24-hour book store hopes to win readers back

Featuring organized events at night and more knowledgeable staff, a private Chinese bookstore chain is, perhaps, bravely strategizing to win readers back by providing the city with a 24-hour haunt to put their noses into the books on Thursday, when its Fuzhou Road store will no longer shut the doors at 10 pm.

With three downtown bookstores offering limited foreign-language reading materials, the Popular Bookmall, headquartered in Nanjing, which entered Shanghai seven years ago through a merger with the then nearly bankrupt Soccer Bookstore, is pushing boundaries at a time when many bookstores are being swallowed up by relentless competition from online book stores.

Popular Bookmall is trying to reach out to a broader audience after Soccer Bookstore began a similar 24-hour venture in 2003, which was forced to close a year and a half later due to low sales volumes.

"At first, we only planned to extend hours until 1 am," Dong Chenxu, assistant to the general manager of Popular Bookmall, told local media last week. "But, our market research later showed more demand exists.

"We're prepared for initial sales volumes to be low, but we think that we might be able to build on more interest from readers in the long-term," said Dong.

Extended hours for the Fuzhou Road shop also follows last month's sudden closure of Huaihai Road's iconic City of Books, which had been struggling with sales for some time.

But to attract more customers, the store has hatched a plan that concentrates on attracting consumers by launching exclusive cultural and book-related events in the evenings and developing a knowledgeable team of staff, said Dong.

"Essentially, we want to cater to a greater number of readers with a wide range of interests by providing more reading materials to them in a cozy environment, where well-trained veteran readers will be able to recommend lists of books to customers interested in learning more about niche subjects or reading more on their areas of interest," said Dong.