It was a double whammy for Boffins - lower volumes and lower unit prices.

In early 2002 Mr Liddelow took time out to revisit the bookshop's strategic plan and undergo a SWOT analysis.

"For the previous few years, we had been in the habit of spending a couple of days to tweak the plan," Mr Liddelow said. "This time we started again from the ground up, laboriously going through the SWOT analysis and seeking an answer to our predicament.

"We came to the view that we needed to do three things. First, we needed to upgrade our inventory management system to allow us to offer online buying.

"Next, we needed to tweak our product mix and seek to grow our sales of design books, architecture and graphic design in particular.

"Third, we needed to rebrand and refit the shop to attract more female customers."

Despite some delays, the bookshop was able to achieve all of these objectives by early 2004.

Mr Pontarolo said after surviving the recession of the 1990s and the dot.com crash, he was confident of making it through the current economic turmoil.

"Commitment and tenacity were the secret then, and we are confident that same attitude will see us through again," he said.