Dillons Booksellers

Last updated

Dillons former flagship bookshop on Gower Street in London; now a branch of Waterstones Waterstone's Bookshire, Malet Street WC1 - geograph.org.uk - 1567108.jpg
Dillons former flagship bookshop on Gower Street in London; now a branch of Waterstones

Dillons was a British bookshop founded in 1932, named after its founder and owner Una Dillon. Originally based on Gower Street in London, the bookshop expanded under subsequent owners Pentos plc in the 1980s into a bookselling chain across the United Kingdom. In 1995 Pentos went into receivership and sold Dillons to Thorn EMI, which immediately closed 40 of the 140 Dillons bookstore locations. Of the remaining 100 stores, most kept the name Dillons, while the remainder were Hatchards and Hodges Figgis. [1] [2] Within Thorn EMI, Dillons was placed in the HMV Group, which had been a division of Thorn EMI since 1986. EMI demerged from Thorn in August of 1996, and Dillons-HMV remained an EMI holding. [3] Dillons was subsumed under rival chain Waterstones' branding in 1999, at which point the brand ceased to exist.

Contents

History

Store Street

Store Street, London, site of the first Dillons Bookshop in 1936 Store Street, London.JPG
Store Street, London, site of the first Dillons Bookshop in 1936

Dillon's Bookshop was founded by Una Dillon in 1936 at 9 Store Street, between Gower Street and Tottenham Court Road in Bloomsbury. [4] Dillon had become involved in the book trade through running bookstalls for the Central Association for Mental Welfare after graduating from Bedford College, London. [4] Determined to build a career in bookselling she persuaded the owner of a failing bookshop to sell her the business for £800, borrowing £600 off her father and £200 from a friend. [5]

Dillon stocked both academic and general titles, believing that specialisation stifled curiosity, [4] and the shop prospered catering to the needs of staff and students of the nearby University of London. [5] Dillon would deliver books herself by bicycle within eight hours and the shop began to attract bibliophiles, with regular customers including Cecil Day-Lewis and John Betjeman, who would also become Dillon's personal friends. [4]

The outbreak of World War II saw the nearby University of London and Froebel College evacuated from London, but instead of closing for the war Dillon maintained contact with her customers and shipped orders to their new locations in Cardiff, Leicester and Hertfordshire, [4] while also building a new custoner base with the staff of the Ministry of Information who were now established in Senate House. [5] When her shop suffered bomb damage she temporarily operated from an empty shop opposite. [4]

Dillon's University Bookshop

After the war Dillon increasingly focused on educational titles and her shop became an important supplier of books to students from the Commonwealth of Nations. [4] Further expansion was impossible without outside support, however, and Dillon was one of several booksellers approached by the University of London, who were looking to form a partnership to open a bookshop alongside a chemist and a newsagent in a block the university had acquired after the war on Torrington Place, Gower Street and Malet Street. [4] The block had been designed by architect Charles Fitzroy Doll and built in 1908 as a residential building with shops on the ground floor. [6]

Although the initial proposal for a partnership fell through, in 1956 Dillon was again approached by the university, and agreed to use her stock and goodwill from Store Street to purchase a minority stake in a bookshop on the new site, on the understanding that the new shop would bear her name. [4] The university contributed £11,000 in capital that it had obtained as an insurance payment for the death in a building accident of a workman who had no relatives. [5]

When it opened in 1956, Dillon's University Bookshop only occupied the small part of the building at 1 Malet St, and in its first year saw turnover of £30,000. [5] The business was soon worth £1 million a year, and expanded to nearby buildings. Una Dillon retired as managing director from the business in 1968, but remained as a board member until 1977. [5] Her place, as Managing Director was taken by Peter Stockham. then followed a period when Dillons was controlled by the unions (Actss). Then in 1977, Grant Paton, from Glasgow, was appointed Managing Director by the then owners, University of London. It was taken over shortly afterwards by Pentos Ltd.

Expansion under Pentos

Back in private hands by the mid-1980s, the store undertook a major makeover and modernisation, announcing its relaunch with the advertising poster "Foyled again? Try Dillons" displayed prominently on the bus shelter opposite its London rival Foyles. [7]

Inspired by the success of Waterstones, demonstrating the potential for large modern bookshops with a depth of stock, the new owners Pentos plc rapidly rolled out the format across the country, ultimately building up a chain of 75 stores. However, having overreached itself financially, [8] Dillons was acquired by Thorn EMI, which already held the HMV chain, for £36 million. [9]

HMV acquired the larger Waterstones chain in 1998, and the following year the Dillons brand ceased to exist as a separate entity when the branches were rebranded as Waterstones. [10] A remainder were sold on to the smaller chain Ottakar's, which itself was later taken over by Waterstones in 2006.

See also

Related Research Articles

His Masters Voice

His Master's Voice (HMV) was the unofficial name of a major British record label created in 1901 by The Gramophone Co. Ltd. The phrase was first coined in the late 1890s as the title of a painting depicting a terrier-mix dog named Nipper listening to a wind-up disc gramophone. In the original 1898 painting, the dog is listening to a cylinder phonograph. It is a famous trademark in the recording industry.

Foyles

W & G Foyle Ltd. is a bookseller with a chain of seven stores in England. It is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London. Foyles was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop in terms of shelf length, at 30 miles (48 km), and for number of titles on display. It was bought by Waterstones in 2018.

The Net Book Agreement (NBA) was a fixed book price agreement in the United Kingdom and Ireland between The Publishers Association and booksellers which set the prices at which books were to be sold to the public. The agreement was concerned solely with price maintenance. It operated in the UK from 1900 until the 1990s when it was abandoned by some large bookshop chains and was then ruled illegal. It also operated in Ireland until shortly before its final demise.

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.

HMV Public entertainment retailing company

HMV—His Master’s Voice—is a UK-based music and film retailer. The first HMV-branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company on Oxford Street in 1921, and the HMV name was also used for television and radio sets manufactured from the 1930s onwards. The retail side of the business began to expand in the 1960s, and in 1998 was divested from EMI, the successor to the Gramophone Company, to form what would become HMV Group.

Ottakars

Ottakar's was a chain of bookshops in the United Kingdom founded in 1987 by James Heneage. Following a takeover by the HMV Group in 2006, the chain was merged into the Waterstone's brand.

Fopp (retailer)

Fopp is a British chain of retail shops selling music, film, books and other entertainment products in the United Kingdom. It is owned by HMV.

William Foyle

William Alfred Westropp Foyle (1885–1963) was a British bookseller and businessman who co-founded Foyles bookshop in 1903 with his brother Gilbert Foyle.

Christina Foyle

Christina Agnes Lilian Foyle was an English bookseller and owner of Foyles bookshop.

Bookselling Business of selling and dealing with books

Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of libraries in c.300 BC stimulated the energies of the Athenian booksellers.

Hodges Figgis

Hodges Figgis is a bookshop located on Dawson Street in Dublin. Founded in 1768, it is given a passing mention in James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses.

Sir Tim Waterstone is a British businessman and author. He is the founder of Waterstone's, the United Kingdom-based bookselling retail chain, the largest in Europe.

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.

Achilles James Daunt is a British businessman. He is the founder of the Daunt Books chain, and since May 2011 has been managing director of the bookshop chain Waterstones. Known as "the man who saved Waterstones". In June 2019, he became the CEO of the US bookshop chain Barnes & Noble, acquired by Waterstones' parent, Elliott Advisors (UK) for $683m.

St. Marks Bookshop

St. Mark's Bookshop was an independent book store, established in 1977 in New York City's East Village neighborhood. It was the oldest independent bookstore in Manhattan owned by its original owners. The shop, run by proprietors Bob Contant and Terry McCoy, specialized in cultural and critical theory, graphic design, poetry, small presses, and film studies—what the New York Times called "neighborhood-appropriate literature". It featured periodicals and journals, including foreign titles, and included sections on anarchists, art criticism, women's studies, music, drama, and drugs.

Agnes Joseph Madeline Dillon, known as Una Dillon, was a British bookseller. She founded Dillons Booksellers.

James Heneage is a British historical fiction writer, and the co-founder of the Ottakar’s bookshop chain and the Chalke Valley History Festival.

Lavender Menace Lesbian & Gay Community Bookshop was an independent bookshop in Edinburgh from 1982 to 1986. It was the first LGBT+ bookshop in Scotland, and the second in the United Kingdom. The play Love Song to Lavender Menace by James Ley (2017) was inspired by the bookshop.

References

  1. ↑ Stevenson, Tom (20 March 1995). "'Second time lucky' hope of Rymans' buyer". Independent . London . Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  2. ↑ Shepherd, John (25 March 1995). "Thorn EMI closes 40 Dillons bookstores". Independent . London . Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  3. ↑ "Thorn EMI Demerger Proceeding Smoothly". Billboard . 31 August 1996. p. 1, 137.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Cook, Jean H. (2009) [2004]. "Dillon, Agnes Joseph Madeline [Una] (1903–1993)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Obituary: Una Dillon". The Independent . 17 April 1993. Retrieved 11 April 2017.
  6. ↑ Maher 1994, p. 62.
  7. ↑ Christina Foyle; Managed Noted London Bookshop, Los Angeles Times , 11 June 1999.
  8. ↑ "Pentos dealing halted". The Independent. 28 February 1995. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
  9. ↑ "Dillons sold for £36m". Independent. 22 October 2011. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  10. ↑ "Things you may not know about HMV". The Irish Times. 15 January 2013. Retrieved 2 March 2021.

Bibliography

Coordinates: 51°31′20.4″N0°7′56.06″W / 51.522333°N 0.1322389°W / 51.522333; -0.1322389

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.