A rare treat for retail - bringing a subscription service to life with Rare Birds Books

This week, we are speaking to Rare Birds Books founder, Rachel. Rare Birds Book Club started life as a subscription service, created by Rachel to fill a gap in the market - offering a hand-picked selection of women’s literature to shake up your regular reading habits and broaden your horizons. In the past 4 years the business has gone from strength to strength - and this year has fulfilled Rachel’s dream of opening an HQ, by making a move to the local high street and into bricks and mortar retail, setting up shop in August this year, in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge.

We talk to Rachel about growing a business and community from the ground up whilst working full time, being receptive to opportunity and making the move into retail.

If you’ve ever wondered about starting a business, to follow your passion or turn an interest into an income perhaps  - you’re going to find the next 50 mins very inspiring...

https://rarebirdsbookclub.com/

Transcript

Independent Thinking  0:09  
Hello and welcome to independent thinking the podcast exploring a new era for the high street. We celebrate independent business and bricks and mortar retail across the UK, those who are shaking things up on their local high streets and who believe in the potential of our town and city centres. I'm your host Alexandra Welcome along

 Hello and welcome back to the show. Thank you for joining us. This week we are speaking to rare birds book founder Rachel - Rare Birds book club started life as a subscription service, filling a gap in the market offering a hand picked selection of women's literature to shake up your reading habits and broaden your horizons. In the past four years the business has gone from strength to strength. And this year has fulfilled Rachel's dream of opening an HQ by making a move to the local high street setting up shop in August this year in Edinburgh Stockbridge, we talk to Rachel about growing a business and community from the ground up whilst working full time being receptive to opportunity and making the move into retail. If you've ever wondered about starting a business or what to follow your passion or turn that interest of yours into an income perhaps you're going to find the next 15 minutes very inspiring. reminder before we start the show, if you'd like exclusive behind the scenes content, and we'd like to support the show so we can stay ad free head the show notes now see if I do to support us for as little as 30 pounds 50 a month. Now on with the show. Enjoy.

Rachel, welcome to the podcast. I've been so excited to speak to you ever since well, I mean, ever since that shop opened in Stockbridge. So welcome along.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  2:01  
Thank you so much for having me tall.

Independent Thinking  2:03  
So for those who aren't familiar with rebar books, and I suppose you call yourself a be going by your bird books. And and it's the rare birds book club as Yes, yes. A bit of a mouthful. So for those who aren't familiar, how do you describe yourself?

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  2:21  
So basically, we've been going for about four years now we started as an online book club and book subscription. And then this summer opened our first bookshop in Stockbridge, which is why we kind of shifted so we've always been called rare birds book club. But we've kind of shifted just to call ourselves rare birds books, to make it slightly less confusing for the kind of brick and mortar aspect of the business now, but both essentially do the same thing. We're all about sort of celebrating and promoting women's writing. So with the subscription in the online book club, we're focused primarily on newly published fiction by women and in the store, we have a blend of like fiction and nonfiction. I mean,

Independent Thinking  2:59  
if we could start with you, then how did you because on your website, you describe yourself as a writer, a bonafide bookworm. And somebody that's clearly really into it being inhabiting other worlds and reading kind of get immersed in that. So how did you begin to decide to become a bookseller and into this world? Well,

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  3:21  
basically, I think when I was sort of getting started with it, I had this idea. And I was essentially just looking for something I couldn't find. I wanted an online book club for myself. And just because I had been in kind of like in person book clubs in the past, and for whatever reason, I never really stuck with them. Often it was down to like my schedule, like timing, I couldn't make the time or I just couldn't kind of stick to the meetings without sort of thing. Or I was just never, I could never find a group that read that read all the same things that I wanted to read. And I was just kind of playing around thinking about, Oh, it'd be nice if I could sort of do this online with my friends, that sort of thing. And also in the background, I have always been like a really voracious reader. And I really love recommending books to people. And I was in the habit of doing that for friends and families. And I also had this kind of like, I had this little cottage industry of choosing books for other people's book clubs were like friends and friends of friends, and people I worked with. So I was having like, lots of conversations over and over with people that kind of took on the same tone where it was a bit like, I feel like I should read more, or I'd read more if I knew what I wanted to read or I'm always picking the wrong thing, or I never seem to like the books I pick. And I just kind of started feeling like you know, I wonder if if I could make this easier for people in my life. If they would, you know if they could connect to reading more because I got so much out of reading and loved it so much. And I knew you know that feeling when you find a great book. I know everyone has had that. At some point when they read something absolutely amazing on holiday or wherever it is. And you're just I love that book. It was amazing story and I was just kind of thinking about is there a way that I could offer something that gave that a little bit more consistently to people who maybe are not in the habit of reading as much themselves and sort of seeking that out themselves? So that was kind of that was kind of what was floating around and got me thinking about it

Independent Thinking  5:20  
really trusted your opinion, as a as an like, it's it feels that you've sort of built that trust, and people just liked what you were. You've sort of built a community of people around you who like, already, I'm feeling that things are sort of growing, aren't they? Yeah, a little good foundation to grow upon, you know, when was that? Was that sort of?

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  5:36  
That was 15. Yeah, so that was four years ago, at the time, I was working freelance. I was a freelance copywriter. That's kind of my background. And so this was just like a little idea that kind of like, grew legs, I was just like, oh, you know, what can I do? Oh, it could make it. And again, I always really cared about women's writing and women's fiction, like, it's just all these things were sort of floating around in my world already. And the idea for this book subscription, and online book club kind of brought a lot of them together and just felt really exciting. So I was like, Well, you know, there's nothing to lose, I'll just give it a go. At the time, because I was already working in marketing, I knew people in my network that could help me sort of put the website together fairly quickly and do that sort of thing. So I thought, I'll just try this as a little side project, like the stakes are low, I don't have to quit my job, I can just do this on the side and sort of see what happens. And so that's what I did. I didn't really I didn't have any previous experience in books selling or publishing or anything like that. So I

Independent Thinking  6:37  
didn't know where to start, like, what did you just sort of go with a collection of books that you thought, right? This, these are ones that I've recommended to others. And we'll start there and grew from there. Basically,

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  6:46  
I had like a really small kind of like collection of books that I felt really represented, what I loved and what I wanted to do, again, I was kind of trying to sort of balance the scales in terms of women's fiction. So something that always really bothered me, for example, was like the way books for women are often marketed. And particularly things like romance, romance, romantic comedies, like what we call like, Chiclet, commercial, women's fiction, that sort of thing. I knew that there were huge audiences, of people who love these books, I love these books, I knew when I could convince my friends to read them, that they loved them, too. But there was sort of a disconnect between feeling like, oh, I don't like this, or I don't read that kind of book. And, you know, there was a disconnect between what was on the cover and what was inside it. And I kind of wanted to sort of take that and say, If I could set it out and say, right, this is what this service does, or this is what rare birds is, this is what we're about, we're gonna make it really fun, really approachable and feel really cool and fresh. And then hopefully, I could bring people kind of on that journey with me to read these books that they might never otherwise try. Because when I was sort of researching it, and in those early stages, as I was figuring it out, I was doing things like I was showing covers of books to friends, I would say, would you read this yes or no? And just kind of jot down the feedback. Yes, no, yes, no. And it was interesting, particularly when I was doing it with friends, or people I knew quite well, I'd hold up a book and I'd say, Would you read this? And they'd say, Oh, no, I wouldn't get that. And I thought you'd I know you'd love this. I know for sure you love this. And when it's your mate, you can be like, just just trust me, just go with me on this one, just give it a go. So I've kind of lost my train of thought here. But that was that was all those were all the things I was thinking about when it was starting basically.

Independent Thinking  8:33  
I love that and a bit of a tangential question here about why what is what is the problem with with why women's literature is marketed? Like why why is there such a disconnect between how it's marketed? And actually, the The novel itself? Or the why is that because of who's in charge, or,

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  8:52  
you know, the thing about book covers is they transmit a tonne of information to readers really, really effectively, which is how we choose books. It's how you know, on site, across, it's a crime book, or it's a romance or something like that, or you can kind of get a feel for it's sort of some challenging highbrow literature. And you know, covers are extremely effective for that sort of thing. Because we all walk into bookstores and do it, we instinctively go, this is my kind of book, that's not my kind of book, this is what I'm looking for this is not. And so they work really well. But the problem is, is that they can be so much themselves that I think we all get sort of pigeon holed sometimes and we get you know, if you're used to reading crime, it might feel too challenging or too scary to go into something else. And if you don't feel sort of comfortable picking up a certain genre, or if you don't feel like you're a smart enough reader, which is something I hear from people all the time, like in terms of reader anxieties, like, I'm not clever enough for that book. Or if you've had the experience of you've picked up a book and you've tried it and it's not that great until you've put it back down. You kind of you almost like lose the confidence to choose, but in turn As a fiction,

Independent Thinking  10:00  
yeah. And you blame yourself off and you think, Oh, it must be a problem with me that I'm not getting it or I'm not connecting with it rather than actually. I mean, maybe it's just it's like a lot of things I think it's like with people think sometimes you're just not meant to be. You don't want to be you don't, you're not gonna connect with old books.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  10:15  
Oh, absolutely. And so and then when you look particularly at the way women's fiction is marketed, where it's like, it's always like their slots of bunting are like, sort of like an illustration of like a woman like looking off into the distance. And if you feel yourself like you're, you're like, you know, I'm sort of really modern woman, I consider myself really smart. I'm a feminist, I don't like all these kind of old stereotypes, they feel quite dated. Now, you just instinctively aren't going to connect with that book cover, even though it might bear no relation to the story that's inside it even you might love the story or anything like that. And I think that happens in women's fiction a lot. And so I kind of wanted to sort of redress the balance there a little bit, I guess.

Independent Thinking  11:02  
Interesting. So So you started to see, you've picked a few titles. So you are you sort of got this together? And how did you begin getting the word out and sort of building that community?

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  11:13  
Well, I mean, at the beginning, I didn't really I just, it was like a little side project. The first month, I think we had 12 subscribers, I knew all of them, like I was related to all of them. Yeah. And because it was just sort of a thing I was doing off my own back, there was absolutely no budget, there was no the the business had no money, I was working full time paying my salary into it. So I could kind of keep it going and see what happened. But after a few months, kind of things slowly started kind of like picking up momentum. Because a friend told another friend, we've always been a word of mouth business. And it really became again, a friend told another friend, somebody got it delivered to work, somebody else at work signed up, somebody heard about it, they signed their book club up. And we started growing really, really organically which in retrospect, I'm so so grateful for because it gave me a chance to a have a really intimate relationship with those kinds of really early subscribers, so I could get lots of feedback, and hear what was connecting here what wasn't. But also I think those personal recommendations, they mean so much, you trust your friends to recommend things to you. So if a friend turns to you and says, Hey, I've heard of rare birds, I think you'd love it, give it a go. And they will. And there they buy it as a gift or that sort of thing. So we were kind of growing along like that. And then in kind of our first year, I think it was like September, we got a mention in stylist, we've got featured on the kind of like style list, you know how they have that shopping page every week. And we got featured on that. And that was just like an explosion of sort of attention. And it was just kind of like exactly our right audience. tonnes of people bought it, which was really, really exciting. And then off the back of that stylist invited me to come and do stylists live with them in London, which is there. I don't think they're doing it this year. But in past years, it's kind of like an annual sort of weekend of shopping and their seminars, all sorts of stuff. And they sort of said, you know, this is coming up. So it had already been sort of in the works. But they phoned and said, We have a couple of little booths left, do you want to take one and come down and do a pop up for the weekend. So I obviously snapped their hand. And we went down and that weekend was like, I think it's like 10,000 people come to this event. And it was just incredible. Again, we just picked up so so so many customers that weekend and met so many people and were able to tell so many people about ourselves and what we do what we were trying to do that sort of thing. And then it was just again, it was just like every little step was picking up steam, and then things just kept going and going and going this

Independent Thinking  13:51  
sounds like maybe something that started legacy as a product now of a passion that you had no of that trust that your friends had in you. And then to grow into this business with and I mean, that real step change as well. How did that feel? As a founder? Did you did you sort of think oh my god, this is this is okay, this is a this is a thing? Or did you were you always sort of ready for it to become what it's no become? No,

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  14:16  
to be honest. Like, I just sort of like it was just, it was almost such a whim to start it. You know what I mean? Like I never really, I never really had this huge vision for it. I just thought I just want to do this. I just want to sort of participate in this, I want to make sort of a positive change. I want to interact really positively with something I care about a lot. And then it just sort of picked up from there and there at that stylist event that I mentioned. They had kind of like an internal little retail awards that they did for all the all the different vendors who were there for the weekend. And they had an award ceremony on the second night at the end of the show. And they said you know everybody come along and me and the two girls were doing it together. We're like, Oh, we're really tired. We're just going to head home. And then the last thing and I was like, You know what, I bet you any money, there's free, there's free bubbles. And I was like, there's just no way I was like that's gonna be free bubbles. Let's just sneak in. We'll go on for 10 minutes, we'll have a glass, we'll go back out. So we said, okay, so we were there sitting there, got the free bubbles, we came in quite late. So it's like they had a sort of a table out, which was basically unmanned. So we picked up like to each one of the other girls, also called Rachel, she had like three in her hand, and we sat down and Susie sat down, she tipped one over, we were like, oh, that's like, trying not to make a commotion in the bath. And then they were like, as this is happening, they're presenting the awards, like someone's up on the podium talking. And they're like, and here are our brands, here are ones to watch in 2018, or 2019, or whatever it was. And our logo, like flashes up on the screen. And we were like, staring at it stunned. And I was like, you would have a phone like politico get a picture of this. That was like, just such an amazing moment. Because we were so tired by that point. We had like, next all these bubbles, we snuck back out and went to the pub, and just like that, for me was a moment where I felt like oh my gosh, maybe we actually do have something here. Maybe Maybe this is more than just a tiny, tiny little niche side project. Maybe it could be something slightly bigger.

Independent Thinking  16:15  
It's amazing. And also to feel that I think there's something so wonderful when you when you have an idea, and then it's so well received. People are like, Oh my God, yes. This is what we've been wanting. And thank you for creating it. Like it's totally, it's amazing, isn't it? And I think that's such a wonderful feeling. So then you've you've had that amazing uplift. And so presumably you're sort of building your team. And and at this point, where were you based? In?

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  16:40  
In Edinburgh? Yeah, we've always been based in Edinburgh. Yeah. So again, all the while in the background, I was working for the first two years of the business, I worked full time. And did, Robert. So those especially in the kind of, I'd say from around the year one point that became like, truly two full time jobs. But the business was growing. And like I said, it didn't, I didn't have any, you know, investment, anything like that. And there was no finance behind it, I was really feeding this. So to grow, I was still pumping a lot of my salary. And so I could invest in things like marketing and advertising. And when the business got big enough to sort of pay my salary, I just hired somebody else. So it was around, I worked full time for two years. And then at two years, I hired our first full time staff member Amanda who's still here, she's been here for two years, and she just had her two year anniversary, which is very exciting for us. And again, I just kept working in the background. So by that point, I was starting to drop off and kind of do sort of part time, freelance copywriting. I just had a few clients. And so I would sort of work in the background and evenings and weekends in that thing to sort of keep some money coming in for myself, so I could pay my rent. And then so I didn't have to take any money out of the business. And again, just so we could see what would happen, essentially. And things just again, just kept growing building up really, really nicely by this point, we had, I think around 1000 subscribers. And we had a really nice community of people who had been with us for a long time for over a year. And which was really nice, because we had a lot of people who really were starting to believe in what we were doing and, and connect with it and really like it. So again, things were growing, growing, growing. And that kind of brings us up to the end of 2019, the start of 2020, which like, obviously, yes, the pandemic happened, and then everything just kind of changed again.

Independent Thinking  18:38  
Sound did that impact you and your because because at this point, were you thinking about opening? When did when did that start to come into your head or thinking about opening our physical space,

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  18:47  
I had really wanted to have our own space basically from the get go. But if I'm honest, I wasn't really thinking about opening a bookstore, I was more thinking about an office that we could turn over and into into an event space. So one of the amazing things about being online is that you could have customers everywhere. And that really, really worked for us in terms of the book club, because we had a lot of people we had a lot of members in really rural or really remote areas that couldn't wouldn't have a book club in their community and really loved it. And then by this point, again, we had grown and we had lots of people from overseas, we had members in like 23 countries, and so that we could all meet online was just this amazing thing for us. And actually, we were really well set up for the pandemic because there was no change to us. We were already meeting online, we were already doing everything online. But something that I had really felt all the way through was I actually really missed that sort of in person opportunity to connect and to sort of bring the authors together with the community, that sort of thing. We had been doing like things like pop ups like Stylist Live, we were starting to participate more and more and things like that and also hosting our own events, inviting our book club authors to come to Endra and to do like a sort of members evening with them, where we would talk about the books and that sort of thing. I really, really wanted that to be part a big part of who we were and what we were doing. And at the end of 2019, we were starting to sort of seriously shift towards that. So at that point, we were our office was in the we work on George Street, we were just getting ready to host events with we work there, and to do that sort of thing. And then obviously, the pandemic came and shut it all down, and sort of put everything on the backburner, but with the pandemic, so that was in like March, just around Mother's Day. We got a piece of press coverage on ITV this morning. And so we got mentioned in in there, he had like a sort of a shopping segment that was like, last minute Mother's Day gifts that you can still get in times from in time for Mother's Day, that was like on the Wednesday and Mother's Day was on the Sunday and we were watching like, what

Independent Thinking  20:53  
you were just,

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  20:54  
we knew we knew that there was a chance we could be featured on it, because they had they had emailed and asked for the product. Okay, so we were watching to see if we had even made it on the segment because they never confirmed. So it was a huge surprise that we were even on the segment. And then when they said that we were like

Independent Thinking  21:11  
like Titleist over again. Yeah. So it was like

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  21:14  
the first the first year that's like, when we watched it, we watched that work. We were so excited. We're like whooping like we've been on TV, I can't believe this. And then it was like, and again, it was just like sales are coming and coming and coming in. Like my inbox was just like, we were so excited. And it was like, you know, the first 25 minutes is just asking, like, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. This is amazing. And then it was like, gradually just got quieter. And quieter as we're like, the orders don't stop. They're not stopping. How are we gonna get these done? How are we gonna get these out the door? So there was a huge uplift from that TV mentioned. And then it was like a week later lockdown happened and just shut everything down.

Independent Thinking  21:50  
Oh, my God, what shift like, yeah, oh, my God. Yeah.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  21:55  
But that exposure had meant that when lockdown happened, a lot more people suddenly knew about us than had even two weeks before. So I thought and in the lead up when you know, it was on the news. And it's funny, because I think like a lot of people, I never really considered that there would be like a lockdown or that COVID was really going to like impact us at all. And the only thing we had talked about Amanda and I was at the we were in a co working space. And in the co working space, they had said, you know, if someone in the building has COVID, the building will probably have to shut down for a week or whatever. And so we had talked through the possibility that we would get caught out by this and what would we do? Okay, we'll take the printer home, I can pick up the books we can send them from here, you know, we had sort of talked through a contingency if the building shut for a few days, not society shutting down. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, like this. Like, I did not plan for this. And this, but we just we managed to keep going and at that point, like when the lockdown first happened, I thought like, Oh God, this we're going to be toast. Like we weren't eligible for furlough or anything like that. I was like, I don't know, am I going to even still be able to pay Amanda is everything we worked for just gonna abruptly grind to a halt. And really luckily it didn't. And we kind of kept going and actually had a really, really strong year because people were at home looking for connection with a lot more time to read. And we were there ready for that?

Independent Thinking  23:22  
Absolutely. I think was really interesting as well we spoke to David from a golden hair books about people's changing habits and reading habits during lockdown and whether they were reaching for different things. And I think that there's there's also something really interesting about some being suggested something I think that is in your position, the sort of curating the collection, I suppose you could be really in touch with actually like, maybe this is what we could we could suggest No, but given the circumstances, you know what I mean? Like totally in a really special position. I'm really interested to know about people's reading habits because I mean, I I find it very difficult to concentrate. So my I read really different things during lockdown. How did you find it as a reader?

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  24:02  
I think for me, when I'm going through anything difficult or when life is really stressful or challenging for me, I am like a real comfort read person. So I'm turning back to like beloved books that I've read multiple times, I'm turning to things that are light and gentle and easy to drop into and are not going to cause me a lot of stress. I'm looking for stories that resolve themselves with a happy ending, that sort of thing to give you kind of all the sort of comfort and safety that you maybe aren't feeling in your life right now. So with the book club we have every month two books so the way it works is the members get an email in advance of a synopsis of two books so it will be like okay, this month is an upbeat rom com about to Office enemies who fall in love. And book B is Chase thriller set notation. frequently mentioned or something like that, and you just sort of choose the one that appeals to you. So we tried really hard in 2020, when everything was locked down to just make sure that we were always hitting the bases of, right? If we, we want something to offer to the person who is distracted and stressed and finding reading hard, or finding everything a challenge right now something light and easy that they could just get into a short book that they could read quickly, that sort of thing. And then on the flip side, having something a little bit Meteor a little bit more challenging for the people who are just absolutely bored out of their minds, who had, you know, had done every puzzle in the House who had watched to the end of Netflix, who doesn't? And we're just like, I've got nothing left to do now. But read, yes. We got a lot of people like that at that time. Like I've tried everything. I'll try reading now.

Independent Thinking  25:48  
Interesting, you said something about a comforting read. And there's often so much judgement about a book that can offer that to you or, because actually something that's exactly what I felt like I needed. And I felt like actually, this is exactly where the subscription would have been perfect for me at the time, because I think I just desperately wanted to escape into something that felt familiar. But there is a lot of judgement isn't there about books that can do that? Or for people? i Well, personally, I always feel like, gosh, should he be challenged all the time.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  26:18  
100%. And we get this so so much with people in the shop, like coming in and out and like our customers and our members and everyone we kind of interact with online, I hear that sort of stuff over and over again, what we usually say to people and what we're trying to do with the brand and with the shop and with the book club is sort of set out and say you know what, all books, let's just say All books are kind of created equal. So you don't come with this anxiety when you turn on the TV or you you power on Netflix, right? Sometimes you're in the mood to watch the buzzy Oscar nominated film that's really challenging. Sometimes you want a real tear jerker where you cry for two and a half hours. Sometimes you want to put love island on and zone out for seven and a half hours while you finish it. And that all those things are fine. All those things are good, all those things entertain you, you just need different things at different times. And what we try and always encourage people to do is think of your reading the way you think of Netflix, which is to say you don't really think of it at all. You just press play on what you feel like that day. And that's it. You don't have to feel like oh, I should be reading something more important, or I should be doing more of it. You know, it's not it's a homework.

Independent Thinking  27:30  
Yes. Yeah. You're supposed to be doing this.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  27:32  
Yeah, exactly. And if you're, if you're not enjoy it, put it, put it down and find something else. Yes, that's been

Independent Thinking  27:37  
so liberating to me the idea that, Oh, no, I don't like it. Okay, well, I can put it back on the shelf. Great. And somebody else could enjoy it. It's just it's so interesting. So So we're, we're in 2020 at the moment.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  27:49  
So we're going back to the timeline. Yeah. Going back to that time.

Independent Thinking  27:53  
And so the you're finding that people actually are really enjoying what you're doing. And then in fact, possibly growing them, the business is going

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  28:00  
to grow hugely in 2020 2020 was a really, really busy year, challenging in a lot of ways because we were locked down. And it was really hard to kind of keep things moving and make sure we were still able to access books and dispatch books and that sort of thing. But actually, the demand for the business was really, really strong, which meant in and also we again, took on our third full time person, the end of 2020 was when I finally got rid of all my freelance work. So all of this year, I've actually worked for the business. Yeah, it was kind of a big milestone. And it was very weird to finally like put all the side work away be like I just don't do that anymore.

Independent Thinking  28:40  
Correct. But also again, yeah, exactly.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  28:43  
I was like, oh, any excuse, LET'S GET IT guy. At so at the end of 2020. Again, and because we sort of spent Christmas essentially locked down, people were not with their families, they were sending gifts remotely. Our our service has always been a really big, really big with gifting. But half of our members come to us because they received it as a gift. So Christmas was a gift. Christmas was crazy, crazy busy. Which meant at the end of the year at the end of 2020. And as we turned into 2021, it was like, right, what do we want to do now? And we were we were like hungrier than ever for kind of connections, meaningful connections in person with people. And we needed more space for just all our stocking all our books and all the stuff that was going on. So we knew we were going to have to move offices into a bigger space. And I was like, You know what, what if we opened a shop? What if we opened a bookstore, we'll work in the back, it'll be kind of like our HQ is actually how we started talking about it. We need a headquarters. So the space where we can work from where we can host events from when that day finally returns. And then I said well, it just makes sense to make it a bookstore of course because that's what we do. And it can you will give people a way to sort of understand who we are and what we're doing in a really tangible way because That, for me has always been the kind of the, the underside of being an online only business. It's great, you have so many opportunities, it's so much cheaper oh my god, it's so much cheaper than having a store. But you you're not there in person with people you're not you need to, I really felt like I wanted a stake in the ground where our brand lived, where our business lived, where people could find us and come in and interact with us and discover us and do that sort of thing. And we just couldn't, we just couldn't get that same purchase online with just, you know, an Instagram page, or just our website, or just some ads that sort of followed you around to make you aware we were there. I wanted something really tangible, really physical. And because 2020 went well, we were finally in a position that this could be a possibility for us. We just were basically like, we could take all the success of last year and roll it into the store. And we can kind of take this risk that we haven't actually had the means or the time or the energy to do before.

Independent Thinking  31:02  
Did you know exactly where you were going to position yourselves in terms of like, where you wanted to be in Edinburgh? Or which was it? How did you go about locating the space?

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  31:11  
So we had an idea I'm I live basically at the bottom of Brandon streets, Amanda lives just towards leaf. So we kind of knew we wanted to be New Town ish, just because it was a convenient location for most of the staff. And that just felt like for me where we wanted to be I knew it was I knew our members could reach it easily. Like I just I just knew that sort of general area on the app would work. But other than that, we were just like, we'll just see what happens. So we hired someone to help us find the space. And I had, she's called Emma and Emma and I had a conversation. And I said to her, you know, this is what we want. This is how big we want it in New Town. You know, can we do this? And this would be our budget, blah, blah, blah. She was kind of like, yeah, we'll see.

Independent Thinking  32:03  
Yeah, she was like,

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  32:06  
it's like, there's not like an excess of spaces here. But she's what she said at the time was, so this was early 2021. I think this was like March, maybe, and hit March. And she said, I think it will take us about six months. And her kind of read on the situation was, you know, everything has been locked down. A lot of businesses will maybe give up their retail spaces, they're desperate to let go of them after a really difficult year for the high street, or sort of to change their circumstances. So there might be an opportunity as things start to open up. So wait and see how it goes in the spring. I'll keep my ear out, let you know, expect six months. And we'll kind of touch base. So I said okay, we had had our expectations set. At the time. Louisa was one of the three on our team, when we were just a team of three still was pregnant, and due to give birth in the summer. So we were like perfect. Hopefully we'll start looking over the summer we'll find somewhere, she'll come back from her kind of short mat leave. And we'll maybe by the end of 2021, we'll get the space open was what we thought was gonna happen. Two days later, Emma phoned and she's like, right, if you're ready to move right now. I've just heard of something that I think could be perfect. So the space we're in, was formerly a charity shop on Rayburn place in Stockbridge, and it had closed last year, an autumn and had been sitting empty for over six months. And it had been under offered to somebody else and the point that we came in, so it wasn't really even listed when we were looking. And the point that we got in was our Emma had heard the surveyor had heard from the agent that this deal was just about to fall through. And we basically just by like totally the stars aligning, we're able to go in and see it and say if this deal collapses, we'll take it before it went back on the market. Before we had to actually compete with anybody else to get it was just total serendipity. So again, it was one of those things like it felt like such a gift from the universe that we just didn't ask any questions. We were just like, we will take it if we can get this we'll take it. And we'll just do whatever we have to do to figure it out.

Independent Thinking  34:25  
Wow. I mean, I love that almost. I mean, that is that's a big lesson in in getting people around you who are have the ear to the ground because I think that's that's so much of this is about that isn't that about actually a lot of things don't actually go to market. They're just about knowing the right people and about that and that close knit. Yeah, and just about

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  34:43  
I think yeah, getting lucky sometimes. Like the thing I think I think I've really, really learned is that you know, you will just be presented with all these like Big and Little opportunities at times and if you're just bold enough to grab them so much can come from them because you know that conversation could have easily gone another way where I would have thought, Oh, well, we'll think about it, or we want to keep looking and see what's out there, that sort of thing. And then we probably would have missed it. Yeah, let's just Don't look a gift horse in the mouth type thing.

Independent Thinking  35:14  
Has it been? How has it been running a shop? Because if you do, did you ever record retail before? Have you had an experience of

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  35:18  
not really No, not really. It's been an absolute whirlwind. So we took the keys over from this space in around the end of April, and then spent most of the summer doing it up, it needed to be renovated pretty extensively, which was something we really never bargained for. And that was a huge learning curve for us, because it's obviously very, very expensive to renovate a shop space, it's a huge investment upfront. And we didn't have we needed to get it open as quickly as possible to start trading. And we didn't have a huge amount of experience in this area. So we wanted to open in August, we had a charity bundle partnership with the Ember fringe. So we made created a book bundle with them. And the proceeds from that bundle were our to support their save the fringe fund. And so this was in the pipeline, we knew we had to get open for August, so we could sell this thing during the fringe. So it was always August, August, August, we must be open, we must be open. And it was like right down to the wire. The street flooded in July, that was like really a shock because our this the unit flooded, ruin the floors, like all these things. And so it was like the day before we opened or the weekend, the week we were supposed to open we opened on a Friday. And it was like two days before we had the door open. Everyone has an all hands on deck and like local, like neighbours kept popping in and being like, oh, when are you going to open early Friday, Friday and not?

You shall see. But we got we got the doors open. And it's been absolutely amazing, ever since there was so much interest and enthusiasm and support for the shop that I really, really never anticipated. And actually, in the months when we were working on it, we had kind of gotten ourselves used to or I had definitely kind of gotten myself used to going, you know, this is just going to be a really fancy office space for us. And if the shop, you know, if the neighbourhood doesn't respond to the shop, we still will use it as it's always gonna still be our office. And it'll just be like a really fan will just work inside a bookstore. It's gonna just sort of be like a showroom or like a set piece or something. So it was an absolute shock to me on the Friday morning that we opened there were like, it was like 950, we're trying to get the tail set up and looking at the window. And there's like people like milling around, outside, waiting to come in when we opened that and it was just yeah, that especially that first weekend, we had like, almost 2000 people come through the door. It was just absolutely incredible. The number of people who were sort of curious about what we were doing had sort of walked up and down the street and seen it or heard about it online and wanted to kind of step in, like the idea of like the concept of a store dedicated like exclusively to women's writing and just wanting to poke their nose in and see what we're all about.

Independent Thinking  38:09  
It's amazing, because also I think you how many people were aware of you. So I'm really interested to see what they kind of split in the customer base, because you're obviously opened up yourself to a whole other world of people who wouldn't be aware of you online.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  38:21  
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, our business again, because we were online, we had customers all over the place. We were, you know, most of our customers were based in the UK. But we were scattered all over the UK, we had kind of a small base in Canberra, but we weren't really in Denver business because we lived online. So that has actually just even demographic been a big shift is that lots of people in the community can now interact with us in a way they might not have been aware of before even realising we were remember we'd occasionally have something happened where somebody would join, sign up to the online subscription and be a member and they'd realise I'm basically

Independent Thinking  39:00  
like, so what can you what can we look forward to when you know when it's all safe to do so over those caveats of like, you know, what, but with the events, particularly What's What are you got in mind about the offer about connecting with that community that you've built? Oh, my

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  39:15  
gosh, we've got so many things in the pipeline, we have so many things kind of just ready to go that we're just sort of waiting. Again, we're just waiting for the right moment, I think in terms of safety and comfort and all that sort of thing. And also, we didn't want to rush it because we just opened in August, and we really have been scrambling to find our feet.

Independent Thinking  39:33  
You know what I mean? Yeah.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  39:37  
But we have so many things. So we have our back office space. We have this enormous boardroom table that we always envisioned for workshops. So we have a series of writing workshops that we're going to run for sort of aspiring writers and sort of budding writers who want to give it a try for the first time and for people who are sort of in already in the midst of a project that just need You know, some workshopping space to share some ideas, get some feedback, that sort of thing. So we've got a whole programme of writers events. And we also really want to do some more kind of like craft events and things. So we've had a few local artists come into the store and pitch events of their own. Things like book cover, illustration, classes, and candle making, and soap making. And just really fun things like that, because you thought that we do. Yeah, so we have our own range of candles called Book smells, which are sort of like based on genres of books, essentially. And so we want to do some workshops, where you could learn how to make a candle and make a candle of your own, make your own book smell, basically. So that's the workshop side of things, and then into next year, so 2022, we already have quite a few authors, author events lined up. So local authors and authors, just from different parts of the UK, we try usually to do it tied in with our book clubs. So if we've used this author's book, as a book club selection, the following month, we'd like to get them in to store. And this again, these, these events are sort of focused at our members, but we will do them for just everybody locally as well, where you come in, and the idea is you've already read the book. So we can have a really interesting conversation with the author where we really grill them about like, why, why did he go into this creepy room, like it was so crazy, he would it there's a ghost in there, like come on. We can really talk about that sort of thing. So we've got lots of author events. And things lined up another thing that actually we might launch before the end of the year, we'll see we would really like to do a few of these before Christmas are we're going to do probably a Thursday night, it looks like late night shopping are sort of like one to one personal shopping with people. So it will just be kind of like the stores closed, and you can kind of sign up to come, it's totally free. And this is for people who want to have kind of a more focused discussion about what they're reading the if they want to talk to us about things they've read and enjoyed, and also to get recommendations for specific things. So sometimes people just come into the store, and they just want to sort of browse around and pick up. But other times people come in and they're like, I really like sci fi or this was my favourite book, what else should I read, I'm stuck in a reading read, I never read anything good. And it gives us an opportunity to have kind of like a really one on one session with people recommend some things, have a few drinks, have a few nibbles, just relax.

Independent Thinking  42:28  
Amazing. And this is it because I think we talked about on the podcast about this as exactly what the future of the house should look like in terms of it being a much more immersive and experiential. And this idea that you actually feel part of something and I love the idea of it becoming like this hub, I love that you call an HQ actually, I kind of feel like I kind of love it is like this, where you've got this community of women or anyone who identifies women or non binary or, or men who loves who love women's writing, I just love that. It's the sort of the way they can get great advice and find like minded people. And that's

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  43:02  
exactly yeah. Which is really what we wanted, we really wanted it to feel. And again, you can see the shop and the office are divided by a big open bookcase. So you can see us all the time working back there, which we really wanted, we really wanted people to feel like they were stepping into like a really bustling space and feel like they were kind of almost coming into our living room. And they could just come and sit for half an hour or browse around or talk to us and be like, Well, what's going on back there, we really wanted again, to make the online portion of our business feel really tangible. So when somebody pointed and it's like, what are those people doing back there? And it's like, oh, we have an online book club. Like, here's where they work from, here's where all that happens. It's like closely connected to the store. We all do this together, we all work on this together.

Independent Thinking  43:46  
But that because I think as well, that shows that hybrids as well have like two elements of the business because it's not to see, I think, you know, obviously the podcast focuses on on independent in bricks and mortar retail. But I think as well know that we live the way we do, I think that there's a role for them to interest into play. And then there's of course of space for online. I think it's beautiful to show both sides of the business, you know, through that.

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  44:09  
And I think for us, like what I kind of came to learn and realise was that, you know, each, whether you're just an online business, or just a brick and mortar business, like each aspect has pros and cons to it. It's like a brick and mortar. It's great. It's you know, your brand is there in people's faces, you're, again, you have a stake in the ground, but it's very, very expensive. And on a rainy day, if people aren't out and about they're not coming in, you know, your your the weather can determine shopping patterns, which is just crazy. Whereas online things are on all the time. 24/7 people can shop the way they want anytime they want from anywhere, which is amazing because we can pick up customers from anywhere. But sometimes we don't feel real. I had that feeling a lot when we were just sort of only online. It's like, people didn't feel oh What are you, oh, you're a book club is that what does that mean? We just didn't feel real to people. And the store gave us that chance to feel real. And also, the online aspect gives us a chance to sell all the time, even when the store is not open. So those two things, I hope, I hope that the the sort of risk we've taken means that they'll balance each other out and provide kind of a really stable business for us for our team.

Independent Thinking  45:25  
And I'm really inspired by your story. I think it's a really, it's a great example of somebody as well, I think, working full time, and developing a project and working full time for two years, and then developing it and slowly building a real lesson here about, you know, letting things build organically and like you see being open and being receptive to a to opportunity as well. Do you have a sort of piece of advice for yourself that you would give yourself four years ago?

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  45:51  
I mean, if I could go back, I wish I could do some of it a little faster. Really? Okay. Interesting. But actually, I'm, you know, when I started the business, I was really naive about what it was going to take, I didn't know much about book selling, I didn't really know about running a business, I hadn't done any of it before. And I didn't have the option to leave my job. But I'm so glad all those things worked out the way they did. Because if I had known what I was in for, quite honestly, I probably would have been too scared to try it. I went in blind and was just like, let's see where this goes. And so it's always been an adventure. And even, you know, not leaving my job, it took a lot of the pressure off because I didn't have to, you know, it's it's stressful, and it's scary. But something that I was never sweating it out about was am I going to make the mortgage payment this month or anything like that, I just kept working. And that was very freeing in the sense that I was like, we can just let it blow up in my face, if it's gonna blow up in my face, I can get in it, I can go back to work, I can keep freelancing, I can do that sort of thing. That was a safety net, I really needed something. Maybe a piece of advice I would give myself if I was going back is in the early days, I felt very, I guess insecure about the fact that I didn't know anything, and that I was a bit of an outsider. And I was an outsider to book selling. And I really, you know, I had to have a lot of very silly conversations with a lot of people who knew a lot more than I did, where they'd asked, and what's your this? And like, I remember in the early days on the phone with a with the bank, and they were like, Oh, can you tell us what your projected turnover was? And I was like, just one minute, please like muted the call, I Googled turnover and was like, just make sure I'm answering the right question like that. That truly was me in the early days. And I saw that as such a failing, at first and was really sort of, again, nervous and insecure about that. But actually, what I've kind of come to realise over time is that being an outsider in terms of books, selling and publishing, always let me stay really close to the sort of the mindset of the customer, our customer, and to see things slightly differently. And that actually, I think, has served us really, really well. Because the reality is, you know, do does ever need another bookstore, did it need another bookstore when wherever it's open? Probably not, and has amazing bookstores already. So being an outsider and coming in with a different perspective also offered us the opportunity to hopefully bring something different to the table for people rather than just the same old. Yeah, so that would be my advice to myself.

Independent Thinking  48:23  
I think that's good advice. Yeah. And I think as well, like you see without being constrained by what you should do when you are a bookseller, or whatever. I think that that is very freeing. I think there's a lot that people can. Yeah, I think that's just you perhaps if you had had a background then that maybe you made it into different choices, but you are, you wouldn't be where you are, I think you wouldn't have been created what you've created, which is gorgeous. So Rachel, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your journey with us today. It's been such a pleasure to

Rachel, Rare Birds Books  48:54  
meet you. I spent so wonderful to chat, I could go all day.

Independent Thinking  49:11  
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