One for the book
There is a lot going on in preparations for a big book sale.
Planning a book sale is hard work, as it even requires getting an ambulance on standby for pregnant customers! The people at big bad Wolf tale us behind the scenes as they prepare for “the world’s largest book sale”.
ORGANISING a book sale is definitely not an easy task, especially one on the scale of the annual Big Bad Wolf (BBW) book sale. Imagine being behind the wheel of a book sale that stays open all of 11 days. There are promotions and marketing to deal with. And logistics .... believe it or not, that includes helping pregnant women going into labour. According to BBW co-founder Andrew Yap, this is something that happens almost every year.
“We have heavily pregnant women coming to the sale. We have had to rush them to hospital,” Yap said, during a recent interview at the BBW warehouse in Shah Alam.
Fortunately, Yap said, there is always an ambulance on standby at the sale.
There is a great deal of thought behind everything that happens at the BBW book sale, he said.
Indeed, the BBW book sale has grown from strength to strength over the years. It was the brainchild of Yap and his wife, Jacqueline Ng, who are the founders of book retailers Bookxcess, the parent company of BBW.
Starting out as a warehouse sale for excess books from distributors in Kuala Lumpur in 2009, the BBW book sale has since grown into an international name, having travelled to 32 cities in 10 countries around the world. It is known as the world’s largest book sale.
This year, the BBW book sale celebrates its 10th anniversary, and will offer a record 4.5 million books.
Planning usually starts three months before the event, Yap said, with the company’s marketing, supply chain and operations departments all involved.
“We discuss what will be this year’s concept and angle, since we have a different theme every year, and which partners we will be working with,” Yap explained.
This year’s sale has a carnival theme.
Another highlight is the “Magical Book” – children’s books enhanced with Augmented Reality technology.
Apart from reading them in the traditional way, readers can also use a phone app on the book to discover additional surprises.
Books from the sale are packed at the company’s three warehouses in the country, and then delivered to the event venue, where staff have three full days to put everything up (and two days to pull everything down after the sale).
Each year, BBW book sale hires about 500-600 students to handle various matters from housekeeping to sales, with about 20-30 of their own staff acting in supervisory capacity.
This planning is crucial, Yap said, as they are the only 24-hour book sale in Malaysia.
“The first few years of Big Bad Wolf, there were many instances where we had to close our doors, because there were just too many people.
“You would have people queuing up outside for very long, which was not a very nice environment to buy books. So, we first tried 24 hours sales on the weekends,” Yap said.
Another reason for the 24-hour sale period, Yap said, was to draw youths to a healthy activity.
The all-day sales was also good for outstation visitors, who could come at night to avoid heavy traffic.
This year’s BBW book sale officially starts on Dec 6, a Friday, and stretches until Dec 16, a Monday. This may seem a bit odd: why not end your sale during on a Sunday? As it turns out, there is a reason for it.
“During the 11 days of the sale, people not only come, but also tell their friends about it. And sometimes, you don’t see your friends or colleagues on the weekend; you only see them and share the news when you go back to work on Monday. So they can have one more day to check it out,” Yap reasoned.
According to him, many visitors come on opening day and weekends.
Yap said the sale usually gets busy after dinner, from 9pm to 2am, with 11pm as peak time. It only gets quiet at about 4am-5am, which is when the organising team would tidy things and get ready for the coming day. Yap said that in the previous sale, new books were replenished about three times. This year, however, he expects more replenishment due to the high number of books available.
While it takes a lot of hard work organising a book sale of this scale, it is fulfilling once everything falls in place, Yap said.
The biggest challenge of the job, he added, is also the biggest reward: getting customers satisfied.
“Every year we have to start from scratch, persuade people who came last year to come again.
“But the biggest challenge is with people who don’t see the value of reading. Getting them to come is difficult,” Yap said.
“When you see customers buying books, it’s a wonderful feeling. You can’t put a value to it.”