
How Indigo, a Canadian Chain, Is Reinventing Book Selling - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/books/booksupdate/indigo-books-canadian-chain.html
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steve_adams_86
Things like this make me feel very out of touch. I went into Indigo the other
day with my kids to use some gift cards from Christmas, with the idea of
getting books to take on a short trip. We ended up in what felt like a bizarre
home goods, toy store, book store, quasi-junk pile store. There was shit
everywhere. My kids needed constant reminders to look for books, not junk.

Everything was plastic, cheap, very disposable, and very much intended for
conspicuous consumption. Some part of me feels like we've fallen very far if
literature, one of the pinnacles of human accomplishments, can only be sold if
you can also buy the kind of garbage that's rapidly filling our oceans and
landfills as well. There is a bizarre dichotomy between books - the things
that can potentially last a lifetime and satisfy countless readers - and the
impulsively purchased and remarkably unnecessary items which will be bought
and lost or disposed of within a year.

I might be overly pessimistic about it. I want my kids to have more wholesome
experiences when it comes to the type of media (especially books) they
consume. I'll keep taking them to the library the majority of the time, and
otherwise, go to local book shops which just sell books. If they still exist.

I feel a little bit like Abe Simpson. "I used to be with 'it', but then they
changed what 'it' was.". Maybe Indigo is just fine.

~~~
adriand
You do seem a bit pessimistic and I'm not sure that your negativity is
entirely warranted in the case of Indigo. The products they stock are
certainly not high-end, but nor are they dollar store crap.

Most of the items are decent and some are quite nice. I've seen very nice
blankets, good quality stationery and related items, board games, and the sort
of mid-quality art/nerdy things that you tend to see in the gift shops of
museums and art galleries.

None of it is stuff you "need" which may be causing your reaction, but if you
were to buy it, you wouldn't throw (most of) it out a week later.

~~~
52-6F-62
Yeah sort of agree here.

I don't head over there often, but I use a tea mug from that place every day
in the office.

I used to like visiting those stores when they were "Chapters" whenever we'd
visit the city (read extent-suburbs) as a kid. It was especially exciting when
we didn't have internet or up-to-date computers and I'd get to browse the
multitudes of computer and music magazines. Always left me jealous. I think
that place had a bit better of a thing going—it was less frenetic.

That said, the buying power of Indigo makes it a worthwhile place to search
for a book if you can't find it locally.

------
motohagiography
I watched this happen over the last 20 years and its an important development.

If you remember the 80s and 90s, you may remember lingering in bookstores
because they were a focal point to daytime city life. Before online dating,
you would meet women and men there, and that was the whole point. If you ask
any man of a certain age from a city who the "bookstore girl," was, he will
have a memory, if not a story for you. It was a big part of city culture.

What Reismann (and her predecessor, Chapters) did initially was bring suburban
big box stores into the city and wiped out a lot of the street life and
culture, and with it, small publishers. In effect this polarized the market
for fiction, where literary fiction today has been reduced to "content," and a
lot of unctuous posturing funded by grant money.

However, after hollowing the market out, Reismann branched out with Indigo and
kind of re-planted, where her stores are once again places for people to
linger. They are placed near movie theatres, so it was something to do while
you waited.

The formula that Indigo is getting right is, like us in software, it's about
generating retail traffic. You need a funnel to drive conversions. To do that,
you need to attract women, who draw men, and the frisson that keeps them
coming back is what turns the engine over. Let's face it, Indigo isn't a
Cabela's with books because that's not how you get that retail traffic engine
to turn over. It's more like Anthropologie meets a craft shop.

I don't like shopping at Indigo, but that's not the point. As a man I go there
because I can get a new release or something relatively mainstream faster than
amazon can deliver it, and crucially, I can get exposure to that element of
social randomness and optionality that is completely absent and destroyed in
cities now that everyone carries a slot machine in their pocket. The most
interesting future from my view will be the one that gets people actually
talking and connecting again the way we used to in bookstores and cafes.

~~~
barry-cotter
> What Reismann (and her predecessor, Chapters) did initially was bring
> suburban big box stores into the city and wiped out a lot of the street life
> and culture, and with it, small publishers. In effect this polarized the
> market for fiction, where literary fiction today has been reduced to
> "content," and a lot of unctuous posturing funded by grant money.

The MFA was born in 1940. Form before content is not a product of Borders. The
same kinds of people read pretentious literature worldwide and the same kinds
of people write it. It’s like avant-garde theatre, it’s the same everywhere.
Literary fiction is no more because of Borders than fantasy or detective
fiction is. People aren’t completely useless at realising that there are
clusters in the kinds of books people like to read, even without computers.
Those clusters are genres and literary fiction is one of them.

~~~
motohagiography
The big box model killed small bookstores, then demanded that to access their
new market, publishers print in sufficient volumes to stock all their huge
stores, and then when they didn't sell all of the copies, the stores returned
the unsold books to the publishers and that collapsed them.

The big box store killed the more sparse and diverse shops that sustained the
market for niches like Nobel, Booker, and other prize winners. Litfic is
mainly character driven over of plot driven, so to say it's all pretentious
would be a bit much. The result was that Indigo came to resemble a kind of
landfill of discarded ideas, where the good stuff got lost in the effort to
find it.

------
tzs
Barnes & Noble is doing something like that, in the sense of having a good
sized section of the store devoted to things not books or reasonably connected
to reading.

The kind of things B&N has there are (all of these are probably incomplete
since I'm mostly going from what I've noticed):

• A bunch of different kinds of games. Board games, card games, dice games
from a variety of types (strategy games, role playing games, party games, for
example).

• Puzzles. Assembly, disassembly, interlocking, take apart, and other such
infuriating things. Rubik's assorted things and similar. Jigsaw puzzles.

• Collectables and branded stuff, such as action figures, bobble heads, key
chains, plushies and such for assorted popular characters from Disney, Marvel,
DC, Studio Ghibli, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and others. Even some food, such
as "Bertie Botts, Every Flavour Jelly Beans".

• LEGO. A bunch of sets and kits, both generic and themed.

• Toys. Quite a bit of these are STEM related, such as simple electronics kits
and simple robotics stuff, microscopes, telescopes, anatomy models, and more.

It's actually a pretty good and interesting selection.

------
bryanlarsen
I used to spend hours in Chapters / Indigo. Now half the floor space is
devoted to overpriced crap, and I never go there.

~~~
foldor
Agreed. The amount of books at these stores has drastically dropped, and they
rarely have what I'm looking for anymore. The crap they do have is now devoted
to targeting a demographic I don't belong to. It's hard to argue with their
success, but it's just no longer a store for me anymore.

~~~
bluedino
What kind of crap? Is it like B&N where half the products are toys, trinkets,
and random Harry Potter memorabilia?

~~~
derefr
Pillows, throw blankets, candles, incense, stuffed animals, ornaments, coffee
mugs. Indigo is essentially now a chain selling “the reading
experience”—everything you need on/near a couch (or bed, or bathtub, or dining
table) to have a comfortable day sitting around reading a book. Including the
book itself, of course. These (both the accessories and the books themselves)
are marketed as “gifts for people who read.”

They also sell some card/board games (and even, oddly, a rather large
collection of tarot card decks), stationery (notebooks, journals, calendars),
_some_ greeting cards (but not a whole aisle of them), and a few other things
that aren’t quite accessories to books, but make more sense from another
interpretation of their paradigm: “expensive, medium-to-high-quality paper
products that nobody would be likely to buy for themselves, and which
therefore make good gifts when you want to make it clear that you didn’t just
buy them something from the dollar store and/or Walmart.” In other words:
_bougie_ paper products.

Oh, and—separately again—their childrens’ section, as well as containing
books, contains toys, but only those that could (perhaps loosely) be referred
to as “learning toys.” Indigo wants to supplant traditional toy stores as the
destination for adults trying to shop for a gift for a child, with a different
approach—rather than stocking the toys the _kids_ want, they stock the toys
that _adults_ think would most _benefit_ kids to play with. If you recall the
kids’ section of early ThinkGeek—before they became a HotTopic-alike “cultural
branding” store—it has that same kind of feel: gifts you could get your
niece/nephew, that would both make the kid excited, but also make their
parents appreciate the purchase (rather than resenting it for how much it’s
distracting the kid from their studies or, potentially, damaging their house.)

------
pseudolus
I'm none too fond of the evolution bookstores into coffee shops and sellers of
bric a brac but quite frankly a landscape devoid of any semblance of a
bookstore is a frightening alternative which has been realized in many
communities. I also realize that I can't have it both ways, sniffing out the
second hand bargain on Amazon or Ebay while bemoaning and fearing the fate of
the local chain store. Accordingly, I'll occasionally pay full price at a
physical retailer and hope that it adds to their bottom line.

------
emptybits
I'll start with my gratitude that a Canadian bookseller has found a way to
make their bottom line work and afford locations in high-rent areas that stay
open late. Also, I'd say their staff are generally attentive and helpful.
Thank you for this, Indigo.

BUT... I have given Indigo too many second chances on their non-book
merchandise so their new defocussed focus makes me cringe. I've had to do many
returns, embarrassing gift returns, because of poor quality crap. Two
"literary" mugs, on separate occasions, whose messages started to wash off
after several uses. A "literary" quote pillow whose stitching came undone
within months. A smart-seeming not-cheap boardgame with wooden pieces that
_could_ have lasted a lifetime time if it wasn't for crappy quality control
that left the pieces painted with grossly offcenter markings that you can't
unsee while playing. Sure, they sell some highish-end consumer electronics,
which seem really out of place, but then that's an area where their staff are
out of their depth when I've asked questions.

Too many merchandise strikes for me. So you're out, Indigo. I'll only shop
there for books now. Which means I cringe and put on tunnel vision as I'm
forced to walk through all their non-book plastic futuretrash.

Their model is obviously working for them and for most people. So I recognize
I'm probably just a retro bookstore grouch with unrealistic expectations. And
I recognize book margins may not be great. But maybe instead of selling
barely-relevant disposable garbage, they could help their bottom line by
moving just outside of the _highest_ rent locations? (Multi-story retail on
Robson Street in Vancouver, really??)

Books endure. Most of their new crap doesn't. Still feels awkward.

~~~
coldacid
It really makes me wish that the older Chapters banner wasn't being retired.
Same company but when you went to a Chapters you knew it was just going to be
books and a smattering of other media. The conversion of pretty much every
Chapters location into another Indigo is one of the reasons I tend to do most
of my book shopping exclusively with Amazon now.

------
jimrhods23
"It may seem strange for a bookstore chain to be developing and selling
artisanal soup bowls and organic cotton baby onesies. But Indigo’s approach
seems not only novel but crucial to its success and longevity"

This is the Amazon model. Start with books and move onto other items. Great
for them, but not novel or innovative.

~~~
slantyyz
Yeah, but it's not. Ever since Amazon.ca really established their presence
here, there's not a lot of reason to buy from Indigo unless they're heavily
discounting something.

Their selection is generally meager compared to a lot of other online stores
here. Honestly, every time I pass by a Chapters/Indigo, I'm surprised they're
still around.

My guess is that they still get a lot of bricks and mortar customers who want
instant gratification with a dead tree book purchase (provided it's a popular,
stocked title).

~~~
crescentfresh
Two times I go to the Indigo near me: a) wander around after I get a coffee at
the attached starbucks, and 2) my kids have giftcards to spend from
birthdays/christmas.

Only once in the last year did I have a focused reason to hit them up, I
wanted to get a certain book for my kid to start reading together THAT NIGHT.

------
johan_larson
Glad to hear they're finding a way to make money.

My impression is that Indigo is a seller of physical books at a time when
reading is increasingly going online, so they are turning into an odds-and-
ends store for the people Stuff White People Like was written about.

It's as if people started drinking less and less coffee and Starbucks slowly
morphed into a kitchen-gear store.

~~~
52-6F-62
> _Stuff White People Like_

Funny enough, also Canadian (well, written by a Canadian)

------
wintorez
The way they layout their stores is also very attractive. It's impossible to
pass one of their stores, and not go inside to browse, even when you don't
plan to buy anything. Only one other store has the same effect on me and
that's Apple Store.

------
giarc
I have two young kids and we probably did 50% of our Christmas shopping _in_
Indigo last year, the rest being on Amazon.

------
thedaemon
Updating your business model to stay afloat; I don't see anything wrong with
this.

I think the major issue currently with books is that most people only listen
to audio books or podcasts. As well as books take up physical space. I regret
to say that I too have been buying less physical books because of running out
of room on my bookshelves! I used to be very proud of my ever growing personal
library... Now I'm unsure if the investment was worth it.

------
NoGravitas
> “Cross-merchandising is Retail 101, and it’s hard to do in a typical
> bookstore,”

This doesn't seem that different from Barnes & Noble. About a third of the
floor space in our local B&N is book-adjacent collectables (Harry Potter
memorabilia, Funko Pops) and another quarter is stationery.

~~~
coldacid
There's quite a gap between collectables and made-for-use lifestyle items like
pans and knives and craft kits and so on and so forth.

------
lazyant
They closed the only bookstore they had in my town and moved to a mall
(Coles), it's a place now to buy pricey stupid gifts and popular books too I
guess.

------
mtw
imo It's the best place to find interesting gifts for family and close friends
in my city.

------
jccalhoun
"Last year, all my friends got reading socks" If one of my friends gave me
"reading socks" I would laugh in their face. If they had reading socks I would
probably rethink my friendship with them.

~~~
johan_larson
Yeah, "reading socks" sounds sort of like "lovemaking hat'. Huh? Why would you
need one?

------
mcguire
...by ceasing to be a bookstore.

~~~
wendyshu
You could call it a "reading store" now I guess.

------
jonathanehrlich
So proud of the Indigo team.

