Ian Draper leaves Whitcoulls for the second
time at the end of January, and because he has been largely behind the scenes
to many publishers for the last few years I suspect that it is possible he
leaves without knowing how important he has been.
It is a fair bet that without Ian’s intervention
the Normans may well not have bought Whitcoulls, and
fought to save this iconic New Zealand business. And Ian has fought hard as
well, making unpopular (in the book industry) decisions to diversify the
product in the front-of-store in order to keep stores solvent when book sales
tumbled. Ian has a passion for this business, and he has been very focussed on
saving what was a sick company when it came back into NZ hands.
Ian started at Whitcoulls in 1995, and was
promoted through to MD in 2001 and then MD of the Angus & Robertson
Whitcoulls Group in 2005. Wanting to come home from Melbourne he left in 2008
before ARW became RedGroup and settled down to time off and his other
businesses, importing caravans and moving houses
Thankfully he became engaged again when
RedGroup went into Administration and he helped the Normans buy the NZ
business, which he has run since 2011.
Ian has massive support among his staff,
and deserves the appreciation of our industry. He would not say he was a big
reader (!) but he is a supporter of books as part of Whitcoulls. I have always found him
a decent, kind and fair man, even when I accused him of “industry vandalism” for leaving
Bookscan. Ian just said that he had made the decision that was necessary for
his business, and we were all entitled to our opinion, and never used it against
me in any way.
We are funny about Whitcoulls in this
industry. We seem to feel an ownership of it, and that it has a responsibility
to fulfil our own wishes for the business. Ian (along with the Normans and his
team) has shepherded it through tough times and enabled us to keep 60 plus
bookstores still operating. I think we all owe him a substantial vote of
thanks.
Kevin Chapman
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