Kerry Ridley opened the bricks-and-mortar version of her travelling business My Little Bookshop in the week that WA’s cumulative COVID numbers hit the 10,000 mark – but that’s the kind of woman she is.
“I could give a masterclass on how to start a new business in a crisis,” Kerry laughs. “Proudly brought to you by Veuve!”
Writing WA had the pleasure of visiting the new store this week, which is located on the picturesque Rockingham foreshore not far from where Kerry lives.
Sassy, colourful and with a few aesthetic nods to 1950s-style glamour, the store is not unlike Kerry herself. Striking black-and-white floor tiles set the tone, offset by an eclectic array of furniture pieces that includes a wheelchair-friendly front counter that Kerry repurposed from the site’s former tenant – a bank.
“That was important to me,” Kerry says. “As the parent of a child with a disability, I wanted to ensure the shop was highly accessible.”
In the same vein, she’s included a whole section of books that portray young people with a disability as rich characters in interesting fictional stories – “not just the traditional non-fiction books that are simply meant to educate people about disability,” Kerry explains.
There’s also a section dedicated to queer books, a case full of cocktail titles, a hand-picked selection of coffee table books (“for the young people who don’t want to read but want to look good”) and a wall of funky puzzles and hilarious political tea-towels. If you don’t know Kerry before you walk into My Little Bookshop, you’ve definitely got a better sense of her by the time you walk out.
Of course many people around the state already know Kerry Ridley through the travelling bookshop she began in 2019. Another example of her inspiration-out-of-adversity approach to life, the idea was conceived after Kerry was made unexpectedly redundant from her government position.
“I had a little pity party for a few weeks,” she says, “you know, woman over fifty on the scrap heap, having to compete with the younger generation – it can be quite disheartening. But then I thought, well what do I like to do? I like travelling and I like books. And before you know it, I’d bought a big old caravan on eBay. My kids thought I’d gone nuts.”
Kerry completely renovated the caravan and stocked it with as many secondhand books as she could get her hands on, most of them donated by friends and family. “I really had no idea what I was doing,” she admits, “and I couldn’t find a single other business like it in the whole country, so I just kept going.”
Before long and with the assistance of word-of-mouth, markets and other events started contacting Kerry to invite her to set up the van there. “It was so exciting,” she says, “that people were actually contacting me.”
Moving confidently into 2020, Kerry found she had already been able to pre-book the van for almost every weekend between March and June.
Then COVID hit.
“And every single booking disappeared – pretty much in the space of a single day,” she recalls.
“So I had another little pity party and then decided to use that downtime to actually get to know the bookselling industry properly,” Kerry says. “After all, I’d never run a business, never worked in retail – I had a lot to learn.”
Kept afloat by JobKeeper, Kerry joined the Australian Booksellers Association and also sought direct experience working alongside Beaufort St Books owner Jane Seaton (who is also ABA President). She purchased two ‘mini-me’ caravans and was able to hit the ground running again when WA’s lockdowns phase started to lift.
Quickly reaching capacity with the fleet of three caravans, Kerry started to toy with the idea of a physical bookstore. There’s a lovely irony to her decision to ultimately choose the site of a former bank – “given that they never loan money to bookstores!”
Kerry says the first few weeks of business in the new store have been very positive, with steady walk-in traffic, encouraging feedback from the public and welcoming support from local organisations and from authors.
She’s hoping the Member for Rockingham will also soon pay a visit when he’s not so busy. “If Marky Mark walks in, the staff knows it’s code blue – time to mobilise!”