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Entirely face-out sections, dedicated publisher areas and revamped travel departments are among the non-fiction experiments Waterstone’s could roll out around the country come the new year.
Over the past few months a variety of trials in the retailer’s Cambridge store have been taking place after the branch reopened its fourth floor with 11,000 sq ft of retail space. Many of the trials will now be introduced in a number of other stores from 2011.
One of the changes to come into place is displaying all titles face out across a section instead of spine on. This has been successfully done across a range of genres including art, gardening, design and photography. Fiona Kennedy, head of non-fiction and academic, said this new approach offers more of a platform for beautiful books. “In the past we’ve been guilty of letting books sit spine out,” she said. “Books just sell themselves when you put them face out.”
This approach has also been trialled in the humour section. Kennedy said: “We’re trying to get away from the overwhelming cluttered approach and take a more edited approach. We don’t want to overwhelm customers.”
The travel section has also undergone a major shake-up and now phrase books, guides and maps are all placed together and grouped by country. For Italy, Spain, France and the USA, a vibrant feature space has been created with colourful headers and a selection of titles from other ranges of books. For example, in the French section alongside the usual travel guides there is a shelf featuring French novels and books on French interiors. A handful of shops have adopted this approach, but come the new year this look will be rolled out to all stores.
Product director Tim Watson said the retailer is looking at working more closely with publishers on designated bays and tables. Waterstone’s can “undoubtedly” do more, “with dedicated expertise on their part and space on our part,” he added. The Cambridge store already has a bay of Faber poetry and the art section has both bays and tables on three main publishers, Taschen, Thames & Hudson and Phaidon. The Taschen bay is in 40 stores and the Phaidon and Thames & Hudson displays are in 10. The tables are not ratecarded.
The non-fiction changes are in addition to the “feature space” that Waterstone’s introduced into its non-fiction sections earlier this year. Each space has a selection of titles on display that have been handpicked from each genre. Kennedy said: “The idea is to have a mini front of store for each genre, highlighting new titles, books on offer or titles that staff from the store want to recommend.” The amount of space dedicated to these feature areas varies from store to store, some genres may have a couple of bays, whereas others may just have one shelf.
Kennedy said Waterstone’s has been spending a lot of time looking at the “running order” of titles. “One of the challenges with non-fiction is how you help a customer to find a book they want,” Kennedy said. “Sometimes it’s not clear to the customer how we categorise it.” The retailer has introduced red blockers which signify which types of titles can be found in that particular part of the shelf. For example, in sport, blockers highlight areas including rugby, running and marathons, tennis, weighlifting and bodybuilding and sports science.
The blockers have been used in the top 20 stores and Kennedy said there are another 50 stores which would benefit from it. She added: “With smaller stores it’s more obvious and it does take up shelf space as you have to take some books out to put the blockers in, so you have to get the right balance.”
The retailer has placed much emphasis on the look and feel of the shop and seating areas are scattered throughout the Cambridge store along with the large café area. Kennedy said for display tables blocks have been used to enable a tiered approach, which she said makes it more visually interesting.
Watson also said Waterstone’s will be looking more closely at non-book products, adding that the retailer is seeing “huge growth” in this area. In the Cambridge store staff have integrated non-book products with relevant genres, for example journals in the travel area and quirky gadgets in the teenage section.