Tea in the Library (26 page)

The final email announced our closure.

We're on the telly!

One day I received an excited call from Emma
—
leaping with anticipation because she'd been contacted by the television program “Getaway” (the Sydney version) which wanted to come and film a segment about Tea In The Library. Being British, her phrase was “We're going to be on the telly!” Everyone was infected with the excitement of the occasion. We were a bit bemused that the television team requested about four hours to film a segment that would last for only about six or seven minutes, but we gave them the run of the place for one afternoon. I went down to be chatted to on camera. What to wear? It was indeed exciting.

The crew and young presenter were very friendly. A lot of time was spent setting up lighting, running power cables, and politely asking bemused customers if they would mind changing seats
—
or sometimes, if they would “be in the shot”.

The idea was to show Tea In The Library as an interesting destination. The segment was light, and the crew was looking for fun angles and amusing aspects. I proudly showed them around the book selection, ordered pots of tea, and pointed out interesting titles. I displayed a range of gorgeous children's pop-up books (great visuals, I thought); and then the producer's eye was caught by
The Pop-Up
Kama Sutra.
You opened the pages and little cardboard figures on bits of string, depicted in various states of exotic undress, did it dangling from chandeliers, and so on. Don't ask me why we had this extraordinary title in stock
—
a rash buying decision by someone. The result was the “Getaway” presenter sitting in a corner looking quizzically through
The Pop-Up Kama Sutra
—
with no direct view of the pages, thank you, this was for a family time-slot.

Because of our events focus, the producer had also asked to talk to one of our author speakers, and it so happened that on that particular evening our guest was Michael Duffy, a political columnist, who was promoting his book
Latham and Abbott
(much political water has flowed under the bridge since then, but at this pre-election time it was very topical). Michael came down to the shop a little early and was interviewed by the “Getaway” crew, who then stayed on well over their planned time, to take some footage of Michael's talk and the attentive audience.

I was as thrilled as The Team with all this, and we eagerly awaited screening day. Based on our experiences with editorial mentions in
The Sydney Morning Herald
, we were bracing for big crowds. I suggested to Emma that she order in more copies of
The Pop-Up Kama
Sutra.
But in the end it was a bit of a fizzer. We had a few people tell us they had “come in specially”
—
usually from out-lying suburbs of Sydney
—
because they had seen us on TV. But generally it seemed that our demographic was not one to watch travel magazine programs at 5 pm on a Saturday. Probably too busy reading
The Herald.

Still, I have the video tape to show my grand-children.

Emma had been pestering me for some time about adding some gift or stationery items to our book range. The hope was that this would not only add extra sales, but also do so at improved margins. I had seen a few items
—
giftwrap, cards, bookmarks
—
from The Bodleian Library in Oxford, at an antiquarian bookshop in the Southern Highlands. I purchased a few samples and looked up The Bodleian on the web. They didn't have a local Australian distributor at that stage, but it was possible to order directly from them. We pored over their catalogue and selected a range of lovely and unique products.

Greeting cards
—
especially those with a literary theme
—
and bookmarks were our main focus. We also ordered small note books and note pads, a memorable necktie, and a very special teapot and cup and saucer
—
white china with the words “Silence Please” printed on them. These last items worked out to a rather expensive retail price, but while waiting for them to sell they made great props on the mantle, or in a merchandising display. I don't know what became of that teapot. I don't believe it was sold. It may be packed away in a box I haven't yet opened, or perhaps it was nicked, in the bedlam of closing. Nothing would surprise me.

The Bodleian items in fact sold very well overall, especially the cards and bookmarks. I toyed briefly with the idea of offering to become The Bodleian's local agent, and they (foolishly?) expressed some interest in the idea. However, after a time Emma made contact with a local greeting card supplier who could supply us with a range of lovely cards
—
including The Bodleian range. It seemed that he had become their local agent, and I am sure they are better off that way. It emerged at this time that Sandy had, in one of her former lives, run a greeting card shop, and she was an authoritative source on quantities, display, etc. We wondered about how to effectively display the cards once we had taken on larger quantities, given that every inch of wall space was covered in bookshelves. But the supplier lent us Perspex racks that fitted the shelves, and all was well. This supplier chap was very helpful, and generous with his terms, and it is regrettable that we only started dealing with him towards the end of the shop's life, and so he never really reaped much benefit from his investment in us.

From time to time we carried other small gift items, where they fitted with our philosophy and the literary theme
—
for example, Tibetan silk book bags, hand made by ethnic craftswomen. It felt good to support such people, and their products were unique and unusual
—
and popular.

Early in the life of the shop, we had bought the daily newspapers and had them available for free reading in the café. At this time I was also a private subscriber to a number of news magazines, such as “The Economist”, “The Bulletin”, “Time” and “The Nation.” Nothing too right wing! I would bring them in after scanning my copies, and leave them for customers to read. It shortly became apparent that this was probably ill-advised. Not because our customers didn't appreciate the free reading – quite the contrary! With all those magazines and papers, they had no need to browse the book stock. So we cut down to just the daily paper
—
any self-respecting café in the city should have at least that, I thought. We also displayed for browsing the publishers' reading copies of new releases, supplied free to us, on the central bench that was the focus of our café table area. This shelf was used for displays, posters, leaflets, the papers, fresh flowers and a whole variety of odds and ends.

From time to time we considered the idea of stocking some magazine titles for sale. Apart from considerations of space (and more suppliers), there was the issue of free reading of magazines with coffee and meals, and the high likelihood of dog-eared copies never actually purchased. We decided against the idea in principle, but we did carry “Good Reading”, which was clearly tailored to our demographic, and was principally distributed through bookshops. We even had our shop promoted on the magazine cover in one memorable issue.

With hindsight, we could and should have made more of the “non-book” item possibilities, although I don't think we had the space or the energy to go into, say, music, in any major way. I liked The Bodleian range because it was literary-themed, and tied in very well with our vision and ambience. I hope I find that teapot. It was cute.

Our first PR team, Whiteworks, declared that we needed some professional photographs of the shop, for use in media kits, promotional flyers and publicity material generally. So they arranged for a photographer to visit. This, of course, turned out to be bigger than “Ben Hur”. First, there is all that equipment; then the
hours
it seems to take to get just the right shot.

For our main set of photos, we needed models
—
people to sit about in the shop and look like they were enjoying themselves. To solve this, I dragooned five people from my office, thinking it would take only fifteen minutes. They agreed to give up their tea break to do me this favour. We had my administrative assistant, Claire; Jo from the Filing Department; plus Diane and Sherlon from Records; and Ashley, an indispensable gopher around the office. All were very kind to give me their time
—
and their signature on releases that allowed us to use their pictures on Tea In The Library's materials. They were our “talent”.

About an hour and a half later, after posing rigidly over cold cups of tea and cakes they weren't allowed to eat, or trying to look fascinated by a book opened at random, they were all getting very twitchy. Finally, the tedious process was over and we all dashed back to the office, where helpful co-conspirators had held the fort.

The pictures were very professional and looked great, and were used many times. But whenever a magazine or newspaper wanted to include a photo with a story or snippet about Tea In The Library, they always preferred to send their own photographer, and the rig-marole would be gone through again, although with the models restricted to the staff, or me. I posed rigidly for
The Sydney Morning
Herald
,
The Law Society
Journal
, and for the lovely colour picture that graced the cover of
Good Reading
magazine (for a price). We also had the professional photographer back once or twice to take some shots at our events, and that was how we acquired some great pictures of Jonathan King speaking about his book
Gallipoli
. There are lots of visual reminders of the unique place that was Tea In The Library.

When the shop was in its infancy, the business plan still under active development, and ideas flowing thick and fast, I conceived the bright idea of using the lovely premises we had to host after-hours events. There is no doubt that Sydney is a big enough city to need a multi-plicity of funky and interesting venues for parties, launches, lectures, meetings and corporate knees-ups. We would pitch our selves as suitable for small sit-down dinners and larger cocktail stand-up functions. I worked with Dale, the small business advisor who helped me in the early days, and we produced a brochure. We covered off the need for after-hours security, the questions of permission to open, liquor license restrictions and noise issues, and we found a young starting-out caterer who agreed to be our “recommended” supplier of catering. We were not confident at this stage that our kitchen staff could cope with after-hours events, although they could certainly handle cocktail canapés.