A Bermudian bookstore has bucked the trend of falling sales in retail on the Island through going on line for its customers.

The Bookmart, in the Phoenix Store in Hamilton, went on-line in December and business has been booming.

After months of declining sales, the Internet has offered the shop a new lease of life and a whole new range of customers used to shopping on the Web.

Company president and chief executive officer, George Grundmuller, told The Royal Gazette that book sales after months of slumping, shot back sharply with the introduction of bookmart.bm.

The Internet access brought Bookmart in to a whole new market where it was directly competing with established popular online sellers such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders.

But locally the store had the edge, because it could in most instances, offer the service cheaper.

"Our sales exceeded our expectations,'' Mr. Grundmuller said. "With the advent of the online sellers our book business had become very slack but we have now successfully reversed that trend.'' The online service with bookmart.com allowed customers a choice of 500,000 titles at US list prices with an additional flat rate of $4.95 per book to travel to Bermuda.

Delivery took an average of eight days, but Mr. Grundmuller noted that many books arrived within just three.

"Customers came in and picked their books up from the shop or for an additional local courier service cost, people had their books delivered to them or as gifts,'' he said.

"We also offered a gift wrap with note card service,'' he added.

Encouraged by the success of the programme Mr. Grundmuller said the company is looking at putting other areas of the Phoenix stores online.

"We are evaluating providing toys over the Internet and offering a local delivery service for select items.

"We recognise that from time to time there are people who don't want to, or who shouldn't leave their homes due to things like sickness, so we are looking into the possibilities of catering to them.'' In the meantime the latest expansion of the Phoenix stores web site has seen the inclusion of prescription refills.

Mr. Grundmuller said the new service should greatly cut down on the time people spend waiting for the pharmacists to fill their prescriptions.

"The time savings will be at least 10 minutes,'' he said. "As the pharmacists will not have to find and fill out the paper work that goes with the original prescription.

"This will be a good service for people working in an office. All they will have to do is enter their prescription number, their name and phone number, and which pharmacy they want to pick it up from. We will then e-mail the pharmacy and the pharmacists will pull the information and have the prescription waiting for the customer at the counter.'' The new service is available at no extra charge to customers who log on to www.phoenixstores.bm BOOKS BKS