Start Licensing’s Ian Downes on how Waterstones’ Piccadilly store is a class above when it comes to the shopping experience.
As some of you may know, I host London sightseeing walks from time to time. As a result I often get asked for recommendations about things to see and do in London. From a shopping perspective I often recommend Waterstones in Piccadilly. As a book lover it is one of my favourite shops and one I love to visit. It is a shop with a rich history. Set over five floors in a high profile location on Piccadilly, the building first opened as a shop in 1936. It was created by Alexander Simpson and was a menswear shop – Simpsons of Piccadilly.
Waterstones bought the building in 1999 and it has been operating as the flagship shop since around then. As well as being a fabulous bookshop, it is a wonderful building with really lovely décor that Waterstones has helped preserve and in doing so has created a very special shopping experience. In line with a current trend in retailing, the shop is more than a shop as it has cafés and a restaurant. The 5th Floor Bar has great views over London. But of course it is first and foremost a bookshop. My visit there this week confirmed that licensing, licensed brands and products feature strongly throughout the store. After a week at BLE it was good to see some of the brands I saw last week on show at ExCeL actually on shelf in a shop.
Waterstones is making good use of the high footfall location and uses the storefront windows to full effect. The main window featured a very creative display for Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s new book, Jonty Gentoo. It is was good to see a retailer making the most of their opportunity to display products imaginatively. This was also a good example of how certain authors and illustrators have become ‘brands’. Book retailers rely on these brands to create marketing moments. In the case of Julia Donaldson there is, of course, a well developed licensing programme centred on her characters.
The trend for authors to become brands is not confined to the children’s category. I noticed a window display for Richard Osman’s new book We Solve Murders. Throughout the store certain authors and book series were given dedicated space – another good example being Mick Herron and his Slow Horses books. Slow Horses is now a successful TV series on Apple TV and Waterstones is capitalising on its popularity well. I often think that certain authors like Richard Osman could drive a licensing programme particularly within bookshops – I could see a focused range of products that mirror the book jacket visuals with an emphasis on pick up or gift items. In a similar vein, it is interesting to see how publishers are relaunching authors like Georges Simenon with newly designed covers and spinner programmes. Authors like Simenon have extensive backlists and have perhaps fallen off readers’ radars, but with a design refresh there is a new generation of readers to tap into. Genres like crime and mystery are perennially popular.
Waterstones has recognised that it needs to sell more than books and has embraced ‘non-book’ product fully. The ground floor of the shop is almost like a ‘greatest hits’ where it curates a mix of products that can be found on other floors, but recognising that some customers may not have time to shop the whole shop. Within this product mix are board games – there is a well stocked display near the front entrance with The Traitors board game to the fore.
Given the shop’s central London location there is no surprise that it carries a lot of London-themed products. I imagine a significant percentage of shoppers are visitors to London. The London offering includes children’s books such as Mr Men & Little Miss in London. It also has a strong commitment to well established children’s brands that started in the publishing world like Elmer and Paddington. It has built nice ranges of products that include books, plush and gift items in branded bays.
It was also good to see a very large area on the ground floor given over to greeting cards. This was almost like a ‘shop in shop’ with a comprehensive selection of cards across ages, occasions and genres. It was good to see licensed card suppliers such as Hype featuring prominently with cards such as Morph part of a spinner programme. Given the time of year Waterstones is well stocked with calendars. I noticed that calendars are sold throughout the shop generally in spinners and the selection is curated to an extent to tie into the various book departments – for example RHS and gardening themed calendars appearing alongside gardening books.
As noted earlier, Waterstones is supporting a range of non-book products such as plush, stationery and water bottles. Licensing features strongly in these categories. Suppliers include Aurora, Rainbow Designs and Museums & Galleries. I like the way that Waterstones supports a good mix of brands and, in some cases, curates small ranges of products on tabletop displays to give consumers a broad choice of brands.
A good example of this was a range of Snoopy/Peanuts gift items from House of Disaster featuring classic Snoopy comic art. It seems Waterstones is also prepared to support special edition or limited edition products, perhaps encouraged by the location. A good example of this was the fact that it had a Merrythought Paddington Bear on sale carefully curated in a display case. This retails for around £275 and is very much aimed at the collectors market. But thinking about tourists, it makes sense to have products like these on sale. It also acts as an interesting display piece. I should emphasise that one of the strengths of this flagship store is the imagination that is put into the shop layout, displays and merchandising. This is throughout the store – for example the Shakespeare section is enhanced by the books being displayed around a bust of Shakespeare. Within the children’s department there are display pieces such as a LEGO Harry Potter and an Elmer statue.
The children’s department features a number of well known characters and curated areas. There is a strong presence for items like plush – for example a great range of Julia Donaldson plush from Aurora is sold alongside her books. There is also a strong presence for classic publishing brands like Asterix and, of course, Harry Potter. Waterstones is also supporting the annuals category in depth with a dedicated display. Featured titles include Pokémon, Sonic the Hedgehog, Minecraft, Bluey and Frozen. It was good to see that the Natural History Museum had a presence in this category. It was also noteworthy to see two football related titles with Match Attax and Match of the Day annuals on sale.
I have noticed in other Waterstones stores the strong commitment to manga and anime. This was also the case here with a substantial space given over to manga. This included a branded display area. This reinforced the current popularity of this genre. It is a good example of a book retailer becoming engaged with a category in growth – it probably gives encouragement to monitor other pop culture trends to see if there may be other opportunities too.
Another aspect of the shop layout I thought was good was the provision of seating spaces and areas on each floor where customers could sit and browse. These areas were generally themed to reflect their location book wise. I guess for the retailer there is a balance between browsing and buying, but overall I think the seating areas add tom the shopping experience. This is a very relaxing shop to shop in – maybe that drives more sales.
Given the size of the shop, it is no surprise that the range of books is very comprehensive covering a plethora of subjects. It is able to support categories like gardening, art and cookery in depth. I imagine for some consumers who are passionate about particular subjects, this store is a destination store for them. Within cookery it was good to see Waterstones curating space for authors like Nadiya Hussain, carrying a good selection of her books. It is also interesting to see brands like Heinz being active in publishing – in this case with The Heinz Cookbook. Branded cookbooks like this are likely to be popular at Christmas time as they make good gifts. In the gardening section it was no surprise to see a strong presence for the RHS. Publishing is a natural category for them and a good foundation point for them to build other activity from.
As I said at the beginning, the Waterstones Piccadilly store is definitely one I would encourage people to visit. You can sit and browse, soaking up the atmosphere. In the age of experiential licensing, this is a shopping experience worth taking. Ideally you could round off your visit by buying something… we all need to do our bit to support retail at the moment and being a paying customer is one way of doing that.
Ian Downes runs Start Licensing, an independent brand licensing agency. His X handle is @startlicensing and on Instagram he is @iandownesphotos – he would welcome your suggestions for what to look out for.
