Books and beyond at High Street

What could be better than five stories of space, right in the heart of High Street, Fort Bonifacio, devoted to books of every possible description — plus CDs, magazines, DVDs, graphic novels and collectibles?

How about a personal discount card you can use after making a P2,000 purchase with your Citibank credit card at any Fully Booked branch?

That’s right, book lovers. It’s one of the perks of shopping at Fully Booked, one of the most comprehensive book outlets in Metro Manila. Thanks to a tie-up between Citibank Corp. and Fully Booked, shoppers who use a Citibank card to make a single-receipt purchase of P2,000 minimum (and, let’s face it, those coffee-table books don’t come cheap) will receive a “Book Perks” card, valid on future purchases at any of six Fully Booked outlets. That means they can enjoy a five-percent discount (up to 10 percent on certain merchandise) the next time they shop. This privilege card usually takes annual accumulated purchases of P15,000 at Fully Booked to earn. This will definitely bring sighs of relief to feverish bookworms who promptly go mad when they see all that Fully Booked has to offer.

And the P2,000 single purchase need not be just for books. Stationery, magazines, aisles and aisles of CDs and DVDs, special toys and comic book collectibles are all to be found at Fully Booked. That’s why so many shoppers who come here end up browsing for hours on end.

By now, many people are familiar with the story of Jaime Daez, managing director of the upstart bookstore. A former architecture student in Spain, he returned to the Philippines lamenting the lack of architecture books. So he started buying them abroad, five at a time; he figured he’d keep one copy for himself and sell the rest at a profit to break even. This desire for more books led him to open two Bibliotech branches and eventually a franchise of Singapore’s Page One (which has since left the Philippines, its stock of imports morphing into Fully Booked).

From the start, Fully Booked set out to create a new slant on the book-selling business. In fact, it’s no longer just a bookstore, Daez will tell you: it’s a “lifestyle destination.”

The new flagship branch at High Street, just opened last month, is a great example of how Fully Booked goes beyond Filipinos’ conceptions of a bookstore.

With existing branches at Power Plant, Greenhills, SM Mall of Asia, Gateway and The Block, SM North EDSA, Daez had something “outside the box” in mind for Fort Bonifacio: Go vertical. Thus the new branch — which Daez designed — was 18 months in the making and boasts more than 100,000 titles. It has a basement level packed with stationery and art materials, as well as graphic novels and comic book memorabilia (Daez’s favorite floor of the store). There’s also a 60-seat theater called U-View that is open to the public for special movie screenings (as with the recent Harry Potter movie marathon to celebrate the release of the final J.K. Rowling book). The theater’s also available for rental for parties, movie events and educational seminars.

The ground level spreads out to include tables and tables of new releases and bestsellers, all the fiction titles you can hope for, magazines, biographies, classics and romance novels.

Interestingly, the center of the store is illuminated by a skylight, leading the eye upward to the higher levels. Some 500 square meters of retail area was sacrificed for this wide-open design because, Daez says, “I wanted a sense of great space.” He was influenced somewhat by the Barnes & Noble at Union Square, NYC, with its classical columns and huge ceilings. “I felt the best way to design a retail store is with ease of use in mind. The store design should disappear. People should be able to see and find what they’re looking for immediately.”

Once you get past the ground level, you’ll find a vast children’s section, complete with tables and chairs for kids to sit and read with parents, along with sections devoted to sports, food and Filipiniana.

Next up is a floor devoted to business, reference, self-help, religion and inspiration, philosophy, and yes, even a Starbucks branch for book browsers to unwind between purchases.

The top floor is filled with covetable art and design books, as well as a wide range of CDs (the Keith Jarrett and Brazilia section alone is worth a check) and lots of DVDs for kids and adults. But that’s not even the top yet, says Daez: he shows us the roof deck, still under construction, which will be available for book launches and dinner events in the future. It offers a panoramic view of the Fort Bonifacio sunset that can’t be beat.

Daez is pleased with the Citibank tie-up, which he’s sure will only add to sales and existing customers. “Citibank has the biggest credit card base in the Philippines,” he notes. “So it’s only natural that we wanted to use the strength of their credit card database to increase our database of customers.” He’s also not shy about gifting his regular customers with discount cards: “We are happy to give out our discount cards. Other stores may not be as happy to do so.”

Daez sees the book retail business as something requiring constant learning and constant reinvention: “There’s never a point in the book business where you can say, ‘Oh, I know everything.’ It’s extremely knowledge-intensive.”

After this flagship, Daez says he’ll take a break. But not for long: he hints that Cebu is the next logical destination for Fully Booked outside Metro Manila.

While there are still plenty of book freaks out there (my wife and I included), Daez acknowledges that, worldwide, book sales are slipping. So Fully Booked had to evolve with the times, embarking on a somewhat different mission: it’s an all-in-one store with an attractive mix of books, comics, multimedia materials, and even coffee: “When people think books, CDs, DVDs, we want them to come here.”

“I felt we still had something to contribute to the market. If anything, we’re trying to make reading cool, in a sense. We want this to be a place to ‘see and be seen.’ In our small way, we’re trying to make books ‘in.’”

Not that he had to convince us.

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Using their Citibank credit card, Fully Booked shoppers who make a single-receipt purchase of P2,000 receive a “Book Perks” card to enjoy a five-percent discount on future purchases. Dubbed the next-generation privilege program, Citibank World Privileges offers a wealth of exclusive offers like discounts, complimentary gifts, upgrades, and a wide range of exciting rewards to Citibank cardholders. Exceptional services and superior benefits await cardholders in over 1,000 merchants locally and in over 17,000 merchants across Asia Pacific and the world, through Citibank’s comprehensive local, regional and global knowledge and partnerships.