Good news department: there’s a new bookshop in Cork.
The Mercier Press, which recently celebrated eighty years in business, now has a shop in St Luke’s on the northside.
It’s not due to open officially until September, but it’s a welcome addition to the city. Mind you, a separate column may be necessary to deal with the increasing trendiness of St Luke’s as a neighbourhood: it seems to have become our Rive Gauche. Or Rive Nord, maybe.
(Note to self: what is the most self-consciously cool quartier of Cork and how many people will be annoyed by their zone being overlooked? )
Those with long memories may recall the old outpost the Mercier Press had on Bridge Street for many years. After it eventually moved book-lovers were able to enjoy another refuge a few doors up the street in Vibes and Scribes, of course. That shop remains, though its focus now is on arts and crafts — the book side of the business is served by two separate premises down on Lavitt’s Quay.
Cork has always been well served by bookshops when you look into it. The Collins Bookshop was a gem. Liam Ruiséal’s on Oliver Plunkett Street closed back in 2018 but gave sterling service to the city for one hundred years. Its disappearance has been counterbalanced at least by Dubray Books and Eason’s on St Patrick’s Street. Waterstones up by Daunt’s Square has been a welcoming haven for Cork book-lovers for decades, thanks in no small part to John Breen.
There were other, more transient locations. Going back to the early eighties I can recall a book-lined lean-to where the Fenn’s Quay restaurant was on Sheare’s Street, a favourite of my late father’s. He was fond of inquiring after the availability of a title on a Saturday, say, and then finding it on the shelves, ready to buy, the following Thursday morning when he dropped in on the way home from work.
(‘D’you think’ I started one day. ‘I don’t think,’ he cut me off. ‘I know.’)
Of course, this is a game you can play with almost every form of the retail or entertainment experience.
Ranging from the old empires of fast food (Mandy’s, the Uptown Grill, Hot Stuff — the list goes on) to palaces of cinema (the Capitol, the Classic, the Cameo, the Pavilion, and yes, the Palace), the variety of outlets is key whether you’re talking about pubs, shoe shops, newsagents, cafes, cobblers, garages, chemists, record shops (oh, my Golden Discs of secondary school Saturday afternoons, trooping in to gaze at the curly haired assistant).
These were the thousand-and-one niche enterprises that made up life in the thousand-and-one cities, towns, and villages all over Ireland.
That is changing, clearly. It was interesting to see a flurry on social media in the last week at the sight of several empty retail outlets on Grafton Street in Dublin.
In the words of a cynical pal, this particular development satisfies his single criterion for a problem anywhere on this island becoming a fully-developed national crisis.
It finally affects a particular part of Dublin.
Amazon’s growing expansion into Ireland
There’s a particular reason I dwelt on bookshops this morning, though. Sometimes the timing of events has a knack of focusing your mind.
Earlier this week, Emer Walsh of this parish wrote about Amazon’s plans for Ireland. The company plans a dedicated Irish website, and she wrote that “its new Ireland store will offer ‘a localised shopping experience”, including even “more from Irish businesses, low prices, and fast and convenient delivery and returns”.
“Amazon’s growing expansion into Ireland will transform the retail landscape … Its ambitious plans for Ireland will change how indigenous companies, particularly small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), conduct business.”
That it will. Amazon began as a bookselling website, of course, which means the contrast with a new bricks-and-mortar bookshop being opened in Cork is an obvious one to make. CNBC reported that after Amazon launched in America back in 1995 there was “a 43% drop in book stores five years after Amazon’s first year in business”, but the online retailer soon moved beyond book sales to offer a far more varied shopping experience.
Last September Global News Canada reported that “Amazon is being accused of illegally maintaining a monopoly over the US retail and technology marketplace in an antitrust lawsuit filed Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 17 states …
“The report comes shortly after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 17 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, accusing it of ‘unlawful conduct’ and illegally maintaining a monopoly over the US retail and technology marketplace by stifling competition and squeezing small businesses who use Amazon’s services with exorbitant fees.”
Soon afterwards The Competition Bureau of Canada announced an investigation into Amazon’s business practices, with GNC reporting: “The CFIB (Canadian Federation of Independent Business) notes just two per cent of its more than 97,000 member businesses use Amazon services. Of those, a majority — 55 per cent — said they were dissatisfied with their experience.
“The report said businesses told them that if a product they were selling on the platform became popular, Amazon appeared to push customers away from those products toward identical ones sold directly by Amazon. Independent listings were then buried in search results, the report said, and suppliers would suddenly stop working with the businesses — even threatening legal action.”
Amazon is a serious employer in Ireland. The company employs 6,500 people at locations in Cork, Dublin, and Drogheda, and it is expected that that number will increase when the amazon.ie website launches next year.
The decline in high street retail in favour of online shopping is also a reality which must be faced.
In Emer’s piece, however, another reality was spelt out by Tomás Kenny.
“The data is there for what Amazon has done to the high street, and it is not good,” he said.
“During the pandemic, such a strong emphasis was placed on supporting local and Irish businesses.
“That campaign was quite successful. With such a drastic move from Amazon coming down the pipeline, we run the risk of undoing these efforts.”
That’s Tomás Kenny, by the way, of Kenny’s Bookshop in Galway.
Small businesses cannot offer what vast corporations offer. There’s no point in arguing otherwise.
But you can weigh the contrast between personal service, community involvement, local knowledge, smaller scale on one hand and, on the other, a faceless monolith whose operations are likely to hollow out your locality without a second thought. It may cost a little more to deal with a small local business, but there may be other, longer-lasting benefits to the community you live in.
Committing to your neighbourhood businesses may ensure that that neighbourhood survives. Best wishes to the Mercier Bookshop — and all other small operations.