Speaker 3 (00:00.014)
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. I'm Maria and today I'm speaking with Tony Cowling and Stuart Ward, two of the founders of Reading Library of Things. Stuart, Tony, hello and welcome to the podcast. How are you both?

I'm fine, thanks Maria.

well thank you.

Excellent. Now, we'll jump straight into it before we find out a bit about your background with what is Reading Library of Things?

The Library of Things is a bit like an ordinary library except we don't have books or things like that. We have things. Now, a lot of the things we have are tools. So we have hammers and circular saws and power tools and things like that. But we also have other things like gazebos, tables, boxes of glasses, projectors, the sort of things that you only use occasionally. So the whole idea is around

Speaker 2 (00:54.582)
rather than buying a specialized tool to do something, you come and borrow it from here and that way you get a good tool and you don't have to spend, you know, what happens with all these things usually, like pressure washers, is people buy them, they use them once a year, they sit in the garage the rest of the year and get spidery and moldy and whatever and stop working and rusty. And when they come to use it, you know, two years later,

it doesn't work. Well, if you give the tool to us, we'll look after it for you. You can borrow it back anytime you want and everyone else in the area can use the same tool.

So how did the Reading Library of Things actually come about then?

Over the past five years we've tried several times in Reading to set up a library of things unsuccessfully and about 18 months ago a friend of mine said, my friend's husband's died, could you use his tools? And I said to her, yes, if we can use them for a library of things in Reading or a tool library. The widow agreed that we could do that. So we had a kickstart and I said this to Stuart and as soon as I said it to Stuart he said, let's go and see my friend Sarah.

she might be able to help us. And Sarah loved our idea. She runs Greenways and she said, you can have a quarter of my industrial unit if you rent it off me and we'll help you set up the organization. And another one of her trustees helped. And from there we've been plain sailing ever since. It's so nice to have had that support. She helped to supply for a grant and Reading Library of Things came into being within, probably within six months of that initial.

Speaker 1 (02:40.448)
idea of a donation.

It's good that you had so much support, so actually let's jump straight into who you actually are.

I'm Tony Cowling. retired 21 years ago and I now do voluntary work in Reading with a variety of different charities. Reading Hydro, Community Energy Society, Free PV, Reading Draft Busters, helping people in energy poverty. I also work with international students, families in difficulty and a whole raft of other charities that my wife says is too much, but I love doing it.

I like helping charities save money, that's one of my main aims in life. And I also love reducing energy use, so don't use so much energy.

Brilliant, and stew it.

Speaker 2 (03:24.652)
Yeah, I'm also involved in the Reading Hydro project. Tony got me involved in that, but mainly I have run Reading Repair Cafe for the last 10 years, 11 years now. And the Library of Things movement has sort of grown out of the Repair Cafe movement. So there was sort of a natural synergy there. I work in technology, but I'm semi-retired now. So all of these things are finding me to

soak up all my time outside of work, which is really terrific.

Well, you can tell there you both have very thorough backgrounds and I think that really comes out in what you've done and how you set up Reading Library of Things. What did you need to do in order to set it up? I've been really impressed with the research that I know that you did and how much detail you went into.

We did some research, we went to visit other libraries. I went to a library of things in Edinburgh and they were very supportive and helpful and Stuart went to one in Europe, he'll tell you about that. But we sneaked a little bit of their software that they use which is open source software for the inventory. We asked them what they did about insurance and then we, I think we finished up getting our own insurance but we used their insurance quote to reduce our insurance quote.

The ladies that were helping us initially, helped us with the premises and we needed to have secure rent so they helped us with a grant which gave us some money in the bank to buy some things. We didn't buy very many things, probably a pressure washer and a bike trailer. It was almost the limit of it. Some consumables, little things that people need to use when they borrow a particular tool. Stuart's good at websites so he set up a website for us very quickly.

Speaker 1 (05:13.61)
Not much other expenses. Insurance was the good one.

there's a sort of European wide festival or conference on fixing things called FixFest. And three years ago that was in Brussels. And part of that, visited the Brussels tool library, which has been going on for quite some time and very well organized. They have a lot of things and we had a detailed discussion with them about how they operated, what problems they'd had and things like that. And that helped us a lot in how to keep the thing

operating smoothly and things like that so that's been really useful.

And I know that you wanted to be set up under transition town reading and I know that this was connected to the governance. So could you go into bit into that and why it's important?

Transition Town is a UK wide charitable network with a sort of general emphasis on energy solutions and things like that. So there was a certain synergy there. Both myself and Tony have been committee members on the Reading Transition Town network. The repair cafe was set up and is still operating under Transition Town Reading. So there was a sort of natural thing to

Speaker 2 (06:30.43)
leverage the governance aspects of that of having a established charitable organization with AGMs and committee meetings and sort of, you know, governance things in it to be the sort of overview process of how we operate. And that's been really useful for when we applied for some lottery money, because you can say, yes, we're part of this network. So we'll

use it effectively and things like that because we're part of this sort of organization.

So yeah, it gives you some credibility. Anything to add to that, Tony?

I'm not very good at structure and governance, I'm afraid I just like getting on with things, but we have had one or two challenges while we were setting up the Library of Things and probably the biggest challenge, although we may not even ourselves realise it, is the communication with the general public. There's so much information out there that I meet people and they say I've never heard of Reading Library of Things and yet we've been going for 18 months and we're very successful, but still it's difficult to raise your head above the parapet of

the kind of the general babble of everything that you need to know. How do you find out what you really want to know? And that's, it's a challenge for us that. I think we're doing okay and we're going to probably set up another one. And once we move into the town centre, that will be a different story. I think everybody will know who we are then. Finding good volunteers had been a challenge initially, but now we've got a major group of very good volunteers and it's nice that we can share the load so we don't have to come in every week.

Speaker 1 (08:06.316)
and they're prepared to do stuff in between times. Some of them are really good at communicating. I'm not a good communicator and I unfortunately don't have time to communicate with people during the week but some of these other boys are on the case of if somebody's saying something they're responding and talking to them which is great.

You said the challenge there about marketing basically, about getting the word out, but as you said in your own words, you are successful. You've had so many people come to you, you are getting your items out there. So clearly what you're doing is working because it's word of mouth, which is always the best form of marketing.

anyone who comes in to borrow something, always give them a couple of leaflets and say, you know, put that up in your office and your church and your community space or whatever. So that's really helpful from a sort of operational point of view. I'm really proud that in the last couple of months, we have just managed to income equals expenditure. we've got annual costs as well as monthly costs. so, but for the last couple of months, we have

just exceeded our expenditure on income so that's really good

Excellent, well done. So does your income come solely from your members? And if so, how many members do you have now and how can people get a membership?

Speaker 1 (09:27.054)
People can apply to become members online and they can reserve things even when they're a provisional member. can't borrow things until they're a proper member and a proper member is somebody who's paid their subscription which is £25 a year. We do kind of special case subscriptions on a lower rate for people unemployed or refugees but generally speaking it's the same for everybody and once they've paid we

take their details of where they live and check it and then they can borrow whatever they like however often they like.

Yeah, because our costs are not related to borrowing something. So it makes no sense charging to borrow something. So what we want is people to join and be a member and be part of the community and make it happen. And then they can borrow as much as they like, because, you know, it really doesn't cost us anything for someone to borrow something. It's actually less because it's not having to be stored and looked after because someone's actually using it.

yes, I was just looking up the numbers. We've got 194 customers now. There's two ways you can become a full member. can either pay 25 pounds per year to be a member, or you can donate a significant tool. And that way, you know, this is what I was talking about. So if you've got a tool rotting in your shed, give it to us. You get free membership. You can borrow it anytime you like. And

other people are using it as well. haven't actually got the details but we've probably got at least 50,000 pounds worth of tools.

Speaker 3 (11:09.422)
That's a great number. How many tools do you have and what you say are the most popular tools?

We've got 829 items in the library, but they range from a drill bit all the way through to a mitre saw. Most popular items, pressure washer, carpet cleaner, multi-tool, chipper, Bosch lawnmower. Lawnmowers, we found that there's quite a few people who have live-in flats, but are responsible for a bit of lawn. So they've got nowhere to store a lawnmower.

So this is the ideal solution. They can borrow a lawn mower, go and hack down their overgrowth of lawn and then give it back and they don't have to store it. So we're finding these sorts of edge cases out there.

Fascinating. Has anything surprised you about Reading Library of Things?

think the quality and volume of tools and things that have been donated is remarkable. Some of the tools we get are very valuable. People could sell them on eBay and get several hundred pounds for them. And also we've had the range of things. We've had a microscope, which I'd have loved to have been able to borrow a microscope when my children were small so we could look at pond life or whatever. But we've got two here and people borrow them and it's great that they borrow them.

Speaker 1 (12:35.284)
and it's difficult to borrow a microscope from a school or from a laboratory which is where you'd really need to get one from and the only other choice is buying it and then sits on the shelf until the children get married or something and then you don't know what to do with it so there's just the sheer volume of stuff that we've got in here like 800 things have been donated and they're generally speaking very good quality we have a random orbit or sander which somebody gave to us which

It probably cost pounds and it's an absolutely brilliant sanding machine. It leaves no marks, it's easy to use, it's quiet and it's got a dust bag. Many, many things are nice. The other thing that surprised me was the quality of our volunteers. We've had people come. One old boy came and he sharpened all our chisels and shears and axes and things. He just came and took them away every week until they were all sharp. We haven't seen him for a while, but we don't need to see him for a while. Some of the

volunteers that we've got are good at fixing things, although Stuart and I help at Repair Cafe, we're kind of quite busy for doing things and they've taken a tool away that's not working and given it back to us and they're really very valuable resource for us so I'm surprised about how good they are and they're responsible, they can let themselves in, they can set things up, give people stuff and lock up and go, so we're kind of a little bit redundant sometimes which it was our idea that we wouldn't have to be here every day.

I admit, I'm so impressed. I love this idea of a library of things because like you said, there are so many items we have at home where you don't need them all the time, but if you could have access to that plus 20 other objects that you may need access to at some point. So this idea of having everything in one place is definitely the way to go. It's not only better for the environment, as you've said, but it also helps the people who maybe don't have as much or can't afford it. So it sort of benefits everyone.

If you're doing a job, having the right tool to do that job is so important. say you have a broken tile in your bathroom, you need a multi-tool to scratch out the tile. You might need a tile cutter to cut the tile to fit. You wouldn't want to buy all of those tools to do one tile, but with a library, you can come and borrow

Speaker 2 (14:59.938)
the ideal tool, the actual professional tool to do those jobs and do it professionally yourself. And it's great having access to professional grade tools all the time. It's just an amazing resource.

think that leads nicely into something. You are not competing against some of these other trade places where they maybe have more specialist items. You have everyday items. You know who you're for. You're helping people. And again, you're not replacing trades people because if you have a whole wall place in, you'll get someone in. But like you said, it's for the odd job where you won't necessarily get someone in, but you're helping to develop people's skills.

Our target audience is people who live locally and who probably are in more difficulty than rich people, so they can't afford to go out and buy a tool to do it. Sometimes they have discounted membership and they pass the tip of the wink to their friends and say if you want to borrow a lawnmower go to Reading Library and things and let you have one. And it's really simple and that word of mouth works well.

And those kind of people are not going to be going to a tool hire shop. They cannot even think about affording to go to a tool hire shop. If you wanted to borrow a pressure washer, probably cost you 50 quid from a tool hire shop. Membership here is only half that, so one thing has paid for two years membership. It's a great way of doing it.

So good. Now, what would you like people to do? You've got a great course here, you're doing great work. How can people help?

Speaker 2 (16:32.78)
We need more members and we need more volunteers to make that membership happen. We're just in the process of opening a second location in the centre of Reading called the Reading Bike Hub. With that we hope better awareness and publicity. If you've got useful tools sitting in your garage or whatever that you use once a year then we could free up some space in your garage.

I'm not sure there's necessarily particular things we're looking for. There's always sort of hand tools and power tools and things like that. We generally have a preference for corded power tools rather than battery operated power tools because the batteries go through. But what we do do is we have battery adapters. So all of our batteries we have are mostly Makita batteries and we have converters to the other brands of tool where we have. So we keep

Makita batteries which are quite good. Obviously work with Makita tools and adapters to work with Briobe or DeWalt or whatever tools. So you know that means we've got a common battery. It's not a very good situation we need to have standardized batteries.

The new bike hub in the town centre will be a partnership between the bicycle hub and a bicycle shop and the repair cafes. There's not just Reading Repair Cafe, there's another six repair cafes in the Reading area and we'd be inviting...

one of them in once every six weeks to kind of help to spread out the load of repair cafes. Reading Repair Cafe runs every month and so we'd be there every fourth week but the others would be welcome to come in and use the premises because we can't staff it more than once a month. And then the library of things would go in there as well and that would be great and instantly we've got communication, we've got publicity, we've got promotion, we've got a lot of interesting things going on and in the town centre.

Speaker 1 (18:36.236)
When we started the Reading Library of Things we were told by one of the other libraries that we would probably need to four separate locations in Reading for the library and we've been looking at one down the end of Tilehurst Road or Oxford Road for a long time and it's never been able to happen and we've been trying to get one in Palmer Park or maybe even two in Palmer Park. I am still hopeful that we'll get something in the Palmer Park area in the not too distant future but the town centre is like it's absolutely amazing for us.

Like said before, it's brilliant what you're doing. So fingers crossed you can get those extra locations because people will naturally want to go for something that is on the doorstep. So having something which is close by, that will not only increase your reach, and I love what you're doing with collaborating with other groups because, like we said before, that increases not only your reach, but it helps to spread the load and to tap into other networks, which is a great idea. Do you have any future goals? I mean, I take it. We've already said it. You want to get to four. That is the number.

four different Reading Library of Things and you want other people to be helping you so you don't have such a central role. Is that right?

Yeah, we'd need four times as many volunteers in order to run four separate ones. I think the need is there for it. We're at capacity or anything like that. And the Reading Bike Hub is a really great opportunity to collaborate with other groups. It's mostly going to be around bikes and bike repair and bike loans and things like that. you know, lots of other things can happen in that.

space as well.

Speaker 3 (20:14.274)
What would you like to leave our listeners with?

Well, the big thing I think would be to come along to the Reading Bike Hub on the 7th of September. We're hoping that's going to be the launch party for the Bike Hub. It's quite a big ask to get there. There's still a lot to do, but that's our target. If you go onto readingbikehub.org.uk, updates there about the launch party. And then we hope to have Repair Cafe starting up soon after that and Library of Things operation there as well.

but they're also going to have bike loans, so longer term loans. So your kids, like three and four, use a sort of small bike and then they grow out of it after a year. You want to upgrade. So the idea is you can borrow a bike for a year for them and then they grow out of it. You bring it back and you get the next bike up for them and sort of cycle that through. And then we've got bike mechanics there as well. So they'll keep all the bikes.

operation and good order and well oiled and all that sort of things.

That is a brilliant idea. Well, Tony Stewart, thank you so much for your time. I've really enjoyed it today. And while we've been talking, we've had a couple of customers come in. So I've learned a lot about your system and pat testing too. So thank you.

Speaker 1 (21:29.474)
Great interviewer, thank you very much.