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A new bookshop has opened this weekend in Oxford, bucking the trend reported last week that the sector was in decline. The Last Bookshop, the second remainder bookshop to be run by Jake Pumphrey and business partner Nick Walsh, opened on Saturday 31st October. It carries a range of titles, from children's books to art, cookery and poetry, with every copy being sold for £2.
Pumphrey said the shop's name was intended to be "a tongue-in-cheek rebuke to those who thought books would become obsolete with the rise of the internet". Its logo is a book in flames.
He said: "When we opened, we didn’t know how the shop would fare, but now that we are opening a second, we are confident that our business still has a place."
Pumphrey added: "We’re not aiming to compete with the bigger bookstores. Given our focus on remainders, our purpose is different – we’re not stocking the latest bestsellers, but rather providing an opportunity for customers to pick up good quality titles at a reasonable price... If selling books cheaply encourages more people to enjoy reading, it can only be of benefit to everyone."
The pair also runs a wholesale business, Pumpkin Wholesale, providing remainder books to other retailers and selling directly to customers via their own website and sites such as Amazon.