Welcome to Ulysses Bookstore - my new venture

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in the last few weeks, but I have to confess that I haven't been reading very much lately.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am opening a bookshop in my local suburb and the organising of this has taken such a large amount of my time, that my blog has been left dormant on the shelf.  I can now proudly say that Ulysses Bookshop is now open in Sandringham, Victoria, Australia and I am hoping that I will now have the time to catch up on that reading pile that has been accumulating next to my bed.  One of my new problems is that there are so many books in the shop that I want to read I don't know how I'm going to get to all of them.

I went to a booksellers conference in July and heard from a marketing expert that every business should have its own story as that is what will make it special to its customers, creating a sense of community and making the business personal.  So this is the story of Ulysses Bookstore.  Take one woman who use to work for a large multi-national in a finance and marketing capacity, then along came three children, so the employment became of a voluntary nature working with other mothers in her local area.  The oldest children are now at secondary school and the mother is wondering what to do with the next ten years.  She can't see working in a large corporation again - the hours and location aren't convenient and she's used to working in a smaller, more personal environment.  She wants to be her own boss as she has been for the last 12 years.  A small business seems the ticket.  Then the big question - what strengths and skills does she have?

Well, there are the years of selling raffle tickets at a local shopping strip, giving talks to new mums, and helping her own mother in her small retail business - people skills aren't too bad.  She's good with computer systems and one of the few people she knows who balanced her cheque book and does a periodic check of family spending - that should be good for managing accounts and inventories.  The question is - what is the product.  Well, the onl yinterest she feels passionate about these days is books.  Reading them, talking about them with her friends and family, reading reviews to find new things to read.  So, from this, a bookshop is born.

Where does the name "Ulysses" come from?  Honestly - a wallpaper sample that I liked in a decorating magazine.  Well, that was what got me thinking.  I thought it would make a lovely feature wall until I discovered the 3-dimentional butterflies were actually dragonflies!  But by then I was fixed on a theme of butterflies.  They reminded me of a family holiday to Dunk Island which has the beautiful blue Ulysses butterfly everwhere, and then there was the famous book "Ulysses" by Jame Joyce.  Featured in the book given to me by my husband one Christmas "1001 Books to Read Before You Die", I did try to read it but only got about half way.  I believe it is one of those books that everyone says they have read or tried to read but couldn't finish.  Lastly, there's the Irish connection - my younger brother and his family live in Dublin.  It just seemed right.

Well, that's the story behind the birth of Ulysses Bookstore.  If you are in the area, please drop in and say hi.