It’s well past time for an update here. We’ve had a really busy couple of months, first building a store room and transferring all the stock, then a rush of demand in our first month, especially for maps. It’s all been very encouraging but has left little time for social networking!
One of our initial problems was that stocks of some of the more popular lines had run down to more or less nothing, so every time we got an order we found quite a bit of it not available and had to backorder from suppliers, many of whom I didn’t even have a relationship with.
We are now in a much better place, with stocks slowly building to a reasonable working level, and hopefully our delivery times will get better.
I want to thank all of our customers for their tolerance and loyalty in sticking with us through this.
I have also been getting to grips with the structure of the book trade and understanding the complex and interwoven relationships between publishers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers – and have realised that our business actually fits, in various ways, in all four of those categories.
Another aspect of Linden Crescent’s business which we’ve taken on board is the publication of tide tables for the Norfolk Coast. Now we probably should have had them ready by now, but with everything else going on we’re running a bit behind schedule. Still I’m hoping to get the Norfolk edition finished over this weekend and to the printers on Monday. We’re also going to publish a separate edition covering the Suffolk and North Essex rivers, but more on that in due course.
Despite the amount of work, it’s been a real pleasure getting out and talking to some of our customers and I hope to see a few more of you over the next few weeks.
