@LukePlaysUke

4 weeks ago

I was deployed to Germany for a couple months and volunteered what off-time I had at a used bookshop on base and they had a similar issue regarding holds. People would find out about a certain classic (the shop owner had a passion for going to the UK to dig through estate sales, shop closings, charity shops, etc and buying nice classics to bring back to her shop and sell at really good prices because she wanted to get more people into collecting vintage books) and ask them to set it aside and a lot of times they wound up never coming in. But to the owner, that was money that could have been made sooner to help pay the rent. So her solution was to establish a hold period of… 5 days? 7 days? Not a long period of time but probably enough time to give the person a window to come into the shop. Life gets busy, especially for military folks, and she recognized that. So she set aside a shelf behind the counter and would write on a slip of paper the name and date when the hold would expire. That way, if a volunteer was running the register, they could verify that the right person was getting the books OR they would know it’s time to put the books back out on the shelves. Some exceptions applied but it wasn’t just for regulars, you know? She had to be super careful about when to allow longer holds and it usually had to do with how much she liked the person. For instance, she’d hold all sorts of classics for a mother/daughter duo who were building libraries in tandem for something like a month (or two!) so they could come in at their leisure and examine the books in person. I’d say about half of the books went back on the shelves so it’s not like the owner was giving these two special consideration because she knew they would drop a lot of money on them. I wouldn’t do that if I ran the shop but maybe something like a regular who’s deployed would make sense. Deploying sucks and maybe them looking forward to coming home to buy these books is what helps get them through it all. But even then, they’d need to be a staunch regular, you know? But I digress. A strong hold policy with definite deadlines and the statement that when that deadline expires, it WILL go out on the floor, and a little organization to make seeing what is new or due would probably help increase loyalty from the customers, frequency of traffic, and overall satisfaction. Hell, you might even want to consider displaying the records on hold to the rest of the shop with the deadline visible to drum up excitement in case the holder doesn’t come in. As a kid, I would definitely go to pawn shops and see pedals or guitars and know when they would be relinquished by the owner and be able to be bought by me and it made me frequent the shops even more. I can only imagine this would be increased in a record shop because the holder has already singled something out as being at least cool to them. Maybe it would be cool to me, too. I’d definitely look at it at least!

1 |