I can’t believe I’m already sitting down to write this blog post. Book Hero isn’t even two years old and we’ve already moved once before, which means we’re now onto warehouse number three.
Fair to say growth has exceeded expectations, or we’re just spectacularly bad at estimating how much space we’ll need. Probably a bit of both!
Our little unit on Workspace Drive is where it all started. We signed a three-year lease (!) and I remember being completely daunted by the size of it. I spent far too long trying to convince Tim that a storage locker, or even my garage at a pinch, would be more than enough.
Thankfully, we knew what would be required to succeed and we didn’t put a limit on our thinking or our ambition. We pushed ahead with the lease and launched Book Hero with a carefully curated range of 5,000 amazing books in stock. At the time, that felt enormous.
It’s pretty incredible to think that we now sell through that many books in less than a week.
And Book Hero isn’t even two years old.
A short nine months later, our little unit was bursting at the seams and it was time to start hunting for warehouse number two. Books were already spilling into the lunchroom, we’d taken over space in our neighbour’s unit, and we had more books on the water with absolutely nowhere left to put them.
That was about the point Tim and I went for an emergency walk around the block and spotted a vacant, much larger warehouse just a few minutes away.
We quickly negotiated the lease, believing that surely, this time, a three-year lease would give us plenty of time to settle in and establish ourselves.
Wrong.
We wasted no time filling those extra shelves with more books and, to our delight, you couldn't get enough of them! Turns out New Zealanders really love reading. And the more books you have to choose from, the more you seem to read.
So naturally, we kept adding more. And more puzzles. And more board games. And now more toys.
We’ve also been overwhelmed, in all the best possible ways, by the response to our cute little bookstore that sits alongside the warehouse.
We weren’t sure how it would go, but it has exceeded all of our expectations. Weekends especially have become a huge hit, with the carpark overflowing with children and their families browsing books and collecting their online orders.
Lizzy even overheard two customers arranging their next visit “Meet you here then, same time next week?”
So wholesome!
That’s been one of the real joys of our current site. It’s allowed us to fulfil our dream of running a cute independent community bookstore while still having the scale and support of a fully functioning warehouse behind it, with around 100,000 books available just a few steps away.
We love the model, and we want to keep growing the range of books and other awesome products we have available.
Which leads us to our next home.
In September, we’ll be moving into a 1,600m² warehouse on the main road in Hobsonville.
History has indeed repeated itself. We’re currently bursting at the seams, using a neighbour’s vacant unit (thanks Brian!) to process more stock than we can physically fit, while Tim is once again eyeing up the staff kitchen and wondering how many extra board games he could squeeze in there.
Our new warehouse is, once again, around four times larger than our current space. It also has a bigger bookstore for our local customers and much more visibility from the main road.
Importantly, we’re staying right here in Hobsonville.
We absolutely love being part of this community. I live here myself, as does a growing number of the Book Hero team, and we’re incredibly proud to call Hobsonville home.
There’s another happy consequence of moving into a bigger warehouse too: having the physical space to support a growing team.
Book Hero now employs 20 people who work together to deliver the fantastic overnight delivery experience we’re so proud of. We’re proud to be creating jobs, growing demand for books, making it easier for New Zealanders to read, and bringing a bit of fun back to business, especially in what continues to be a pretty challenging economic environment.
We’ll be making the move over a weekend in the middle of September and, once again, we’ll be leaning not only on our team, but on our small army of friends, family and supporters.
Like so many small businesses in New Zealand, Book Hero is fuelled by late nights, weekends that aren’t really weekends, and special people who believe in us, what we’re building, and genuinely want to see us succeed.
I’ve also been blown away by the support of other business owners who know exactly what it’s like to be in our position.
There’s our neighbour letting us use his empty warehouse while we’ve run out of space. A supplier around the corner is giving us extended use of his van to help move bits and pieces ahead of the big move - and he’s even throwing in the beer (he thinks we’ll need it?).
Our partners at NZ Post are getting involved, lending us Maxis for transportation that we can load straight into a curtain-sider truck with forklifts for the big move itself.
Having that kind of support from our customers, suppliers, partners, friends, families and the wider community is pretty amazing.
How am I feeling? Overwhelmed, slightly scared, but incredibly excited.
A bigger building means bigger financial risk and a bigger responsibility. But what helps me sleep well at night is knowing just how capable the team around us has become. The foundation of myself, Tim and Alastair, along with our families, is stronger than ever. But we now have so many incredible people around us who genuinely care about Book Hero, believe in what we’re building, and would do anything to see it succeed. We’re all rowing in the same direction, every single day, and there’s a huge amount of momentum behind us.
Moving a warehouse sounds like hard work - and it is. But it’s also a fantastic problem to have, and we couldn’t be more thankful to find ourselves in this position.
Thank you for supporting Book Hero. Every order, every visit to the bookstore, every recommendation to a friend and every book you buy from us has helped us get here.
We can’t wait to welcome you into our new home, whether that’s in person at our bigger Hobsonville bookstore, or online, where we’ll have an even bigger range of books, games, puzzles, toys and more ready for Christmas.
We’ll be taking you behind the scenes over the coming weeks, sharing how we’re tackling the move, introducing some of the people helping make it happen, and giving you a first look at our new bookstore. Keep an eye on our social media and emails as we get closer to moving day!
Warehouse number three. Here we come 🚀
