Muna bhfuil agat ach asal, bí i lár an aonaidh leis...

( Even if you only have a donkey for sale, its important to be in the middle of the fair) 

I've always loved that phrase, I gather Jeff Bezos has it in poster sized font on his bathroom wall. Translated roughly, it means location is everything. (Timing is important too, but location more so) 

We are a book business, and as anyone with a lot of books will tell you, space is key. Space for old books, space for new books. Space for books you haven't read yet. Space for books as yet unpublished and unsold.

Templemore man Dónal Condren started selling books online with thebookshop.ie in June 2013. The initial website was small,and as many startups are it was run from a house. As the business grew, it necessitated a move to a larger warehouse, which we have been trading out of in rural Athnid ( between Thurles and Templemore) since then. Swallows would fly in and out the door every summer. Cows wander fields in the flat east Tipperary landscape. Tractors pass you a lot.

I got lost driving out to it the first time on my own. 

The business model was simple - sell books at the best possible price, with free shipping over a certain price point. As time progressed, I joined the business in 2017, having started buying from Dónal initially. I soon joined him in the business, initially looking after higher value and collectible books, adding new (as opposed to used) books. 

The time has now come for the next big move for the business, and it's back into town - back to Templemore. When the owners of the long established Doherty's Hardware in Patrick Street decided to retire , it was an opportunity too good to miss. This past month, we've started the process of moving the warehouse into the (4 times larger) building, which typical of many Irish towns has long deep back lot, stretching back  (and with access from Church Avenue) . Ideal for a business like ours, which si space intensive. But the opportunity to merge online and physical bookshop was also too good to miss, and an ( initially small) used bookshop - The Book Temple - opened this month in part of the main street frontage. 

There's so much more we can do now - the ability to hold additional quantities of books is the obvious one, but we will also (soon) offer click and collect, the ability to collect books from the online store from the physical shop, and much more. It's a vote of confidence in ourselves, in independent small businesses,. in Templemore town, and in the ability of a small group of people to create and sustain a retail business in the face of global behemoths . 

Onward and upward. 

Tá muid i lár an aonaigh anois. ( We're in the middle of the fair now).