Coles (bookstore)

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For other uses, see Coles (disambiguation).

Coles was a Canadian bookstore chain.

In the 1930s, two brothers, Jack and Carl Cole, opened their first bookstore near the University of Toronto.

At the age of 11, the Coles were living in foster homes in Detroit and eventually Toronto. With the little amount of money they had, they were able to open their first store paying rent daily as they could not afford the monthly rent payments. These two children, with no retail experience, turned their bookstore chain into the largest bookstore chain in Canada at the time.

Jack and Carl are also responsible for opening "The World's Biggest Bookstore" in downtown Toronto and as well for inventing Coles Notes.

Coles Notes began when students at a local high school were having trouble translating a french paper. Jack and Carl hired someone to translate the book and they sold over 1000 copies. From this idea, Coles Notes was invented. Today, Coles Notes have sold over 80,000,000 copies worldwide, and were the initial idea for the similar Cliffs Notes which are published in the USA.

In 1976, Jack and Carl sold Coles Bookstore to Southam Press.

In April 1994, Coles and SmithBooks, the country's two largest book store chains, were merged. The resulting company, Chapters, Inc., opened Canada's first two book superstores under the Chapters name brand in November 1995, but retained the name Coles for its smaller-format bookstores in shopping malls.

Since 2001, Coles and its parent company have been owned by Indigo Books and Music.