Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Another comment re Dymocks closure of NZ head office.

Weekly Book Newsletter of Australian Bookseller + Publisher today...

Dymocks has closed its New Zealand head office, resulting in the redundancies of general manager Andrew Howard and retail business manager Doris Mousdale.

At the end of the day I'm doing this for the efficiencies of the business,' Dymocks CEO Don Grover told WBN. 'We're absolutely committed to our New Zealand market but don't find that a very small office in New Zealand is an efficient way [to run the business] and doing this, like a number of publishers have done, allows us to leverage the abilities we have with Australian management.'
Office manager Loretta Ruissen will stay on in the New Zealand office during a short ‘transitional period', during which ‘accountability for all strategic and operational activities' will be transferred to the Dymocks team based in Australia.
We thank Andrew and Doris for their contribution to Dymocks New Zealand and wish them every success for the future,' said Grover in a statement.

Grover, who spoke to WBN from New Zealand said the closure of the New Zealand head office did not represent a withdrawal from the market and added that the chain would be opening a new New Zealand store in Ponsonby in May.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's an unbelievable decision. They obviously have no idea of the true value of the groundwork someone like Doris Mousdale does. Is someone from Australia going to turn up at an Auckland school on Wednesday night with an author - and sell a whole pile of books in the process? Just to describe one of Doris's many "on the ground" activities. I'm not directly invloolved with the book trade but I've seen her in action over many years, she's gold. This Don Grover must be a total moron...