Waterstone's

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Gower Street branch

Simpsons of Piccadilly, now a branch of Waterstone's

Waterstone's is a United Kingdom based chain of bookshops. Its first branch opened in 1982. Waterstone's is the largest retail bookseller in the United Kingdom, with sales of £446.1 million in 2004–2005. (Waterstone's competitor W H Smith's retail division is considerably larger, but has a much wider product range.)

1 Locations
2 History
3 Takeover of Ottakar's
4 External links

[edit] Locations

Waterstone's has around 200 shops in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland (including Dublin and Cork), and continental Europe (including Amsterdam and Brussels). A substantial number of the shops are close to universities, and offer a wide range of academic books as well as general books. Its two flagship London stores are on Piccadilly and on Gower Street, between University College London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The Piccadilly store is Britain's largest bookshop (and the largest in Europe) whilst the Gower Street store has a large well-stocked second-hand department. The bookshop in Harrods is also a Waterstone's, boasting an extensive range of egyptian books hand-picked by owner, Muhammad Al-Fayed.

Waterstone's has acquired a reputation for its sympathetic reuse of buildings of architectural and historical interest. Its more interesting branches include:

Broad Street Independent Chapel, Reading
Former La Scala Cinema, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow (source:[1]).
Simpsons of Piccadilly, London
Wool Exchange, Bradford
Bond Street, Liverpool

[edit] History

The chain was founded by Tim Waterstone after he was sacked by W H Smith. It brought modern marketing techniques to the sale of highbrow, academic and literary books, providing a "browser friendly" atmosphere, with knowledgeable booksellers, a wide range of titles, and smartly-designed shops.

In 1989, W H Smith took a share in the chain, and Waterstone sold out to them in 1993. In 1998, Smiths sold the chain for £300m to HMV Media (now HMV Group plc), a new venture in which EMI was a major shareholder and which already owned the rival Dillons chain. In 1999 the majority of Dillons stores were rebranded as Waterstone's with some sold to rival Ottakar's.

Waterstone's had started selling books online, but in 2001 franchised its Internet operations to Amazon.com. However, in May 2006 it was announced that Waterstone's would relaunch their own internet retail site in time for Christmas 2006. [2]. This came on line in September 2006. The online store will offer free delivery to a local branch.

In 2001 Waterstone's launched a magazine for book lovers, Waterstone's Books Quarterly. The magazine brings together a mix of news, author features and interviews as well as reviews of over 100 books in each issue. A marketing tool, Waterstone's Books Quarterly aims to recommend across all genres and encourage readers to consider books and writers previously unknown to them.

In recent years, Waterstone's has been under more pressure from other chains: Ottakar's, which has many small shops; Borders, with large shops and huge depth; and Blackwell's in its academic heartland. HMV has responded with a "more aggressive and commercial focus... without compromising on the unrivalled range authority for which the chain is renowned." Nevertheless the current management has been criticised for concentrating on fewer, best-selling titles at the expense of range.

Robert Topping, manager of the Manchester branch, became a high-profile sacking when he resisted these changes. Tim Waterstone, who had returned to the chain as chairman of HMV Media in 1998, was apparently also unhappy with the management and made moves to buy the chain back, without success. He was suspended as chairman and subsequently left the company in early 2001.

As well as the Waterstone's shops, the firm owns the London bookseller Hatchards, founded in 1792. The Gower Street shop first opened as Dillons in 1936.

[edit] Takeover of Ottakar's

In September 2005 Waterstone's parent company HMV tried to buy the book chain Ottakar's, a move which, if successful, would give HMV nearly 25% market share of the book trade. As this includes online booksellers and book clubs, the percentage of high street bookselling would be far higher. This alarmed publishers and authors who hoped the Office of Fair Trading would refer the takeover bid to the Competition Commission. They did so on 6 December 2005, whereon HMV's share offer lapsed.

On March 30, 2006 the Competition Commission provisionally cleared Waterstone's for takeover of the Ottakar's group stating the takeover would "not result in a substantial lessening of competition", and is "not likely to affect book prices, range of titles offered or quality of service." Through extensive research they also found that "contrary to widespread perception, Waterstone's, like Ottakar's, operates a book-buying system which mixes central and local input on stock selection." [3] [4]

More recently, Tim Waterstone, the chain's founder, made a failed bid to buy back the chain from HMV, for a reported £280m [5]

On May 31, 2006, Waterstone's announced that it had successfully negotiated the takeover of Ottakar's. HMV chief executive Alan Giles said: "A combined Waterstone's and Ottakar's business will create an exciting, quality bookseller, able to respond better to the increasingly competitive pressures of the retail market." Ottakar's chairman Philip Dunne said: "Over the last year the book market has undergone a significant change with new levels of competition from the supermarkets and online retailers impacting all specialist booksellers and in particular those with insufficient scale to compete on equal terms." [6]