A big day for Dubray: ‘A bookshop in Bray? This is never going to work!’

Book loving staff, enthusiastic customers, monthly recommendations, staff choices, bookclubs, and author signings and events: Dubray Books has grown over the last 40 years from a small bookshop in Bray to a group of eight dedicated stores for booklovers to escape to.

"A bookshop in Bray? This is never going to work!" Not encouraging words to owner Helen Clear from one of the first visitors to what became the first Dubray Books store. Originally named The Bray Bookshop, it opened in 1972 in a small premises on the Quinsboro Road and local customers still regularly regale us with their memories of that tiny shop. Helen, who founded the business at 55 after rearing seven children, came from a long line of strong business women and continued undeterred. Such was her enthusiasm for her new project that she and her husband Kevin sold the family home to finance it, and relocated to the Wicklow area.

Despite the doubts of the customer in question, the people of Bray have been good to Dubray Books. In speaking of that day, Helen wrote: “I was absolutely frightened out of my wits . . . on the morning we opened I got a great lift – Mrs Harvey, from the fish and vegetable shop, determined to be the first customer, arrived early and presented me with a bunch of flowers, wishing me success. It warmed my heart and lessened the terror.” Takings on day one were a princely £40.

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Nigella Lawson signing copies of her book, Kitchen, at Dubray Books, Grafton Street, Dublin in 2010, for Naoimh Kenny with her son Daniel from Blackrock. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill

The company has now served the Bray area for over 40 years, and expanded to seven other locations around the country. We are very proud of the strong links forged with our local communities and authors over the years. Early supporters included Marie and Seamus Heaney, Éamon de Buitléar, Diarmaid Ó Muirithe and Kate Cruise O’Brien. Helen is credited with introducing Joanna Trollope to the Irish market, enthusiastically hand-selling the author’s books to such a degree that the publisher was moved to bring her to Ireland for the first time.

Over the years, innumerable writers have enjoyed a warm welcome in various Dubray stores: Irish authors such as Edna O’Brien, Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín, Maeve Binchy and Derek Landy; as well as more international stars such as Michael Palin, David Attenborough, Nigella Lawson, Anita Roddick, Julia Donaldson and Stephenie Meyer, to name but a few. Last Christmas, both astronaut Chris Hadfield and Panti Bliss brought Grafton Street to a standstill, and tonight we will celebrate the talent of our Wicklow-based authors with a special evening at the Bray Main Street store, featuring Sebastian Barry, Paul Howard, Cathy Kelly, Audrey Magee, Emma Hannigan and many more.

To say that Dubray Books is a family business would be an understatement. In 1988 the company was bought by daughter Gemma and her husband Kevin, a highly respected economist with the Central Bank and NCB Stockbrokers. Gemma’s passion and flair for retail and Kevin’s financial acumen were the perfect complement to Helen’s book knowledge and the three built a strong business based on a shared love of books and exceptional customer service. The group became well known for its positive relationships with the wider trade, particularly with Irish publishers and representatives, who have provided great support to the business over the years. Helen continued to work in the business until 2005, quietly withdrawing from the shop floor that Christmas aged 86.

All of Helen’s six daughters have worked in the company at some stage. Maria managed the Grafton Street bookshop and still works in the Bray head office, while Olivia, former manager in Stillorgan, continues to have active input into the store. Since Kevin’s death in 2014, a loss which his colleagues and the trade feel very deeply, his sons Cormac and Eoghan have taken an active role in the business at board level. Helen’s granddaughter Emma has joined the team to buy book-related toys and gifts, and it is not unusual to find other relatives taking a short stint behind the counter at busy times of year.

As determined and ground-breaking as her mother before her, Gemma was the first woman (and the first Irish person) to chair the Council of the Booksellers Association of Great Britain & Ireland, and she and Helen were joint recipients of the O’Brien Press Bookseller of the Year award in 1997, to be followed by our Grafton Street manager Lynn Crampton in 2012 and Susan Walsh, our marketing manager.

The chain grew in scope, first moving to larger premises on Bray’s Main Street, a development which doubled sales. In 1990, we opened The Dublin Bookshop on Grafton Street to great excitement and, with the launch of shops in Rathmines and Kilkenny in 1994, the group adopted the name Dubray Books – a word derived from the founding locations of Dublin and Bray. Further stores in Stillorgan, Galway’s Shop Street, Blackrock and Dún Laoghaire grew the business to become Ireland’s largest dedicated bookseller and, despite the recent challenges of the recession and the e-book phenomenon, it still retains that position.

A strong visual aesthetic is part of the Dubray history: Helen’s daughters having both talent and a good eye for matters artistic. Paula Clear ensured that Dubray Books was one of the first to introduce a collection of art cards to the stores, while Olivia made bookmarks to sell in the store.

Sharing our love of books

Despite the growth of the group, our local ethos and core principles have remained unchanged. We work hard to develop our staff knowledge and we consciously recruit book lovers, who will take pleasure in sharing their enthusiasm with customers. Every bookseller undertakes an eighteen month training program and each is responsible for buying books for the store - the latter an unusual and time-consuming practice by current book retailing standards, but one that we feel is invaluable when it comes to providing a broad selection of books and allowing us to engage in a genuine way with our customers. A monthly recommendations leaflet packed with our buyers’ latest passions is an important part of the Dubray Books offer, and in the coming weeks we will be sharing our booksellers’ favourite books of all time – an impressive and much loved collection led by Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Needless to say we can’t wait for the release of her new book, Go Set a Watchman.

The book trade has gone through many changes over the years. The removal of VAT from books in the 1980s provided a massive boost to the industry and made it viable, and the Celtic Tiger years saw major expansion. Recent years have brought challenges which still linger: the recession hit book sales just as Amazon grew in strength, and the growth of e-books, mercifully now abating, provided a very real threat to bricks and mortar retail. Legacy rental agreements led to the demise of a number of dedicated Irish independent bookstores and continue to cause difficulties for many.

Book buyers seek an enriched experience

Looking to the future, we are working with customers and trade contacts to explore what motivates book buyers now that the rise of e-books has halted. The findings are rich: modern Irish book lovers increasingly seek personal recommendation and communication – having exhausted the novelty of auto-recommends from online retailers - and look forward to indulging in the pleasure and serendipity that a bookshop visit can bring. Book lovers are also keen to seek depth in their reading experiences: access to authors is ever more important, as evinced by the growth of book clubs literary festivals such as the upcoming Hay Festival Kells and Dalkey Book Festival. Range is making a comeback: the fiesta of celebrity autobiographies that characterised the boom years has subsided and readers now seek to discover something unusual, something special, something that reflects, affirms and extends their personal world view.

Hearteningly, our research has uncovered an undaunted appetite for reading, browsing and discovery among tech-savvy twentysomething “millenials”: the challenge for the trade is to provide an environment that provides them with the stimulation that they seek. Growth in the children’s market continues unabated and Dubray’s booksellers take particular pleasure in recommending books to younger customers and those who encourage them. Author Emma Hannigan, a Bray regular, remembers her sibling harbouring a childhood suspicion that Mrs Clear was in fact Enid Blyton, and customers frequently tell us that their reading lives began with a recommendation from Helen in those early days. If there is one sincere hope that springs from the company’s heritage it is that we can continue to inspire and encourage the reading experiences of customers new and old.

Dubray Books Bray’s local author evening takes place on Thursday June 11th, at 6.30pm, at 10 Main St, Bray, with Wicklow-based authors Sebastian Barry, Paul Howard, Cathy Kelly, Audrey Magee, Emma Hannigan and many more.