On Tuesday next week, Book Hero will celebrate its second birthday!
I still remember driving home from our very first warehouse late one evening, then sitting on the couch while Tim made our website live from home (working from home - the good old days!). I remember the excitement of the first few orders from friends and family flowing through, and just like that, our journey had begun.
If you're reading this today, you're part of our story, and you're probably already familiar with some of the highlights. We're celebrating our second birthday in our third warehouse, which is an incredible 16 times larger than the one we started in, which according to the three year lease I signed, we should still be in!
Rather than retrace our steps over the past two years, which if you’re interested can be read in my previous blog posts, today I thought I’d share a few of the lessons I’ve learned in our first two years. I hope you enjoy it!
Growth doesn't solve problems. It creates new ones.
When we started Book Hero, I didn't want to put limits on our ambition. How many amazing books could we hold in stock? How many readers could we serve? How many creative ideas could we pursue at once?
Of course, that ambition has created a never-ending list of new problems to solve. More books mean more warehouse space. More customers mean more team members to maintain our service levels. More orders mean better systems to handle the volume.
As the business has grown, I've learned there's a difference between good problems and bad problems. My partner Alex often reminds me, "My sympathy only goes so far! These are all problems of your own creation!"
And he's right. They're good problems to have, even if they don't always feel like it at the time.
You need to plan for the future, while being prepared for everything to change tomorrow.
In 2024, when Tim, Alastair and I sat around a table in a small Thai restaurant somewhere on the North Shore, planning how we'd start and eventually scale our warehouse operations, we always knew Book Hero had the potential to become something big. It was important to anticipate that growth and plan accordingly, but equally important to just get started, rather than over-engineer everything before we'd even sold our first book.
We started with off-the-shelf warehouse management software that could only pick one book at a time (I think Cin7 was built for selling something like spa pools, not books!), before eventually developing our own bespoke systems. We signed three-year leases on each of our warehouses, allowing room for future growth while limiting our exposure if things didn't quite go to plan.
With a fast-growing business like Book Hero, you can't afford not to plan ahead. But at the same time, the chaos of rapid growth means everything can change tomorrow. I’m writing this on a Sunday afternoon in late October, and I have a pretty good picture in my head about what I’ll be doing on Monday, and generally between now and Christmas. Ask me what we'll be doing this time next year? No idea. If I told you, I'd just be making it up.
The people you surround yourself with make all the difference.
Given our ambition to build the best bookstore in New Zealand, and knowing the personalities of the people I was going into business with, I knew our journey would be a tough one. But I didn't anticipate quite how tough it would be. The highs are easy. Celebrating being crowned a winner at the Spark Retail Awards, or seeing hundreds of happy customers come through our doors for a successful Bookshop Day.
But it's during the lows that having good people around you really makes the difference. The financial pressure of investing in thousands of books, trusting that customers will buy them. The exhaustion of working seven-day weeks because you feel you have no choice, and the toll that takes on your family. The moments of self-doubt when you question a decision that can't easily be reversed. And the loneliness that sometimes comes with feeling that nobody else can truly understand what you're going through.
I've lost count of the sleepless nights followed by an early morning message to Tim, who never hesitates to arrive at work early, or put his Sunday family plans on hold so we can work through a problem together. Alastair was studying medicine alongside building Book Hero, eventually making the enormous decision to change direction so he could continue building the business with us. His commitment has made an immeasurable difference, particularly as we've navigated the challenges of moving into our third, rather large, warehouse.
And it's not just the three of us. We now have a team of people who would do anything for Book Hero. People who happily take on responsibilities that weren't in their original job descriptions, who rolled up their sleeves and helped move an entire warehouse (twice!), who recommend their friends come and work with us, and who step in to help other parts of the business whenever they're needed. People who care about Book Hero, our customers, and what we’re creating together. I've learned that you can have all the great ideas or ambition in the world, but it's the people around you who make it possible to turn that dream into reality.
Happy customers are the foundation of a business.
I've worked really hard to make sure every customer has a great experience shopping with Book Hero. We strive to offer the widest possible range of in-store books, fast overnight delivery, an easy-to-use website and a friendly, personal experience in our bookstore where the team and our customers are encouraged to be themselves.
And when things go wrong, as they inevitably do at our scale, we try to put ourselves in the customer's shoes and simply do what feels right. We replace books when customers aren't happy, take people at their word when they tell us something has gone wrong, and trust our team to make decisions that put things right. We don’t hide behind made up policies or corporate speak.
This pays off for our customers, but it pays off for us too. I absolutely love spending time in the bookstore because I'm confident the customers I meet are going to be happy ones! I'm proud to offer warehouse tours on Bookshop Day because the people I meet are genuinely excited about what we're building and happy that we exist.
And from a purely financial perspective, it pays off too. As trust in Book Hero grows, our marketing becomes more effective. We spend less time convincing people to give us a chance and more time telling them about our growing range of amazing books, adorable puzzles, and super fun toys and games. Those customers tell their friends and family, leave lovely reviews and help spread the word. It's a wonderful cycle, and the key reason we've been able to grow so quickly.
What works for a team of five doesn't work for a team of twenty.
This time two years ago, it was just me, Tim, Alastair and Jeremy. Today, we have a team of 20 full-time employees, plus a growing number of part-timers and casuals as we transition to operating every part of the business seven days a week and prepare for the Christmas rush.
As the team grows, so does the need for coordination, planning and management. There's also a whole lot more work involved in looking after people, making sure everyone feels supported, understands their responsibilities and works well together.
As someone who loves rolling up my sleeves and getting stuck into the work, this is perhaps one of our biggest challenges. Tim and Alastair are much the same. Tim has been on the warehouse floor every day this week, stocking books, puzzles and toys, and fulfilling customer orders. Partly because it helps him understand what's happening on the ground, but also because he genuinely enjoys it! Alastair would much rather be writing code than explaining to other people how it works, even though that becomes increasingly important as the team grows.
The challenge for us, and for everyone at Book Hero who manages people, is learning to shift from simply doing the work to taking responsibility for making sure the work gets done. I don't believe that means stepping away from the day-to-day entirely. In fact, I think it's important that everyone continues to contribute directly, while also finding the time to coach, support and lead the growing team around them.
It's a difficult balance to get right, particularly when doing the work yourself often feels quicker and more satisfying than teaching someone else to do it.
Don't underestimate the power of being different.
Book Hero hasn't tried to replicate a traditional bookstore. We chose a semi-industrial corner of Hobsonville and set up shop in a rather unglamorous warehouse. We invested in books rather than expensive high-street real estate, and prioritised building a great website over fitting out a beautiful bookstore. We're all readers, and loving books is essential to building a great bookstore, but that alone isn't enough. We've built a team with expertise in eCommerce, logistics, marketing, design and technology, alongside a genuine passion for books and the people who read them.
One of the most rewarding outcomes of these decisions is that we now have a beautiful physical bookstore too! By focusing on the foundations of the business first, we've grown to a scale where we can afford to create a wonderful space for customers to visit, made all the more special by the warehouse of 120,000 books it's attached to.
The power of being different also applies to our people. We have some very, er, unique personalities at Book Hero, and I think that's a good thing! And we don't hide them away. Everyone on the team is encouraged to write blogs, appear on Instagram reels, help customers in the shop and share their own interests, ideas and expertise. I love that our customers get to know the real people behind Book Hero, rather than just a logo or a brand. We're not trying to create a team of people who all look, think and act the same. Our different personalities are part of what makes Book Hero special, and I think customers appreciate that authenticity.
Success is rarely as glamorous as it looks from the outside.
We love celebrating milestones, like winning a Spark Retail Award or shipping more than 1,000 books in a single day for the first time. But behind those successes are plenty of late nights, difficult conversations, financial pressures and countless small problems that need solving every day.
As the team has grown, I've finally found a little more time for reading. But until recently, I could barely keep up with all the new books and authors hitting our shelves (thankfully we have Shirl and Lizzy for that!). Tim, who has a personal collection of around 1,000 books sitting in his garage, often jokes that he's read fewer books than ever since starting a bookstore.
The reality of running Book Hero is somewhat less glamorous. I'm writing this blog post on a Sunday morning while my friends and family are out enjoying brunch in the sunshine. Meanwhile, the team back at HQ (who are also working on a Sunday!) have just messaged to let me know there's a plumbing problem in our new warehouse, so we're organising an emergency plumber.
Like thousands of small business owners up and down the country, we'll be up late tonight planning the week ahead, then into HQ early tomorrow to get a head start on the day's work before the inevitable curveball comes our way. We'll probably make it home just in time for dinner, a 30-minute episode of something on TV and a few chapters of a book before lights out, ready to do it all again the next day.
Make no mistake, we're incredibly proud of our successes, and we'll happily tell you about them! But behind the scenes, it's a daily grind, just like it is for so many other hardworking New Zealand businesses.
Everything is stressful - so make it count.
My partner Alex, friends who know me well, and now - basically everyone I work with - will tell you that I’m not exactly a super chill guy. Everything I do seems to have an element of stress to it. I try to fit too many things into too little time, and I have sky high expectations of myself which quickly translates into having sky high expectations of everyone around me.
But Alex has often said to me, “look - you’re going to get stressed and anxious about anything and everything, so you may as well make it count” and that’s exactly what I did. Books matter, bookstore matter, and now - Book Hero matters.
I'm incredibly proud of Book Hero and the two-year journey we've all been on together. The late nights, the difficult conversations, the constant pushing to do more and do better. It's all helped us build a bookstore that now has the privilege of serving over 130,000 happy customers, supported by a team of more than 20 amazing people who come to work every day and make life a little better for readers up and down the country.
We've grown every month for two years, and there's no sign of slowing down. Last month was our busiest ever, and October is already tracking well ahead of that again. It's taken an enormous amount of hard work and determination from so many people to get here. And while we're only just starting to find moments to look back and enjoy the view, we're somehow still accelerating, heading further into the great unknown!
Like so many bookstore owners, opening a bookstore was a lifelong dream, and it's an honour and a privilege to be living it. I wouldn't change a thing about the past two years, or the life I get to live today. We've built a fantastic foundation for the future, one where our range of amazing books will continue to grow, and where we'll introduce more and more people to the joy of books and reading.
Thank you for being part of our journey, for supporting our team, and for giving us the incredible opportunity to build something we're so proud of, right here at home in New Zealand.
Happy second birthday, Book Hero!
