Henry Layte, owner of The Book Hive, one of the UK’s most renowned independent bookstores, thought long and hard about how to open again after lockdown. He considered wrapping each book in plastic, placing them on tables under Perspex or allowing a maximum of two people in at a time. But none of it felt right.
Instead, he will be using the shop’s rather grand, full-length windows that curve around a pedestrianised street in Norwich to display as many books as possible. He’ll show the front cover and the back blurb, enabling customers to browse from outside the store.
“We’re kind of open but you can’t come in,” says Layte. “When you get into the shop it’s quite long and narrow, and there’s just no way you can do it. The thing with browsing is you see a book, and you want to pick it up and read it. That’s just not possible in the current situation. We’ve got to try something new.”
Customers will still be able to buy books, place orders and ask for recommendations – but it’ll be through the window. Layte’s plan enables both his customers and staff to stay safe while retaining all the pleasure of browsing in a bookshop. It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘window shopping’.
But even though The Book Hive and stores like it have found a way to enable customers to browse at least a little in the wake of Covid-19, will they even want to? If the pleasure of browsing is in looking, touching and, often, walking out intentionally empty handed, then a substitute for browsing in a pre-coronavirus world may not pass muster.
In that case, have we reached the end of browsing as we know it?
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June 30, 2020 at 09:23AM
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How Covid-19 will change our shopping habits - BBC News
"how" - Google News
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