WH Smith PLC, trading as WHSmith, is a British retailer, with headquarters in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery.
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 of the number of titles on display. It was bought by Waterstones in 2018.
Chapters Inc. is a Canadian big box bookstore banner owned by Indigo Books and Music. Formerly a separate company competing with Indigo, the combined company has continued to operate both banners since their merger in 2001. As of July 2017, it operated 89 superstores under the banners Chapters and Indigo, and 122 small format stores under the banners Coles, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company.
Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom 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.
Blackwell UK, also known as Blackwell's and Blackwell Group, is a British academic book retailer and library supply service owned by Waterstones. It was founded in 1879 by Benjamin Henry Blackwell, after whom the chain is named, on Broad Street, Oxford. The brand now has a chain of 18 shops, and an accounts and library supply service. It employs around 1000 staff in its divisions.
HMV is a British music and entertainment retailer, founded in 1921. The brand is owned by JD Sports and operated by Sunrise Records, except in Japan, where it is owned and operated by Lawson.
Fopp is a British chain of retail shops selling music, film, books and other entertainment products in the United Kingdom. The chain's stores are operated by Sunrise Records, but with the Fopp brand being used under license from JD Sports.
James Thin Ltd was a British bookshop chain, founded by James Thin in 1848. It operated for 154 years, during which time it was run by five generations of the Thin family. Starting from a single shop in Edinburgh, it grew to a national concern with 35 branches throughout Scotland and England. In 2002, following a period of rapid expansion, it went into voluntary administration, after which most of its shops were purchased by other companies in the book trade.
In the Republic of Ireland, the retail sector provides one of the largest sources of employment in the economy, representing over 12% of the workforce. As of 2017, approximately 40,000 wholesale and retail businesses employed almost 280,000 people in Ireland, with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment reporting that 90% of these businesses were Irish-owned.
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books, which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process.
Dillons was a British bookseller founded in 1936, named after its founder and owner Una Dillon. Originally based in Bloomsbury in London, the company expanded under subsequent owners Pentos 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. 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 1996, and Dillons-HMV remained an EMI holding. Dillons was subsumed under rival chain Waterstones' branding in 1999, at which point the brand ceased to exist.
Hodges Figgis is a long-operating bookshop in central Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1768, it is probably the third-oldest functioning bookshop in the world, after the Livraria Bertrand of Lisbon (1732) and Pennsylvania's Moravian Book Shop (1745). It was moved and expanded numerous times, and arrived at 56 Dawson Street in 1979, and gradually expanded to take its current form of four floors at 56-58 Dawson Street in 1992. It is mentioned in James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses, at the time of which it would have been situated at 104 Grafton Street, and the novel Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, and in other writings.
Gardners’ is an international wholesalers of books, eBooks, music and film. They work with multi-channel retailers worldwide, both online and on the high street, to supply physical and digital products. They offer back to store or direct to consumer on their behalf through a consumer direct fulfilment service.
The Waterstones Children's Book Prize is an annual award given to a work of children's literature published during the previous year. First awarded in 2005, the purpose of the prize is "to uncover hidden talent in children's writing" and is therefore open only to authors who have published no more than two or three books, depending on which category they are in. The prize is awarded by British book retailer Waterstones.
Sir Tim Waterstone is a British bookseller, businessman and author. He is the founder of Waterstones, the United Kingdom-based bookseller retail chain, the largest in Europe.
United Drapery Stores, or UDS, was a British retail group that dominated the British high street from the 1950s to the early 1980s.
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.
Alan James Giles OBE is a British businessman and currently a non-executive director of the Competition and Markets Authority. He is also a non-executive director of Rentokil Initial plc and a member of OFT's Audit and Risk Remuneration committees.
Reading is an important commercial centre in Southern England and is often referred to as the commercial capital of the Thames Valley. The town hosts the headquarters of British companies and the UK offices of foreign multinationals, as well as being a major retail centre.
James Heneage is a British writer, and literary festival entrepreneur. He was the co-founder of the Ottakar’s bookshop chain, the Chalke Valley History Festival and the Kardamyli Festival in the Greek Peloponnese.
