Robinsons to open Melbourne CBD store in April
Independent Melbourne bookseller Robinsons Bookshop will open a new outlet in the Melbourne CBD in April.
The new store, which will open in mid-April, will be located in the new Emporium shopping complex, which has been built on the former Myer Emporium building site on Lonsdale Street. It will be the fifth Robinsons Bookshop outlet, joining the three Robinsons Bookshops in Frankston, Greensborough and Chadstone and the recently opened comic store, Graus Comix, which is also located in Chadstone.
Robinsons Bookshop owner Susanne Horman told Books+Publishing that the business ‘can’t wait to unveil the new look we have developed in consultation with Emporium and our own retail designers’ in what she described as ‘a very exciting retail development right in the heart of the Melbourne shopping precinct’. ‘We don’t just want to sell books, we want to sell the “theatre” of books,’ said Horman. ‘Emporium gives us an amazing opportunity to do that because of the type of retail space they are creating.’
Horman said that Robinsons began expanding three years ago—both the Greensborough and Chadstone bookstores opened in 2012—‘becuase our business analytics showed us very clearly that the one bookstore model in the Australian market would eventually become unviable, even for the biggest and most profitable stores like our 50-year-old Frankston store’.
‘Expansion can take many forms,’ said Horman. ‘We chose to increase our physical footprint, expand our product range to include comics and more non-book products and develop our website rather than sit and do nothing about the pattern of increasing costs and declining sales. Expanding let us spread our resources and costs across more stores. This decision, once made, changed the pattern of our business overnight. It made us strong, and more importantly, it made us feel strong again instead of worried.’
Horman initially focussed on expanding the business in the outer suburbs of Melbourne but was convinced to consider a city location by the landlord for the Frankston and Chadstone stores, who presented her ‘with an offer that we couldn’t refuse’.
Category: Local news
