Veritas, Ireland’s largest religious publisher and retailer, is to open a new store in Lourdes in 2012. The French store will be the eleventh retail outlet in the Veritas chain, the first outside the island of Ireland.
Maura Hyland, Director of Veritas, told ciNews that the idea came when they saw a ‘for sale‘ advertisement in the Irish Catholic for the only English language book shop in Lourdes.
The owners, an Irish man and French woman wanted to retire.
The shop, formerly known as The English Bookshop had operated for many years on Rue De Bourg in the heart of the town. The shop has a good turnover.
“They had been letting the stock run down, as they knew they were retiring,” said Hyland, “We have lots of stock in our warehouse, which we can now situate in Lourdes.”
Two people will be working at the new Veritas outlet, which will open on February 8 2012, just in time for the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11.
The new shop will be open seven days a week, but will be closed (like other shops in Lourdes) from November to the end of January.
According to Hyland, even in the midst of the recession, Veritas is doing “extraordinarily well.”
“All our stores are up on last year,” she told ciNews, a fact confirmed by Commercial Manager, Aidan Chester who said retail was up 8% this year.
Chester attributes the increase to their hard work and new marketing.
Last Christmas they produced a catalogue that was included in the RTÉ Guide and Irish Times.
A spring catalogue highlighting their First Communion wares brought a 50% increase in sales.
“People heard about us, who had never heard of us before,” he told ciNews. “We are getting the name out.”
He confirmed that Veritas is now a multi -million operation, employing almost 100 people between full and part time staff.
Lourdes is the destination for one million English-speaking pilgrims each year with Irish pilgrims visiting the shrine since 1883.
“Most Irish people either have been to Lourdes themselves or know someone who has undertaken this wonderful pilgrimage,” says Hyland.
On average half a million Irish pilgrims visit the shrine each year.
Overall Lourdes has between six and seven million visitors each year.
The opening of the new Veritas bookshop comes at a time when the lack of promotion and availability of English-language books in the official 'Libraire' (or bookshop, but often misunderstood by English speakers to mean library) is the source of tensions between the authorities and the Lourdes based English-language coordinator, Brian de Burca, OMI.
Fr de Burca has made many efforts to encourage greater patronage of the Libraire by English-speaking pilgrimages.
However, the official position seems to be less than supportive of these efforts, notwithstanding the success of these promotional efforts which, for example, brought English-language DVD sales to second place after sales of their French-language equivalent.
Veritas is the wholly owned publisher of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
It has shops in Dublin, Belfast, Derry, Cork, Naas, Limerick, Ennis, Sligo, Monaghan and Letterkenny.