Another big year ahead

If we thought 2025 was a busy year, 2026 is shaping up to be even bigger.

Before we get started, I’d like to be cheeky and acknowledge a small personal highlight for me this year - reading books again! It turns out starting and running a bookstore can sometimes get in the way of reading them, so it has been nice to find a bit more time for that. I have already managed six books so far this year including The Emperor of Gladness, Shark Heart and Radical Candor.

Tim, Alastair and I kicked off the year with our first off-site planning session with our friends Vaughan and Zoe, who generously let us use their eco lodge in Raglan. Getting away from the screens for a couple of days and spending time thinking about the future of Book Hero was incredibly refreshing. Vaughan and Zoe are two very supportive people, and we always come away from time with them full of confidence and optimism.

We enjoyed a great off-site top secret planning session at Vaughan and Zoe’s eco-lodge

Our first new initiative for the year has been launching our Board Games category. Like books, board games are a great way to spend less time on screens. Unlike books though, they are more social and focused on bringing people together around a table. It has been fun exploring a whole new category and thinking about how it fits alongside books. I am very much looking forward to our first team board game night next Friday!

Our expansion into boardgames has made for an exciting start to 2026

As we continue to grow the business, we have also continued to invest in our team, with three new Heroes joining so far this year.

Roopa has joined us to head up our School Library accounts and has already made a fantastic start introducing more libraries and young readers around New Zealand to Book Hero. I worked with Roopa in a previous life and it has been wonderful to have someone with her expertise supporting our library accounts. Roopa is a mum to two girls and is married to a librarian, so there is nobody better suited to the role.

I am also fortunate that my friend Tim Fulton has joined us to lead our expansion into book-adjacent toys. I have known Tim for many years - having first met through our shared interest in pinball - and developing a friendship that saw us recently explore pop culture and gaming stores together in Japan. Tim is a true toy and pop culture enthusiast with a garage full of retro toys from the 80s, pinball machines and arcades - and to the amusement of his very patient wife, not a car in sight. Having recently spent a week away with Tim at the Melbourne Toy Fair, where he seemed to know absolutely everyone, I cannot think of anyone more passionate and well suited to heading up our expansion. 

Amelia - the fourth and final Burns sibling to join the team - has hit the ground running adding new board games, puzzles and other fun things to the site. Amelia is an administrative and eCommerce wizard, and knows our product ranges inside out, getting new products added to the site and expertly merchandised in record time. The office has always had a warm and happy vibe, but Amelia has taken it to another level with her infectious laugh and wonderful sense of humour.

Our team of Heroes has continued to grow - with 15 full-timers working together to deliver the best possible experience we can for our customers

Our Hobsonville bookstore has also levelled up with more stock and more events. An early highlight was hosting Kelsey Waghorn for her new book Surviving White Island. It was a special day and a privilege to meet such an inspiring first-time author. It has also been wonderful to see the book selling so well and resonating with readers - it is an important story that deserves to be told.

The bookstore was also a hive of activity on Valentine’s Day, thanks to our Bookstore Hero Lizzy, who did an amazing job creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere in the shop - complete with fresh flowers from a local florist. Every time I pop down to the store I find Lizzy deep in conversation about books with our customers, which is exactly what a great bookshop should be about. Lizzy has also contributed some fantastic content to our website, including a thoughtful deep dive on ADHD and a reading guide for Pride.

Our Hobsonville bookstore is going from strength to strength thanks to Lizzy, Sacha and support from our local community

As the team has grown - we now have 15 full-time Heroes - it has been fascinating watching the business evolve from an organisational perspective. Being only 18 months old, I still see Book Hero as a start-up, but it’s becoming increasingly sophisticated and working well together will become critical to our long-term success. Cam has been doing a great job using his organisational psychology background to help shape how we work together as a team. He has rolled out some awesome initiatives including free books for learning, work-from-home options for our office team, and something we call Hero Days - wellness days that give the team time off for things like moving house, doctor appointments, or dealing with tradespeople. We expect a lot from our team, and I am really proud that we are building a business that looks after people as we continue to push hard and move forward at pace.

This week I have returned from my first overseas trip, with Tim (T1), Tim (T2) and myself visiting the Melbourne Toy Show, where we saw the best toys and educational products hitting the New Zealand market between now and Christmas. Seeing brands like LeapFrog and VTech at the show was a nostalgic moment for me. I remember the Talking Whiz Kid from the 1980s, so it feels special that Book Hero is now selling the modern-day equivalent to help kids with their numeracy and literacy. 

We had a lot of fun together at the Melbourne Toy Fair

But perhaps the most amazing thing about that trip was knowing that while we were away, Book Hero was operating flawlessly. Customer orders were being picked and packed. New books were being stocked in. Customers were being helped in the shop. Newsletters were being sent. I even finished another book on the plane ride over (Half His Age). This would have been completely impossible a year ago and is a testament to how far we have come as a team.

Another highlight of the Melbourne trip was being invited to visit the Penguin Random House Distribution Centre, where their warehouse manager generously gave us a two-and-a-half-hour tour of their state-of-the-art 40,000m2 warehouse facility. The whole Penguin team made us feel welcome and valued, and it was inspiring to see a business operating at that scale. We learned a tonne about automated warehouse technology and what could potentially be in Book Hero’s future. 

We were inspired by our tour of the Penguin Random House distribution centre

And the fun does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Just last night the next ACOTAR book was announced, and we secured more pre-orders in the first 24 hours than we have had for any book to date. It is already looking like it could be the biggest title of the year for us.

All of this growth is creating a bit of déjà vu around the warehouse. New racking is being squeezed in wherever we can find space, and we have once again started storing overflow pallets in one of the neighbouring warehouses.

I’m not going to lie, I’m equal parts excited and terrified. I guess some things never change…