There’s a particular kind of Cambridge business that doesn’t advertise itself as such. It’s simply there, year after year, decade after decade, so woven into the fabric of daily life that you’d struggle to imagine the town without it. Paper Plus Cambridge (Wright’s, as generations of locals still think of it) is exactly that place.
The story begins not in Cambridge but in Masterton, in 1907, when Hamish’s great-grandfather founded Hedleys Bookshop. Four generations of booksellers followed, each one passing the love of the written word to the next. Hamish’s mother Margaret took that legacy to extraordinary heights. She worked at Hatchards bookshop in London, where she became the book adviser to the Queen for her children’s Christmas selections, choosing titles for the young princes and corresponding with the palace. She assisted the King of Jordan and King Olaf of Norway with their book buying. It is the kind of backstory that belongs in a novel.
Margaret eventually married Richard, a sheep farmer, and the family settled into rural Wairarapa life. Hamish grew up on a sheep and beef farm, went overseas, and built a career in supply chain consulting, working for the likes of KPMG, Australian Post, and the US Air Force. In 1998, with his wife Amanda expecting their first daughter, the couple returned to New Zealand. His parents had just bought a bookshop in Cambridge.
“They said to me, ‘Look, we’re putting in a computer software system, can you help?”’ Hamish recalls with a laugh. “That was in 1998, and I’ve been here ever since.”
He bought the business from his parents in 2007, right in the teeth of the global financial crisis. The timing was, to put it gently, adventurous. But Hamish had a clear philosophy about what kind of shop he wanted to run.
In 2014, Wright’s transitioned to the Paper Plus franchise model, unlocking significant benefits such as increased buying power, access to nationwide TV advertising, and enhanced loyalty scheme support. But Hamish struck a deal with himself from the outset.
“I had an internal resolution to keep as much of the independent flavour and freedom as possible,” he says. “I don’t do uniforms, I don’t do anything like that. They always promised that the independent style I was used to would not be compromised, and that has rung true for the most part.”
That independence has shaped everything, including the decision in 2019 to absorb Cambridge’s postal services into the store when NZ Post sought a community partner. Hamish didn’t hesitate. “I felt it was incredibly important to the community, for people to have a place to pay bills and send parcels.”
It’s that instinct, the sense that a local business is answerable to its community, that Hamish credits for surviving what many retailers haven’t. Amazon, online shopping, COVID: the headwinds have been fierce. Yet Wright’s not only endured; it expanded, with Hamish and Amanda recently purchasing Cambridge Office Products on Alpha Street, extending that paper-and-people focus into the commercial space.
“I think if you came in with a very corporate approach in a small town, it’s not going to be as successful. I’ve always tried to get to know people in the community, get to know their names. It’s old-fashioned, very small town, but I think
it works,” he says.
“People come in with things that are quite sensitive: a friend with depression, a family member with cancer. It’s nice they trust us with those things.”
Cambridge is changing fast, and Hamish watches the transformation with genuine excitement.
“The growth we’ve been experiencing is phenomenal. It’s bringing so many amazing people into town from all different cultures and backgrounds.” Amid the growth, he hopes the town holds onto its essential character, the kind that makes a shopkeeper remember your name and your reading tastes.
Hamish’s children now work in the business, making them the fifth generation of booksellers in a family line stretching back to 1907. Were his parents to walk back through the door today, what would they recognise?
“They would be thrilled that we still greet people as friends, that they are more than just customers, and that we are, at the heart, a community-based family that still operates in that space.”
