Books, Bath and beyond - chatting 'extreme customer service' and bucking retail trends with bookshop Mr B’s Emporium

Independent Thinking - Exploring a new era for retail and the high street

There are few places you can escape reality better (on the high street at least) than in a bookshop. Shelves filled with history, memoirs, adventure, sadness, scandal and delight; wonder, joy, pleasure and heartbreak. Books can transport us to another time and remind us that some thoughts and feelings are as old as time itself.

Imagination is at the heart of what makes books and authors so special, of course, but what about the booksellers themselves? Well, it turns out they can be just as imaginative as the authors on their shelves. And that’s what I’ll be exploring this week with two-time winning bookshop Mr B’s Emporium, based in Bath.

I chat to co-founder Nic about extreme customer service and why it matters, how customers respond to world events through their reading habits, why he remains an optimist about the health of the high street and whether writers can truly predict the future…

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