Services – Gold Leaf

“Buy local” during Covid-19 – How German booksellers encourage local shopping online; and what is happening in the UK

April 20, 2020 Gold Leaf

Since the 18^th of March 2020, all non-essential shops in Germany have been closed owing to the current Covid-19 crisis. Like everywhere else in the world, this affects small shops in particular and even though many offer click & collect or delivery services for their products, the danger of the vast majority of customers simply buying from one of the online giants is incredibly high. Small shops (with less than 800 m³ of shop floor) and all bookshops are now due to reopen from today, but they will have to operate under strict hygiene rules and the expected footfall will remain low.

To inform the consumers about their options and ways to support local shops, the German bookshop chains Thalia Mayersche and Osiander teamed up and started the initiative www.shopdaheim.de (which translates into “shop at home”) about 10 days after the closures. Initially, it was a database of about 1,000 bookshops – you are able to search by postcode or place name and see all the local shops that offer some kind of delivery or collection service locally. Within 2 weeks, nearly all of the 3,000 bookshops in the country joined and now – after 4 weeks – 10,000 shops in 41 industries are listed. The site experiences more than 100,000 views a day (at peak times up to half a million) and has become such a success that recently the Austrian equivalent www.shopdaheim.at was launched.

The site still has its main focus on bookshops, but includes shops that sell confectionary, cosmetics, baby products, flowers, perfumes, fashion, sports and more. Several chains (Intersport, DHL, Douglas perfumes, the drug store chain DM and Blume2000, a flower shop chain) are contributing to the marketing and PR of the site whilst the original founders have invested a 6-digit Euro sum into the site. Currently, the listing of a shop is free of charge, but it might be possible that the display of a shop logo or inclusion into marketing campaigns will become chargeable in future – the owners are planning to keep the platform running; after all, local shops having a shared platform to encourage consumers to shop locally is a good idea at the best of times.

The UK is less fortunate than Germany. Not only are all the bookshops closed, but some of the distributors have closed down their operations and furloughed their staff. Gardners, one of the UK’s leading book wholesalers and distributors, closed before the end of March and Amazon is no longer stocking new titles, as it says it must focus on storing and distributing more essential products. It’s still possible to buy some print titles direct from online booksellers such as Waterstones and some publishers are also selling print direct – Bloomsbury, for example, has a well-established online ordering service for both print and electronic books which so far it has continued to maintain. Many online sellers are also making extra promotional efforts to sell e-books; it will be interesting to see if this results in another spike in e-book purchase, which has long plateaued at around 10% of all sales in the trade sector.

Libraries are also closed but also promoting their digital services. The British Library has contacted all its members to explain how to access its huge resource of online collections. Some public libraries are still making their online collections available, but others have closed down their services altogether.

Academic libraries in the UK are also all closed, but their staff are still working from home and making Herculean efforts to provide as extensive a service as possible to all their patrons – students, lecturers and researchers. Most have built up extensive online collections over the past twenty years which have now become an even more valuable resource than they were prior to the lockdown, but users still need support when accessing these and help in finding exactly the materials they want.

When the lockdown is relaxed, it is difficult to predict which businesses will become casualties. In recent years, the UK has enjoyed a resurgence of both small independent bookshops and independent literary publishers. Many of these businesses are run on a shoestring, propelled by enthusiasm and love for books rather than any more concrete financial backing. Our culture would be the poorer if we were to lose them, so it will be worth making an extra effort to support them when they are able to trade again. In the meantime, we could do worse than set up our own version of “Shopdaheim” in the UK.

[Written by Annika Bennett and Linda Bennett, Gold Leaf]

Libraries, Services

The British Library: literally a national treasure

September 6, 2019September 6, 2019 Gold Leaf

Today the British Library is housed in what from the outside is a very a non-descript building. Resembling a giant warehouse, it stands on Euston Road in London next to St Pancras station, its much more imposing neighbour, and is a stone’s throw from both Euston and King’s Cross stations. It therefore enjoys an ideal location in terms of accessibility.

Rather amazingly, the current building was opened twenty years ago last year: there are posters inside that celebrate this. And, in contrast to its dull exterior, inside the building is magnificent. A majestic staircase sweeps ever upwards (there is an escalator for the lazy or less fit), each floor an ingenious showcase to shelves full of books behind glass from George III’s peerless library. There are comfortable working areas on every floor, available to anyone who needs to nip in to find a place of work for a few minutes – or a few hours – before catching a train. Often these are occupied by students – interestingly, mainly overseas students – are they more aware of this national resource than the home-grown variety? There’s a restaurant, cafés and a shop; and everywhere it’s light and bright and warm, the antithesis to poky, stuffy and forbidding, facilitation of modern scholarship made vibrant.

Beyond are the reading rooms. Anyone who can provide the right credentials can get a reader’s card. It does involve quite a lot of waiting about – and being turned away if you haven’t brought the right documents with you. You need a passport and recent proof of your address on a utility bill or bank statement. Security is tight – partly because St Pancras is viewed as a possible terrorist target – but the bag searches are quick and this care taken over readers’ safety is reassuring. Once the reader’s card has been secured, it provides access to the reading rooms, accompanied by a wonderfully efficient book selection service. Books may be ordered online in advance of turning up at the library, and they will be waiting for you when you arrive.

All this is free. But for a payment of £80 a year, you can become a member of the British Library as well as a reader. This provides many benefits, including free access to the exhibitions for you and a friend, free access to up to four events per year and discounts on purchases from the shop, cafés and restaurant. The current exhibition (it closes on Sunday) is Leonardo da Vinci: a Mind in Motion, and features a collection of Leonardo’s scientific writings, drawn from three major collections. It is well worth a visit if you happen to be in London today or over the weekend.

Even if you are only an occasional visitor to London, you are likely to get your membership ‘moneysworth’ over the year. More importantly, you will be supporting one of the world’s greatest libraries, a national treasure of which we can unequivocally be proud in these times of turmoil and political farce. So this short post is meant as a little nudge: if you aren’t yet familiar with the British Library, and can make time for a visit – or go to its plainer but as a provider of scholarly resources equally munificent sister at Boston Spa – our betting is that your life will be enriched.

Services

Going out to Tender: a Study in Etiquette

August 21, 2019August 21, 2019 Gold Leaf

During the (almost) twenty years of Gold Leaf’s existence, we have worked on many tenders. Sometimes we have been sitting on one side of the table; sometimes on the other. We have helped clients prepare Invitations to Tender [ITTs] and assess the eventual results they’ve received; we have advised at tender “beauty contests” (i.e., formal presentations requested of shortlisted applicants); we have attended the latter on behalf of the clients making the bid; and on occasions we have bid ourselves. We therefore hope that these notes, which are born of considerable experience and have been triggered both by a recent, particularly poorly-conceived tendering process in which we invited to participate and in anticipation of helping a new client to prepare an ITT, will be useful to our readers.

People sometimes ask what the difference is between an ITT and a Request for Proposal [RFP]. The two terms are often used interchangeably; but an RFP can be more informal in approach than an ITT, which usually involves a formal invitation to participate, results in multiple responses and culminates in the award of a legally-binding contract to the successful applicant. An RFP may be a simple request to an existing supplier to set out the methodology, costs and fees for a project that has already been offered to them, without reference to other suppliers. This article will focus on ITTs; and on best practice (“etiquette”), rather than providing a step-by-step “how to” guide for constructing the ITT document (much excellent advice may be found online for those seeking such guidelines).

Prior to designing an ITT, the first step to take is to consider carefully whether it is necessary at all; and if the answer to this is ‘yes’, whether it should be an open or closed ITT. If you are considering designing an ITT for the second part of a project which a favoured supplier has already completed successfully, and you and the supplier are both happy for them to continue with Part 2, you do not need to put the second part of the project out to tender unless not doing so means a contravention of the public procurement policy in your country (the UK rules are set out clearly on the GOV.UK website here, but will almost certainly change after Brexit) or goes against the rules of your own company or organisation. If you are obliged by such a policy or rules to go out to tender, you owe it to your less-preferred suppliers both to take up as little of their time post-bid as possible and to keep an open enough mind to consider their bids with professional seriousness: the excellence of one of them may, after all, surprise you!

If you genuinely want to devise a tender, to discover what is ‘out there’, whether it should be open or closed depends on how specialised is the work required. If your organisation operates in a sector that requires of the supplier prior specialist knowledge and experience – e.g., of practical application of the Arts – or specified technical competence – e.g., being able to provide a technological solution with certain non-negotiable features – a closed tender is not only your best but probably the only responsible option for you to take. This will involve sending the ITT to a selection (typically 4 – 6) of potential suppliers, each of whom you believe is capable of fulfilling the requirements. If the project requires creative thinking or the deployment of transferrable skills, or you think that a new approach from those taken for previous, similar projects might be desirable, an open tender might work better. Do be aware, however, that assessing open tenders is much more time consuming than assessing closed tenders (as you are likely to get many more responses, and, it has to be said, much more “dross”, which will still need to be dealt with scrupulously and courteously). The construction of open tenders also requires more care, as respondents, even if they are capable of delivering excellent results and therefore worth considering, won’t necessarily be on the same wavelength as you are at the beginning of the process.

All bids should be acknowledged upon receipt and read carefully and appraised according to a set of criteria, which in the case of an open bid should include assessment of transferrable skills and creativity. If a “beauty contest” is planned – and at Gold Leaf we would encourage this if there are at least two promising candidates – only bidders who are genuinely still being considered for the project should be called to interview. It should go without saying that this is because the ITT process involves a duty of care on both sides: the applicant owes it to the originator of the ITT to give it and any follow-up work his or her “best shot”; and the originator owes it to the applicant not to waste his or her time and money on completing extra tasks, such as presentations and business modelling and undertaking the expense of travelling to a meeting, if there is little prospect of their winning the bid. Most emphatically, the originator of the ITT should not abuse their position of power by involving “secondary” candidates in extra work merely in order to benchmark their preferred candidate. It cannot be emphasised enough that a formal interview that requires extra work and whose end result is a legally-binding contract for the successful candidate cannot be downplayed as a “little chat”.

Finally, once the successful candidate has been offered the project and accepted it, unsuccessful candidates should be contacted as soon as possible. If the ITT was open and there were many respondents, it isn’t necessary to give all of them detailed feedback; a courteous thank-you and explanation that you were impressed by the many excellent applications received will suffice. However, if the ITT was closed, all the unsuccessful applicants deserve a full explanation of why their bid was not chosen; as do all those called to interview in an open bid.

Much of the above, of course, simply requires a mixture of professionalism, good sense and courtesy.

If you are considering going out to tender and would like assistance with any part of the process, from deciding which type of tender you need to the design of an ITT to help with assessing the resulting candidates (including the “beauty contest”), Gold Leaf will be happy to help.