New Avenue Bookstore to open in Elsternwick

Tuesday, 7 August 2012 Books+Publishing

Independent Melbourne bookseller Avenue Bookstore will open a new store in Elsternwick in October, following the purchase of independent bookstore Sunflower Bookshop.

Sunflower Bookshop, located at 434 Glenhuntly Road in Elsternwick, will close on 31 August. Avenue Bookstore owner Chris Redfern told Bookseller+Publisher that the new Avenue Bookstore Elsternwick will open in October after a ‘complete renovation and refit’.

Redfern said that the new store will be managed by Kate McFadyen, who has worked at the Avenue Bookstore in Albert Park for more than 15 years. The new store will have a ‘similar look’ to the Albert Park store, and will replicate the same range of titles, said Redfern.

Work is also underway on upgrading the Avenue website, which currently only sells print books. Redfern said he is still ‘keeping an eye on’ developments in the ebook market.

Redfern said the sale of the Sunflower Bookshop created ‘a great opportunity’ for the Avenue business to extend, and said the store is located in an area of Melbourne which now has fewer bookstores following the closure of a Dymocks store and a number of REDgroup Retail outlets.

In an email to customers, the Sunflower Bookshop said that the Avenue Bookstore Elsternwick will honour all current Sunflower Bookshop gift vouchers and customer loyalty vouchers and the store’s list of subscribers to its email newsletter will be transferred to the new owners.

The store’s staff thanked its customers in the email and said that they will ‘look back over the years to the many pleasures that we have experienced as independent booksellers in the local community’.

Category: Local news