Fate of Beijing Branches Unknown as Page One Shutters Last of Hong Kong Bookstores

The fate of one of Beijing’s last bastions of English books is up in the air today as its parent company in Hong Kong has closed the doors on its remaining outlets and gone into receivership.

Page One Bookstore, which has locations in Taikoo Li, China World and Indigo Mall, just yesterday shut its remaining branches in Hong Kong -- once its most successful market -- apparently under the burden of enormous losses.

We called all Beijing locations late Friday afternoon, and each said they remained open and had no knowledge of an imminent closure. No one answered the store’s Beijing HQ phone number listed on its website or replied to emails, so further confirmation was not possible by the time of this post.

If they were to close in Beijing, it would come as no surprise. The number of stores in Hong Kong has been dwindling for years, and recent visits to the Sanlitun and Indigo locations here in Beijing revealed some half-empty shelves, indicating that stock was not being replenished.

In this era of digital devices, online bookstores and on-demand home delivery, it's not a shock that massive bookstores in high-rent locations in what is now one of the world's most expensive cities are not terribly viable business models, but a closure would signal the sad end of a short-lived era in Beijing.

Founded in Singapore in 1983, Page One made its mark in the late 90s and early 2000s in Hong Kong, where at its peak it had 10 locations. At that time it was not just a local attraction, but a key stop for any Asia-based expat’s Hong Kong visa run.

Pre-Olympics, we expats in Beijing pined for any sort of English-language bookstore that could give us English reading material and that luxurious, literate feeling of browsing. By 2011, when Page One finally landed on our shores, we were both proud and excited to see something of its stature give it a go in Beijing.

Page One initially expanded to China with a Hangzhou store in 2010. Its Beijing debut was in China World in April 2011; it quickly expanded to Taikoo Li in 2012 and finally into the heart of Sanlitun in 2013.

The Beijing Page Ones have been fun to browse and have tried to make a niche for themselves with a wide range of high-end books as well as offering all manner of other literary and non-literary knick-knacks. The Taikoo Li branch also has a coffee shop and even made a very short-lived attempt at staying open 24 hours.

As a parent, my daughter and I have spent many afternoons in one location of Page One or another, browsing their (relatively, for Beijing) enormous English-language book collections.

The books were often overpriced (particularly imported ones), but I’d buy one anyway on each visit, figuring I got not only a book out of the deal, but also an afternoon of free babysitting with my kid safely protected from over-exposure to otherwise ubiquitous digital devices.

This would not be the first of Hong Kong’s prominent bookstores to come and fail in Beijing; Chaterhouse Books had a short-lived run for a few years in the basement of The Place from about 2007 to 2010.

Should it close, it comes on the heels of a generally bad time for English-language things in Beijing: Earlier this week we heard that The Bookworm would be indefinitely postponing its annual book festival, and earlier in November we were informed that one of our esteemed competitors in the expat rag segment, City Weekend, was either shutting down or being sold off to an uncertain buyer. (Lest we be accused of being all gloom and doom, there is one bright spot on the English language horizon, and that is the launch of the new Beijing-based English-language literary mag Spittoon).

Here's to hopes that Page One stays open, if only till Christmas so we can pay a last few visits and land a few gifts for the people on our lists.

Image: Wikipedia

Comments

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JB Leclerc wrote:

Ouch, being publicly salty about your competitors is not a good look! Sad to see this kind of unprofessionalism from The Beijinger. 

I hope next time when a friend or relative of yours dies, someone will say it on your face, "Chances are you are the next." 

And you better not talk back because that's not nice. 

Internet hypocrisy is fucking out of controll.

JB Leclerc wrote:

Ouch, being publicly salty about your competitors is not a good look! Sad to see this kind of unprofessionalism from The Beijinger. 

Just replying to the above poster who stated "you're next", sorry you are offended

Books by current and former Beijinger staffers

http://astore.amazon.com/truerunmedia-20

lynxlynx wrote:

Chances are you guys are next.

Maybe so, you never know. But most of our business is no longer dependent on English products or print products, so I think we'll be OK. 

We do more business these days with our Chinese titles, our digital products and live events where attendance is typically 80% Chinese.

Personally if i had to handicap the likelihood of death of the other expat rags in Beijing I'd place my bets on (1) That's having the largest chance of dying, then (2) Time Out, then (3) us. 

Why That's? Entirely English portfolio; weak family/education product, which is where the money is these days; bloated bureaucracy in Shanghai and multiple city exposure which means higher executive travel costs; weak digital following ... however i do know that's gets a large government subsidy, as they are directly owned and controlled by a publishing house under the State Council Information Office ... therefore they could likely hemorrhage money for years and still struggle along.

Why Time Out? They need to pay licensing fees to a dying publisher overseas; owned by a large Chinese company with increasing corporate overhead and salaries; and they are far wiser businessmen than I and won't spend too much more money on projects with such a low rate of return.

Why us? We're small and there's no "deep pockets" to back us up -- we simply can't afford to lose money on what we do. Unfortunately that has meant skimping in a lot of areas that I'd really like to shore up, but it also has instilled a certain amount of financial discpline over the years. If I had a million RMB to build a kickass app or replace this website with something fancier or more robust, I'd do it -- but currently the market we're in does not give much of a return on that kind of investment.

For all our faults -- and we have many -- we are small, locally owned and operated and have "skin in the game" so to speak -- we are very dedicated to the city of Beijing.

Books by current and former Beijinger staffers

http://astore.amazon.com/truerunmedia-20

Chances are you guys are next.