Merry Christmas – Meri Kirihimete & All the Best for the New Year 2022 – Nga Mihi o te Tau Hou 2022
As the summer season approaches, we know that you are likely to be bombarded with all kinds of promotions as businesses try their best to boost their sales. If it’s not Black Friday, it’s Boxing Day Sales, New Year Sales, and so it goes on throughout the year. At Our Backyard Books, we don’t engage in frenetic sales pitches, and as the year draws to a close, we thought it might be a good time to tell you why this is.
When we started writing and illustrating our books we wanted to show children some of the beautiful places we have in Aotearoa. The idea was borne through a love of travel, and the notion that we could play a part in sharing these lovely places with children in funny and interesting ways. We are both retired, and so the idea of starting a business was not high on our list of priorities! So the Our Backyard books became our way of contributing something that we think is important to the lives of kiwi children, wherever they may live in the world.
When it came to printing our books, we knew that we could have them produced in Asia at a fraction of the cost of printing them in New Zealand. But we made a decision not to do that. We wanted to support kiwi businesses, and to demonstrate our commitment to buying local. While this means our profit margins are small, we nevertheless want to make sure that every single customer who buys our books gets them at the very best price we could sell them for.
At this time of year we also give away sets of books for children who otherwise might miss out. This year we have done this through Kiwi Christmas Books (https://www.kiwichristmasbooks.org.nz/). It is part of our broader kaupapa to support children’s reading and nurture a life-long love of books.
So we hope this gives you a sense of the values that rest at the heart of Our Backyard Books, and why we don’t embark on seasonal sales. We know that many of you have bought full sets of our books. We hope that they become keepsakes that are handed down from generation to generation, as parents and children enjoy the pleasures of reading about special places we have on our own doorstep.
If you have one of our books, and want to introduce other parts of the South Island to your children and grandchildren, then take a look at the new books that we’ve developed this year - Ella and Tai see Golden Bay, Rakiura Stewart Island, they go on a Big trip down South, and the take a train ride to Picton.
Seasons greetings from our whānau to yours. Have a wonderful summer, and if you get the chance, follow Ella and Tai in their travels across the South Island.
