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By Kathy Michaels
Last time the Canadian dollar jumped to near parity with the U.S. greenback, book retailers held their breath and waited for customer backlash.
Demanding to know why the U.S. price on the back flap of a novel wasn’t reflective of amount of Canadian cash they were dishing out, consumers shut their pocketbooks and backed out of that particular retail cycle, explained Michael Neill, owner of Mosaic Books.
So yesterday, when the loonie was pushed to 95.65 cents U.S., Neill wasn’t exactly excited. It could mean savvy shoppers will demand that they pay a price that would eat away his thin profit margin, and in a depressed economy, that’s not exactly good news.
“We are unfortunately one of the only commodities that has a price printed on the product that they manufacture and this is the big challenge,” he said.
That said, he’s learned a few tricks from the last time the Loonie soared and he intends to use them.
“Last time the dollar hit par, we put a lot of pressure on publishers,” he said, noting in addition to offereing discounts, U.S. book suppliers did eventually bring down the Canadian price so it would reflect the currency value. It was something they were slow to do because they suspected the greenback would rise again and, ultimately, they were right. That meant prices have gone up again.
“It’s either feast or famine,” he said.
That said, this time around Neill has channels in place that will allow him to give a consumer the American price, just so long as they are willing wait a couple of days.
“We are in an ugly position, but we have ways to deal with this,” he said. “We have channels where we buy from U.S. wholesalers at the U.S. price. So if the dollar hits par tomorrow, and the book says $20 U.S. and $26 Canadian I tell them they can order it from me today, but you can’t have the one on the shelf.”
With ways to placate the consumer in place, Neill said that business has actually been quite brisk.
“My business has been up 12 per cent from last year,” he said. “When the economy fell apart, we said let’s get out there and let’s do stuff — let’s put our nose to the grindstone and we overcame.”
Neill dumped a pile of money into advertising, contacted publishers so they could offer a couple of days of deep discounts and basically did everything they could to ensure they kept the consumer’s attention. It’s worked so far, though he admits he’s in as better position than many other retailers around the city.
“If you are reader and like a book, will you do without?” he said. “No, people want their books. I will cut back on a $300 widget I don’t need, but we’re a bit recession proof.”
kathy@kelowna.com
250-575-0761
Tags: book stores, Kelowna, loonie
