Walking around the labyrinthine 25,000 sq ft Blackwell’s bookshop in the heart of Oxford, David Prescott has to restrain himself from rearranging a display. Once a shop manager, always a shop manager.
徜徉在英国牛津市中心2.5万平方英尺、有如迷宫般的布莱克韦尔书店时，戴维•普雷斯科特（David Prescott，见上图）总要压抑住自己想要重新排列书籍的冲动。当过书店经理的人，一辈子改不了职业病。
Mr Prescott’s first job after university was in “goods in” — unpacking books and cataloguing — at the chain of specialist booksellers. Having worked his way up, he is now chief executive of Blackwell’s, with more on his plate than fanning novels into a beautiful shape: chiefly, keeping the company afloat in an industry battered by the digital juggernaut Amazon.
普雷斯科特大学毕业后的第一份工作，就是在这家专业书籍连锁书店管理“货物陈列”——把书籍拆包并且按分类陈列。他一步步晋升，如今已经是布莱克韦尔书店(Blackwell)的首席执行官，不再只需要把小说摆成漂亮的扇形，而是有更多、更重要的事务要处理：主要来说，就是要让企业在一个受到数字化巨头亚马逊(Amazon)重创的行业中维持经营。

In contrast to the organised chaos of the various book departments, the 43-year-old’s office is sterile. The mock pine desk bears just a few papers and a laptop. The only decoration on the walls is a framed copy of the company’s shared values, which are strikingly simple and free of jargon, or “not American” as Mr Prescott puts it. One such value is “putting customers first”, which in turn demands that “I will always give every customer my undivided attention”.
相比书店各部门乱中有序的景象，这位43岁的首席执行官的办公室空荡荡的。仿松木办公桌上只放着几张纸和一台笔记本电脑。墙上唯一的装饰物是一块企业标语相框，上面写着的企业共同价值观是一些极其简洁的大白话，用普雷斯科特的话来说就是丝毫“不像美国企业那样”故弄玄虚。其中一条价值观是“顾客第一”，这反过来要求员工做到“我永远全心全意对待每位顾客”。
These values were forged as part of the plan to give each of the 550 permanent employees — from sales assistant to chief executive — an equal share of the company’s profits as part of a John Lewis-style partnership.
这些价值观被打造成为企业合伙计划的一部分。布莱克韦尔实行约翰刘易斯(John Lewis)式合伙制，从销售助理到首席执行官的550名永久员工，都是企业的合伙人，都能分享等额的一份企业利润。
Toby Blackwell, the present owner, whose great-grandfather founded the bookshop in 1879, has long wanted to hand it over to staff. Yet this ambition could only be fulfilled, Mr Prescott points out, if the company was on a firm financial footing. Finally, after years of decline, the company has made a very modest operating profit of £600,000 for the financial year ending June 2014, compared to a loss of £2.8m the previous year.
现任老板托比•布莱克韦尔(Toby Blackwell)长久以来一直希望能把书店所有权移交给员工。他的曾祖父于1879年创办了这家书店。不过，普雷斯科特指出，只有当企业拥有了坚实的财务基础，这个远大目标才有可能实现。在经营业绩连续多年下滑之后，这家企业终于在截至2014年6月的财年中实现了微薄的营业利润——60万英镑，相形之下之前的那个财年则亏损了280万英镑。
This comes amid signs that the market for physical books is stabilising after years of being eroded by ebook sales. There will be no profit in 2015, however, according to Mr Prescott, as he is ploughing the money back into the company, investing particularly in digital products.
眼下有迹象显示，在市场份额被电子图书销售蚕食多年之后，实体图书市场正在企稳。然而，普雷斯科特表示，2015年将不会有盈利，因为他要把利润重新投入到企业经营上，特别是要投资于电子产品。
There is no date for the company to be handed over to its employees, yet. “The reality is you have to meet certain financial tests.” When will that be? “We hope it’s going to be in the foreseeable future but we can only launch it when we know that the business is self-sustaining.”
至于何时将企业移交给员工，目前还没有时间表。“事实上，你必须通过某些财务测试。”那会在什么时候呢？“我们希望是在可预见的未来，但是我们只有在确定公司能够自给自足时才会启动测试。”
The shared values were intended to remind employees of the purpose of the business: to sell books. It may seem obvious, but Mr Prescott says that “one of the challenges of being in a business that has been lossmaking for a long time is that you tend to run the company the wrong way up. You tend to run it on the needs of keeping your head above water, cost-cutting, finance and managing the accounts.”
共同价值观的目的在于提醒员工企业的目标所在：卖书。这个目标或许看似显而易见，但普雷斯科特称，“在一家长期亏损的企业工作，面临的一项挑战是，你往往会用错误的方式想要让企业改善业绩。你总是疲于应对保持生存所必需的各种要求，削减成本、融资以及管理好账目”。
Mr Prescott may be a business pragmatist, but he is not a philistine. On the topic of authors, fiction and non-fiction, he projects enthusiasm rather than expertise, though.
普雷斯科特也许是一个奉行实用主义的商人，但他却不是个俗人。谈到无论是虚构类还是非虚构类图书的作者，他都兴致勃勃、如数家珍，而不是从商人的角度谈论他们的书好不好卖。
Asked to pick a quote for the back of his business card, unlike his colleagues who chose lines from novels, authors or poems, he picked some lines from The Clash’s “White Riot”: “Are you taking over or are you taking orders?, are you going backwards, or are you going forwards?”
印名片的时候，其他同事都选择小说或诗歌中、或某位作家说过的一句话印在名片背面，他却选择了冲撞乐队(The Clash)那首《白人暴动》(White Riot)里的一句歌词：“Are you taking over or are you taking orders?, are you going backwards, or are you going forwards?（你要让别人听你的还是你愿意听别人的？你要往后退还是要向前进？）”
Together with his wife, he is a member of his village book club. His most recent pick was The Wake by Paul Kings­north, which was on the 2014 Man Booker Prize longlist and is written in an adapted form of Old English. “Twenty pages in I thought, ‘I’ve killed the book club. They’re not going to read this.’ But actually everybody loved it.”
他和妻子都是乡村书友会的会员。他最近挑选的书是保罗•金斯诺斯(Paul Kings­north)的《守灵》(The Wake)，该书获得了2014年布克奖(Man Booker Prize)提名，是用一种古英语的变体写的。“读了20页后，我想，‘我害死书友会了。他们肯定读不下去’。但事实上大家都挺喜欢它。”
Because most of the Blackwell’s shops are on university campuses, staff need to buy in books according to what is being taught on the various courses. “Our shops live or die by the strength of their relationships with the university departments.”
因为布莱克韦尔书店大多位于大学校园里，店员需要根据不同课程教授的内容进书。“我们书店的生死存亡，取决于他们和大学各院系的关系有多密切。”
Like many retailers that have been hammered by digital competitors, Blackwell’s has had to overhaul its shops. It can no longer assume customers will visit its branches. “It used to be a very simple business,” reflects Mr Prescott, who became chief executive just over two years ago. The number of independent bookshops in the UK has fallen by a third since 2005 to less than 1,000. Shops must offer experiences rather than just products. He describes Amazon as a “logistics business”, getting things from A to B. “Our job is to give our customers a compelling reason to use Blackwell’s.”
与很多遭受线上竞争对手重创的零售商一样，布莱克韦尔不得不彻底改革其书店的运营模式。它不能再理所当然地认为顾客会光顾自己的书店。“这曾经是一门非常简单的生意，”两年多一点前才成为首席行政官的普雷斯科特表示。2005年以来，英国独立书店的数量减少了三分之一，现在不足1000家。商店必须提供服务体验，而不再仅是商品本身。他把亚马逊形容为一家“物流公司”，把商品从A处运送至B处。“我们的工作，就是给我们的顾客一个让他们心悦诚服地选择布莱克韦尔书店的理由。”
“We are not short of ideas,” he says. Mr Prescott cites the Oxford branch’s Christmas line-up of author readings as the best one yet. On the events programme were London mayor Boris Johnson and Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, as well as Vivienne Westwood, the fashion designer, and former Sex Pistol John Lydon. Although, he says, the real crowd-puller turned out to be Chris Hadfield, the astronaut.
“我们不缺乏创意，”他称。普雷斯科特认为牛津分店推出的圣诞节系列作家读书会是迄今最棒的创意。该活动请来了伦敦市长鲍里斯•约翰逊(Boris Johnson)、《沃特希普荒原》(Watership Down)一书作者理查德•亚当斯(Richard Adams)，以及时尚设计师薇薇恩•韦斯特伍德(Vivienne Westwood)和性手枪乐队(Sex Pistols)的前成员约翰•莱登(John Lydon)等名人。不过，他称，真正吸引人气的却是宇航员克里斯•哈德菲尔德(Chris Hadfield)。
That is not to say the company can afford to focus purely on bricks-and-mortar. Blackwell’s has been encouraging customers to buy books on its own online platform since 1995. Amazon’s algorithms, he says, have yet to replace a good bookseller able to make canny recommendations. This is something he hopes Blackwell’s tech development team can improve on. The techies used to be based in London’s “Silicon Roundabout” in Shoreditch, but have now moved a few miles to Waterloo. Last year, Blackwell’s launched its academic ebook platform, which enables students to buy digital academic textbooks.
这并不是说布莱克韦尔有资本把重心纯粹放在实体书店上。自1995年开始，布莱克韦尔书店便一直鼓励顾客在它自己的网络平台上买书。他称，亚马逊的运算法则，目前尚无法取代可以提供精准推荐的优秀图书销售员。这也是他希望布莱克韦尔的科技研发团队可以改进的地方。他们的技术团队曾经在伦敦肖迪奇(Shoreditch)的“硅谷环岛”(Silicon Roundabout)办公，但是如今搬到了距离那里几英里的滑铁卢（伦敦地名——译者注）。去年，布莱克韦尔书店推出了自己的学术电子书平台，让学生能在上面购买电子教科书。
Managing a tech team was quite different to booksellers, many of whom have been with the company for decades. “We’re used to people coming and staying.” Technology workers, he says, are far more transient.
管理一个技术团队完全不同于管理图书销售员，很多销售员已经在公司工作了数十年。“我们已经习惯了新人来到我们这儿，然后就一直在我们这儿干下去。”他称，技术人员的流动性则要高得多。
More challenging, however, is overseeing a workforce besieged by years of digital disruption. “It’s a normal state of affairs. People are worried about the bookselling industry. They haven’t read many positive stories. It’s an emotional business.”
然而，更大的挑战在于，如何管理一支已经被数字化颠覆围困了许多年的队伍。“这成了常态。人们对图书销售业忧心忡忡。他们没有听到多少好消息。这是个伤感的行业。”
He shrugs off any notions that he has a victim mentality, suggesting Blackwell’s should become a “digital disrupter”, rather than wait for the next threat.
他对说他有一种受害者心态的看法不屑一顾，反而认为布莱克韦尔书店应该成为“数字化的颠覆者”，而不是坐等下一个威胁到来。
Would he recommend the book business to his two girls (aged nine and seven)? Long pause. “Yes.”
他会推荐两个女儿（分别为7岁和9岁）进入图书行业吗？在停顿了很长时间后，他说：“会”。