To say that a bookstore is open could be incomprehensible today compared to how it was assimilated five decades ago. Right now, unless a traffic light can prevent it again, anyone can enter an establishment, take the books off the shelves, read the back cover, wander inside with as many copies as they can hold in the meantime they decide to buy them, or not; Talk to the care staff and get new recommendations, have an appointment for a coffee, in some cases a drink, attend a talk or a presentation and, incidentally, take a gift-wrapped edition accompanied by a peculiar separator.
But 50 years ago, bookstores did not work in the “open” way as they are now used to. Much of this evolution is due to the incursion of the Gandhi Bookstore chain, which this weekend began to celebrate its “golden wedding anniversary” for the exact five decades since its foundation and relationship with its customers and readers.
When the Mexican bookseller of Syrian origin Mauricio Achar Hamui established his first Gandhi bookstore in June 1971, on Miguel Ángel de Quevedo avenue, “books were sold through counters, as if they were hardware stores,” shares Alberto Achar, commercial director of the chain and nephew of that “madman of the family who dared to set up a bookstore in a country where it was said that it was not read.”
Gandhi was one of the first book businesses to dispense with anything that might distance readers from books, but it also had cafeterias, sometimes forums for conversation or musical presentations, and even exhibition spaces. Fifty years later, that chain of the unmistakable logo of purple letters on a yellow background has achieved what few do: that its image goes viral in an organic way.
Today Librerías Gandhi is the chain with the greatest weight and presence in the country. It has 43 bookstores in 14 states, 20 in the capital and 23 in other entities. Additionally, it has 280 points of sale in the Walmart chain and 13 in the El Palacio de Hierro department stores. To nurture these points of sale, it has a catalog of more than 800 suppliers.
As if that were not enough, it is a pioneer in electronic commerce in the country. It opened its page for online book sales in June 1996, exactly 25 years ago, which is visited by around 2 million people on a monthly basis.
But it was not exempt from the crisis
“What we went through during the pandemic, where we had to restructure and where there were moments of introspection to be able to analyze in detail what we were doing to survive as a union, has been an important moment for us. It is not a secret, we had drops in sales of more than 30% – as a union. The bookstores were closed for more than four months and the rest had only 50% of the traffic that we had in 2019. From that moment, we did introspection to find a way to reduce our expenses, think about how we negotiated the Income from each of the bookstores. We thought about closing two or three, but in the end it didn’t happen. We only closed our Gandhi Oportunidades bookstore, which is where we started, ”says Alberto Achar.
Another emergency measure, to be honest, was the reduction of between 15 and 20% of the workforce. “That hurt us deep down, it was a terrible loss. It’s something we’ve never done in time, but it had to be done. It was the desire to survive ”.
E-commerce doubled
Income from the electronic sale of both physical and electronic books, on the other hand, doubled. Achar shares that the weight of this form of purchase was 8% before the health crisis, but in some moments of 2020, those of greatest confinement, it quadrupled. Although currently it has stabilized at 16%, that is, it doubled compared to 2019.
“There was a very high level of adoption for this form of purchase. Habits were changed. Many people who previously did not shop online and are already doing so. We have to bet on this channel and strengthen it more, regardless of the fact that we were already prepared for a long time. But we have to add many additional purchase options ”.
For the specific case of the electronic book, Librerías Gandhi today has more than 5 million titles available, although sales are still minimal: they represent less than 7% of online sales, shares the commercial director. “But actually in Mexico they talk about 3% of total sales. It is still a virgin market. The growth has not been as we expected ”.
Alberto Achar points out that at this moment the chain is still recovering from what it lost in the last year and a half. It recognizes that the traffic of readers in physical establishments has not become what it was in 2019. However, there are reasons for resilience to celebrate five decades of “nonsense.”
4 important moments:
- 1971: Foundation of the first Gandhi Bookstore
- 1996: Opening of the online trading platform
- 2009: Launch of the e-book platform
- 2013: Alliance of points of sale in supermarkets and department stores of online sales are for the electronic book, a still minimal figure in total turnover
Physical space numbers
- 43 bookstores in 14 states of the Republic
- 280 points of sale in a supermarket chain
- 13 more points in department stores
- 800 suppliers or more make up the chain’s catalog
Some figures on e-commerce
- 5 million electronic titles or more are available on Gandhi’s portal
- 2 million monthly visitors, the current figure of the library portal
- 16% the weight for the sale of books by e-commerce currently, a figure doubled by the pandemic (it was 8%)
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