Paddy Laidley Email & Phone Number

Vancouver, Canada Area

At Raincoast, I have the pleasure of overseeing a team of creative and hardworking sales and marketing professionals who are completely focused on ensuring that our client publishers' books succeed in the Canadian market. It's hard to imagine that there's anything out there that's more fun, or more rewarding.

Sales Manager was a new position when I started at Raincoast. The company was, at that time, in full-on growth mode, and that gave me plenty of scope when it came to testing new ideas and building on the work that I had done in both retail and field sales.

Working on my own the west coast for a Toronto company, selling to regional chain, a national warehouse club, untold small and large independents and anyone else who might sell our books, meant that I learned very quickly how important it is to just get out there are do it. In that environment, there was no time, and no way that anything was going to land in my lap.

Blackberry Books is an independent bookstore whose original, and only surviving, location is on Granville Island in Vancouver. The Fourth Avenue branch, which I managed, catered to an interesting mix of professionals, students and generally well-educated and interesting individuals who were a pleasure to deal with. If I couldn't do my current job I'd take this one back any time.