What the interiors of Crossword’s Elgin Road outlet are expected to look like: Bright and cheerful

Sixteen thousand square feet of space, to browse, buy and just be with books. That’s what Crossword, the Rs 40-crore national bookstores chain, is bringing to Calcutta next month. With a customer base of 40,000 spread across seven cities, it is opening its 18th outlet on Elgin Road, the city’s latest retail high street.

At what promises to be the first ‘real’ bookstore in the city, browsing in comfort will be encouraged, with “unobtrusively helpful” store staff helping locate the right book, right CD, right DVD or right gift.

Housing more than 70,000 books over two levels, special focus will be on the children’s section, with more than 7,000 titles, toys, view-CDs and CD-ROMs.

Bright and cheerful interiors by Kingsmen of Singapore, methodical classifications, clear signage, dedicated inquiry/orders desk, electronic inventory control and specially- designed reading furniture will lure visitors to linger, the Crossword team assures.

And there will be more to Crossword than books. A “forum for cultural and social interaction, where people gravitate to be informed and entertained, steered by books and other related products” is how the management would like to position the Crossword brand at its 8 Elgin Road address.

“We will provide a platform to the community to meet and share ideas, to discuss and debate issues that concern us and even listen to great writers and thinkers who will enlighten us,” explains R. Sriram, CEO and managing director of Crossword Bookstores Ltd.

“The idea is to encourage reading through various events and activities, like storytelling sessions, weekly reading hours, quizzes and slide shows, writers’ workshops and interface,” adds Sidharth Pansari, managing director of city franchise Tiger Commerce Pvt Ltd.

Even as every effort is being made to create a “fun-filled and non-intimidating experience” in-store, services like dial, fax or email-a-book are also being offered to facilitate shopping from home.

A customer loyalty programme fetches points, discounts and promotional offers to the Crossword faithful, while ‘eWords’, a monthly newsletter with over 50 reviews of new books, news of in-store events and bestseller lists is mailed to the customers on the chain’s database.

As part of its initiative to promote books and writing, the management is planning to revive the Crossword Book Award, which recognises and rewards the best in Indian writing. Besides the chain’s national tie-up with Give Foundation, other NGOs are welcome to run their events in the Elgin Road store, which will also house a café.

The chain, which has hosted a steady stream of celebrity writers and artistes, promises to continue with the same tradition in Calcutta. “Once our mother store on Elgin Road is well-entrenched, we might augment our presence with a string of satellite stores,” says Pansari.