When Small Is Beautiful

Yesterday, with slight guilt pangs, I chose to visit the newly opened Landmark bookstore instead of my favorite Mom & Pop bookstore (lets call it MnP). You see for a moment the guys at Landmark had me. What used to be a mall was now, Landmark – sprawled over 10,000 square feet, two levels, – that’s a lot of room for a lot of books, I thought. Plus watches, toys, games. Chocolates at the cash counter. If books do it for you, then Landmark was seemingly the ultimate destination store. Despite myself, I was tempted.

MnP on the other hand is barely one tenth that size. The display window is non-existent. Its cramped. Ironically though, its always better stocked.

Anyhow, I digress. So I went with a list of four books. The trained-to-be-friendly customer assistant at Landmark was quick to type in the names into his snazzy new PC to check for availability. I couldn’t help but notice that none of the titles or authors were familiar to this person. He asked me from time to time to confirm the spelling (guess my handwriting sucks these days!). Finally, he announced that one of those books was available and asked another trained-to-be-friendly customer assistant to bring it for me. I followed hoping to find the entire section and browse around for other books that weren’t on my list. We went past Biography, Fiction, Non-fiction, Cinema, Photography, Biography, Fiction… wait a minute!? We were going round in circles. This guy didn’t know what category my book fell into. Sigh.

I didn’t wait to find out.I left, crossed the street and was into the tiny, familiar MnP store! Since college, this bookstore has been my friend, host to all the books I seeked and then some. Host also to some wonderful, knowledgable store owners, managers and assistants. One glance at my list and the guy headed straight to the (unmarked, uncategorized) section where my books were. Three were available, one was out of stock. While I happily browsed around I found other titles by the authors. Ultimately, I picked up three books from my list and three from sheer joy.

As I stepped out with my (very heavy) bag of books, grateful for the store, its people and most importantly the coming days I would be spending with my new-found treasures, I realized:

Creating a sensational experience around a core offering is great. But at the end of the day, its the core offering that attracts people. Because chocolates are available in my neighbourhood grocery store too.

What do you think?

Image courtesy: Flickr

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