Grand bookshop relaunch tomorrow!

By 7 pm this evening we decided the shop was as ready as it's ever going to be and staggered home, to be ready for an early start tomorrow. Our volunteers have repainted all the walls; put up extra shelving; shampooed the carpet; washed the windows; repaired the light fittings, then rationalised the book categories and filled the shelves with as much fresh stock as possible.

We'll probably still need to do a small amount of shifting around if the amounts allowed for the different    classes aren't yet quite right and some of the most interesting books are still in boxes that won't be accessible until we've completed the re-organisation of our basement stock-room. However there will still be lots of bargains and interest for book-addicts when we open tomorrow at 10 and the "hidden store" will gradually flow out onto the shop floor as we empty boxes.

Many thanks to former city MP Anne Campbell for agreeing to do the official opening and to everyone who worked so hard on the refurbishment or helped by loaning equipment or donating materials, including ASDA, Cutlacks, Halls of Cambridge, Cambridge Resale, Homebase, Lloyds TSB.

Special mention must go to Claire of ASDA's Community Life project who put in an enormous amount of work driving forward the renovation, and to Pat, Liz, Alison, Paul and Eileen who worked incredibly hard to get it done in the time available.

We still need your book donations!

Please keep donations of books, CDs, vinyl and DVDs coming: the interest of a shop like ours depends on a constant input of fresh items so that customers know it will always be worth their while to stop by and see what's new.

At the moment the bookshop is open from 10 am until 5 pm from Monday till Saturday (we'd very much like to recruit some extra volunteers to make it possible to open Sundays too).

Our current target is to increase our sales by £200 per week so that we can generate £1,000 profit which can be used to support our low-cost animal clinic.

Hallowe'en at 188 Mill Road

Spent the afternoon setting up a hallowe'en themed window display featuring a selection of books from our horror, folklore, esoteric and children's sections.

Many thanks to the donors who brought more vampire fiction, as well as lots of other books in beautiful condition, this afternoon - most appropriate to the season.

Our current volunteers are doing a wonderful job keeping the shop running with no paid staff, but we could still do with more people to achieve our target of 7-day opening. We pay rent whether we're open or not, so every extra day's cover is all profit for the animals.
188 is also very important to us as "feeder" for the larger shop in Burleigh street because many donors find it more convenient to leave items here instead of going into town.

If you might be interested in helping at any of the shops, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk, or just drop in when we're open.

Volunteer for the RSPCA and learn new skills... hmm

Very many thanks to the new volunteers who've offered to help at our second-hand bookshop. 

WE STILL NEED MORE, so please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk if you think you might be interested.

Volunteering at the bookshop genuinely does mean learning more about the books, music and print trade, how to price items, what will sell and how to present them to best advantage (also use of the till and some general admin skills).

We probably won't ask you to fit a new toilet seat, as Ffi and I have just done that this morning, and also given the kitchen and lavatory a general sprucing up. If you are interested; removing fixing screws that have been in place for something like five years is difficult and involves hanging over the toilet bowl looking as though you are about to throw up.

Many thanks also to the generous donors who brought in huge quantities of books this week. 

Please keep the donations coming. This is a shop that can be made to work to generate useful funds if we can only get enough volunteers and attract interest from the local community to get customers through the door and making purchases. 

RSPCA bookshop at 188 Mill Road

These charming "Four Seasons" and cat prints were donated to our Books and Prints shop at 188 Mill Road.

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Mill Road doesn't really attract many shoppers during the week and the area is becoming more and more just a "dormitory" where people who work more centrally return at night. This means we can't justify paying a manager's salary for the shop, as we'd never sell enough to cover it. 

At the moment we can usually only open on Fridays and Saturdays, when we have enough volunteers. I've been on holiday from my paid job for the past few days, so I've experimentally taken in some of the branch paperwork I need to catch up with and done it at the staff desk. Results have been patchy. Thursday afternoon was pretty good, but yesterday was hardly worth the effort, with most people browsing rather than buying.

We do get a lot of good donations, that donors might not make the effort to cart all the way to our Burleigh Street shop, and I would really like to make the effort to keep 188 open for a full six days. If you have an interest in books, music CDs or pictures and think you might like to get involved, even for just a few hours each week, please email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Pictures from the Mill Road Winter Fair

Remaining tombola prizes

Guess the name of the pink pony (slip us a fiver and we'll make sure you don't have to take it home)

Katie and Ffiona looking very cold!

Total amount raised (including books sold in the shop) was £540. One of the benefits of the Winter Fair event is that it helps publicise the bookshop to local people who never normally walk down Mill Road.

Access to our shop at 188 Mill Road not affected by road works

If you've been put off from visiting the shop because of the stories about Mill Road being closed, please don't be. Access from the town end of the road is completely unaffected by the works near the Perne Road junction and access from the Cherry Hinton end only needs a short detour via Coleridge road.

View Larger Map

Cricketing Magazines

Back issues of "Cricket Monthly"

Back issues of "The Cricketer"

Our bookshop at 188 Mill Road has a large supply of old cricketing magazines, kindly donated by one of our volunteers.

Romsey Recommends

As part of our contribution to the Mill Road Winter Fair event on 5th December we'll be putting up a window display in our bookshop at 188 on the theme of "Romsey Recommends". To take part, just drop into the shop and fill in a form giving the author and title of your book recommendation and we'll add it to the display.

Feel free to include a photo (of yourself or of the book), or you can be anonymous if you prefer.

Closing date for recommendations November 30th

184 Mill Road Closing Down Sale

All items out on display are now £1. Call by to pick up some fantastic bargains (and to save me from spending this Christmas carting stuff between shops. Last Christmas we shifted all the books into the larger sales area at 188 and it nearly finished off the lot of us).

We hope to see you throughout 2009 at the bookshop, which continues at 188 Mill Road and later in the year at much improved and expanded premises nearer the centre of town. We're still in discussions with the agents about the lease agreement for the new shop, so keep watching this space.

184 was in the nature of a trial of the possibility of a specialist vintage clothing charity shop to maximise the revenue potential from clothes donations. We think it's demonstrated that the idea will work; but not on Mill road, which doesn't get a high enough volume of potential purchasers on weekdays. In a more central position we'll be able to showcase our stock to the student and University population and to tourists.