Quieter month at SSG? - No
Following the frenetic amount of activity in February surrounding the SSG Bookshop chain with shop closures, staff dismissals and shops ‘temporarily’ closed for re-fit, it began to appear that things had quietened down in the last couple of weeks.
Some of the shops closed in February remain shut whilst others appear to be working on reduced hours given the number of unanswered calls made to shops during published opening hours.
Whilst Cambridge has re-opened and the closure notices have come down in Canterbury, the same does not apply to Lincoln or Norwich - which is now left without a Christian bookshop in the city centre. Hereford also closed at the end of February, whilst staff in the Birmingham shop say they do not know when the last day of trading will be.
On March 12th it became clear that the round of shop closures and staff job cuts was continuing with the news that the Lincoln shop was closing down on March 14th. What makes this announcement even more surprising is that in the very same week an advert appeared in the Lincoln Job Centre for a (Temporary) Sales Assistant to work at the shop. Equally surprising was the information in the job posting that the employer was the SPCK Bookshop.
SPCK Publishing have a statement on their website regarding the SSG Bookshops which says:
‘SPCK would like to emphasize that they do not own, manage or otherwise run the Bookshops which transferred to SSG’s Charitable Trust in October 2006.
Saint Stephen the Great (SSG) was contacted by SPCK’s lawyers in October 2007 concerning its use of the SPCK name for what used to trade as the SPCK Bookshops group.
In October 2007, SSG put out a release clarifying that from 1 November the bookshops would be trading under the name Saint Stephen the Great.’
However, to date there appears to have been no move by SSGCT to change the signage, or indeed some of the packaging, from the SPCK name. Meanwhile, Mark Brewer, who has yet to respond to questions posed to him by Christian Marketplace indicated to The Bookseller (22.02) that he would be "happy to listen to offers" from potential franchisees, indicating that he believed this to be a "great solution". Brewer said "[The shops] are all available. We want to try and grow the chain, and the best way to do that is through independent owners." He added that he "would listen to offers on the stores we own."
Correction: In last month’s article about SSG Bookshops we reported that Lucy Sparrow was acting manager at the Cambridge shop until she left on 2nd February. She has asked us to point out that she was not “the acting manager of the Cambridge shop - nor was my colleague - we have had no manager, acting or otherwise since last summer.”
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