Waterstones, formerly Waterstone's, is a British book retailer that operates 283 shops, mainly in the UK and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.
Baugur Group was an Icelandic investment company. The group began as a supermarket and general retail company in Iceland, before diversifying to own a number of businesses at its peak, primarily in the United Kingdom.
The Very Group is a multi-brand online retailer and financial services provider in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is based in the Speke area of the city of Liverpool, England. Established in November 2005 as a result of the merger of the former Littlewoods and Shop Direct companies, the retailer was known as Littlewoods Shop Direct Group until a corporate rebranding to Shop Direct Group in May 2008. In 2013, the company rebranded to Shop Direct, dropping the 'group' from its name. Shop Direct rebranded themselves to The Very Group in 2020.
Woolworths Group was a listed British company that owned the High Street retail chain Woolworths. It also owned other companies such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK, and book and resource distributor Bertram Books.
Jessops (Group) Limited is a British photographic retailing company. It was established in 1935 by Frank Jessop in Leicester, United Kingdom. The company controls Jessops Europe Limited, which in turn control JR Prop Limited.
Stephen Leather is a British thriller author whose works are published by Hodder & Stoughton. He has written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock, and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. He is one of the top selling Amazon Kindle authors, the second bestselling UK author worldwide on Kindle in 2011.
Borden Dairy Company is an American dairy processor and distributor headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The company was founded in 1857 by Gail Borden.
T. J. Hughes, registered and styled as TJ Hughes, is a British discount department store brand which first emerged in Liverpool in 1912.
Entertainment UK Limited (EUK) was a retail supply and distribution company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Woolworths Group. The company, and Woolworths plc, entered administration with Deloitte on 26 November 2008. EUK claimed to have had a turnover in excess of £1.4 billion per annum, and over 160,000 lines of products.
Borders (UK) Ltd., also known as Borders & Books etc., was established as a Borders Group subsidiary in 1998, and in 2007 became independent of the US parent company. At its peak after separation from the US parent, it traded from its 41 Borders and 28 BOOKS etc. shops with over one million square feet of retail space, taking around 8% of the retail bookselling market. In 2008 and 2009 the store numbers were reduced before the collapse of the chain. They also operated one single branch in Ireland, but closed this early in 2009. On 26 November 2009 it was announced that Borders (UK) had gone into administration. All stores closed on 24 December 2009.
Baker & Taylor, a distributor of books to public libraries and schools, has been in business for over 180 years. It is based in Charlotte, North Carolina and currently owned by Follett Corporation. Before being acquired by Follett in 2016, Baker & Taylor had $2.26 billion in sales, employed 3,750, and was #204 on Forbes list of privately owned companies in 2008.
Adams Kids was a children's clothing retailer, based in Paddington, London in the United Kingdom.
The Bookseller is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. Philip Jones is editor-in-chief of the weekly print edition of the magazine and the website. The magazine is home to the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, a humorous award given annually to the book with the oddest title. The award is organised by The Bookseller's diarist, Horace Bent, and had been administered in recent years by the former deputy editor, Joel Rickett, and former charts editor, Philip Stone. We Love This Book is its quarterly sister consumer website and email newsletter.
The Quarto Group is a global illustrated book publishing group founded in 1976. It is domiciled in the United States and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The Book People Ltd. is an online bookseller. Founded in 1988, in the UK, The Book People sells books, gifts, toys and stationery through its website. The Book People was recently acquired by Retail Ecommerce Ventures, a holding company that buys distressed brands and revives them as e-commerce businesses.
Connect Airways was a consortium formed in December 2018 to acquire the British regional airline Flybe, which had put itself up for sale in November 2018 after issuing a profit warning the previous month, and the Irish wet-lease specialist airline Stobart Air.
Aurelius Group is an asset management group with offices in five European countries.
Elsie Bertram was an English wholesale publishers' bookseller and philanthropist who co-founded the Bertrams books wholesaler in 1968. She became wholesale distributor for Pan Paperbacks in East Anglia in 1965 before going on to obtain a contract to accommodate a children's book list from Hamlyn three years later. Bertram setup Bertrams with her oldest son that same year and she was credited with significantly helping improve the distribution of books across the United Kingdom. She established the Norfolk Diabetes Appeal in 1987 and did a significant amount of fundraising for the appeal, funding a diabetic unit for West Norwich Hospital and a specialist eye clinic centre. The annual Elsie Bertram Memorial Lecture is named in her memory.
