Popular Fife book shop re-opens after six-figure Lloyds loan

Family-run Topping & Company Booksellers had to close its stores in St Andrews, Bath, Ely and Edinburgh, in accordance with government guidelines back in March. The company furloughed almost all of its 50 employees, sales dropped significantly and their popular literary events and reading groups were all cancelled.

With face-to-face transactions previously making up around 95 per cent of sales, co-founder Robert Topping and his son, Hugh, adapted how they worked by selling books over the phone from their homes and improving the company’s website to increase online revenue.

The business continued to work with authors from across the UK to curate reading lists and collections for visitors to its website, and delivered signed copies of the latest fiction and non-fiction books to its loyal base of subscribers every month. However, these measures still left Topping & Company Booksellers surviving on 20 per cent of sales compared with before lockdown.

The £250,000 loan from long-term banking partner Lloyds Bank, via the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), meant the company could continue to pay for stock while its stores were closed.

The recent easing of lockdown in England saw the company reopen its Ely and Bath stores on June 15, and its Scotland stores on the 29th. Encouragingly, sales in Ely and Bath have already returned to normal, and Robert Topping cites current political and societal movements as a key factor in the rise in sales.

He said: “The relationship between a community and its independent bookshop is something unique, especially in times of uncertainty.

“We’ve seen so many political and societal changes in the first half of 2020, so it’s no surprise that we’ve seen an uplift in sales of non-fiction and current affairs books, especially on the topic of race due to the Black Lives Matter movement.”