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Clapham Books grew out of a desire to save a failing book shop (we love books) and a strong sense of wanting to "go it alone" and have a chance to implement some of those ideas we'd been discussing for so long!
In June 2006 we bought the company, changed it's name, gave the shop a bit of a facelift and got down to stocking those shelves. Within a matter of 6 weeks our takings had virtually doubled our customers were noticing huge changes and we were on our way to creating the kind of book shop we wanted to run.
It was never going to be easy but the fact that we were under rent review at the takeover time was always going to be a problem and when the review was eventually settled we were very pleased at how much our wonderful surveyor had managed to slice off the original figure but we still had to find the money to pay the back rent (all the way back to June 2006) and an extra £2000 a quarter for the new rent.
We did not and still do not want to move from Clapham in fact we do not want to move from our site on Clapham High Street - we have looked and found that there is nowhere suitable for us and the thought of all that upheaval is too much.
We then found that we could make the rent payments and the increased rate payments and after a few months of earning nothing we were able to take our salaries again and have remained financially stable ever since!
During all that worry and uncertainty the really enjoyable side of the business - researching and ordering our stock - saved the three of us from madness!
We are a general book shop, from Travel, Biography and Cookery to Children's Picture Books we select our titles with the same care but we do have a fine artistic leaning - an absolute love of Art books - our Art, Design, Film, Music and general "Culture" sections are great, eclectic, interesting, well researched and very well loved.
We offer a diverse selection and a personal hand picked touch - we choose all the books on our shelves and stock what we want to stock along with titles we know our customers want - this makes for a great selection and a great looking shop ! We offer next day ordering, out of print search, a really user friendly website with access to all the books on Britain's largest wholesaler's shelves straight to your door, a cosy friendly environment to come and browse or ask questions in - and if you want to pop in for a quick recommendation please do!
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