Waterstones' Skipper: 'We have turned a corner'

06.05.14 | Lisa Campbell - The Bookseller

“There has been a huge period of change and last year was obviously difficult, but I think without exception our shops are better than they were 12 months ago,” says Waterstones’ new director of buying Kate Skipper, channelling her boss, James Daunt, who has given similar summaries of Waterstones’ past year.

Skipper has been hand-picked by Daunt to become the new director of buying. Promoted by him to head of buying from her role as new titles buyer soon after the chain was sold by the HMV Group to Russian oligarch and businessman Alexander Mamut in May 2011, Skipper was charged with implementing one of the most controversial business changes in the company’s recent history—moving from a decentralised to a centralised buying system and a “reactive” buying process. The latter meant ordering more books as soon as sales started to take off, as opposed to getting in huge numbers upfront in return for heavy discounts on rate cards—the old way of the HMV Group.

The move was originally met with alarm and despair by many publishers, who saw their orders from Britain’s largest book chain being dramatically slashed. Many booksellers also felt aggrieved that a crucial, responsible role had been stripped from them and, with it, some of their job satisfaction. But Skipper, who joined Waterstones as children’s buyer in 2008 after periods at WHS Travel and Book Club Associates (BCA), tells a different side to the buying story that has unfolded over the past three years

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