If a prestigious marketing program at a university ever invites me to lecture and a student asks, “Sir? What do you do in your book store to get customers to come in?” I would answer, “I start eating lunch or urgently need to go to the bathroom.” These options have shown over the course of many years to make that front door open with customers who have lots of questions demanding your uninterrupted attention.
But what do you do when you can’t have your door open because of a stay-at-home order? At Printed Page, we’ve embarked on a special effort to make sure that when we are finally able to open the door, awe-struck customers will exclaim, “I’ve never seen such neat shelving!”
Crowd-pleasing shelving starts with a visual inspection from a trained looker. Shelves with books that aren’t uniformly straight are flagged for further action. Using a manual level, the shelving technician makes an initial assessment of both vertical and horizontal uniformity to determine what is known in the trade as perpendicularity. After lunch, another technician uses laser technology to assess and determine a straight line on which the volumes will stand. The laser level guides the technician to either move a volume forward or backward. Sometimes, book ends are deployed. Quality control inspectors then check the work for, well, quality control. At that point the shelf is certified as meeting the requirements of the International Protocols on Shelving Books and is ready for public viewing.
Now here’s where marketing savvy comes in. We intend to let all the Neat Shelving clubs around the country know of our achievement in the hope that we’ll be a stop on one of their national bus tours. These clubs have names like “Shelfless Vagabonds,” “Top Shelf Lickers” and “Board Housewives.” Many are shelving re-creators who show off their skills in national shelving competitions. Those who participate in the book divisions strive to be able to remove a book from a shelf in such a way as to not leave an unsightly gap. Here’s where years of practice really pay off.
This is something you’re going to want to bring the kids to see, folks, and we hope that day comes soon