If you’ve trudged along Ann Siang Hill in search for some non generic quaint little places to shop, chances are you’ve chanced upon BooksActually. The probability that you already know about them and that they are quickly stirring your interest in the written art is even higher, given that the store has top of the mind brand recall when it comes to local independent bookstores. Having recently celebrated their 4th anniversary, the store is going from strength to strength, and looks as though it will be a force to be reckoned with for many years to come. We catch up with Kenny and Karen, the founders and owners of BooksActually, to talk about their history, feelings and future plans for the store.

Books Actually has come to be known as one of the most prominent independent bookstores in Singapore. How did you guys start?

Kenny: Well Books Actually began 4 years ago, on 29th November 2005. We started doing bookfairs at universities – generally at NUS. We always had two to three tables of books, in what mostly was a flea market type of setting. But we knew from the start that we wanted to harness good brand equity, so we ensured that the Books Actually brand was prominent and synonymous with our business even though we were just at book fairs.

Karen: And we started making and selling our own products as well – mainly postcards.

Kenny: Yeah certain things have stayed with us until now, especially the postcards, which have evolved into our house brand – Birds & Co.

How or why did the both of you get interested in literature and books?

Kenny: Generally, we both grew up with a lot of books around us. Both of us have massive book collections that would kill us if they collapsed on us.

Karen: I guess our parents made us start reading from a very young age, so it has sort of stuck with us ever since. We also made alot of visits to the library when we were younger.

What were the first books that you were exposed to that you hold near and dear?

Kenny: Enid Blyton.

Karen: Yeah, definitely Enid Blyton.

How did you guys meet one another and what were you doing prior?

Kenny: We met up through a mutual friend. I was already toying with the idea of doing a business regarding books at the time, due to the fact that I already had some experience in the book industry. I worked at Power Books before National Service, and I worked at Borders after NS. I always knew that I wanted to do something with books – I just wasn’t sure in what way or form. So when we first got together to venture out, we starting doing the book fairs because it was the alternative with the lowest cost and low rental, and that was a pretty good business back then.

Karen: I was from NUS, but I stopped school in my second year, because Books Actually was getting too crazy. I had to focus on one.

Much respect to you guys for taking the plunge, following the dream and making Books Actually a success. Happy and contented now?

Kenny: The downside is that this store does consume us a lot, in terms of time. After four years, we realized that we have to learn how to take off days, and so far we’ve not been very successful. It’s a 24/7 thing. Even when we visit Kinokuniya for leisure (we do love the books there), we end up looking at the publishers, and we start to think about whether we can stock it or not. The mindset is very geared towards work. The hobby has become the work.

I guess we can no longer define what is work and what isn’t, and we like that, because it’s something we love doing, and if we define it as work – well, let’s just say that sometimes work can be something that you don’t really love, but you have to do. But for us it works both ways – it’s something that we do enjoy thoroughly.

It’s interesting to see so many different types of customers coming into Books Actually…

Kenny: We’ve been lucky. We thought that we needed to aim for a specific demographic. We wanted to take care of the people within the tertiary institutions towards the age group of 29 up to 35. We realized after that we experienced a broad range of customers. We actually have regular customers who are retirees, we have a good core of upper secondary, junior college kids and university kids, the working crowd which is split – those that are really involved in the creative industry, as well as the office crowd. That helped us to survive the first two years – we wouldn’t be around if not for that sort of demographics. We want to maintain that the bookstore is for anyone, not just for selected demographics.

So how different is running an independent bookstore from the likes of Borders and Books Kinokuniya? Is there any fear?

Kenny: I wouldn’t use the word fear, but there are always issues. Like how the suppliers will always send the stock to the big bookstores first before we get our stock, even though we’re the one paying cash (till this day I still don’t understand that concept). But we don’t see the big stores as a problem.

Karen: It’s more of a complementary thing.

Kenny: On the system that we use to serve customers, we always have another window open – the Kinokuniya site and the Amazon website, so that we know that if we don’t have a certain item in the store but the big bookstores do, we will direct our customers to the necessary locations. Competition doesn’t just apply to the bookstores. I think all the retailers here are fighting for the same percentage of a salary package that the customers are willing to spend.

So what does the future hold for Books Actually? Are there any grand plans in motion?

Kenny: We want the business to enjoy some sort of permanency. We need to buy a shophouse; we can’t rent anymore. As long as we rent we will always be hampered by that uncertainty. It happened to our Polymath & Crust location, we had to move out, but we were kick ass lucky that we had the Books Actually location as a backup location. We’ve known some time back that we really need to buy a shophouse, just that it’s not within our ability at the moment.

We don’t want it to grow any larger. Setting up Polymath & Crust earlier in the year gave us a good experience of running two stores at the same time, and we’ve realized that we’re not ready to manage two separate locations. We thought that it would be simple to run two stores along the same street, but it was terrible. – it was really tough.

Karen: I guess we do also want to work on our own in house products, like our Birds & Co brand, which is stationery and notebooks etc; we also want to work on publishing.

Kenny: Yeah we do love stationery also, so we do want Birds & Co. to grow stronger and be an entity on its own. Publishing is something that we’ve wanted to do a long time ago, so we hope that would grow as well.

It would be nice if these 3 entities can have a life of its own, so the final step would be to buy property to house so that profitability wise, if we put enough effort and we do the right things, Books Actually will always stay profitable.