In the UK bookselling world, there’s Wottakar’s…and a bunch of other stores. I kid, but only slightly, in terms of media exposure, but unfortunately, the family-owned book chain is in trouble so seriously after its ninth consecutive quarter in the red that they may have to shut its doors, the Telegraph reports:
The accounts lay bare the perilous state of Blackwell Ltd’s finances. The Oxford-based firm moved from a loss of £6.94m to £10.1m in the year to July 2005, on turnover down 15pc to £156m. Perhaps more worryingly, shareholders’ equity has fallen by nearly a third to £29.9m after the firm sold a valuable stake in sister firm Blackwell Publishing.
The new chairman of the 60 book stores is Gerry Connolly, drafted in at the start of the year to replace Philip Blackwell. He admitted yesterday the performance under previous management had been unacceptable. “One of the reasons I was brought in was because the UK business has been under pressure. It has been affected by competition from Amazon, Ottakar’s and Waterstones. It is an intensely competitive market.”
Just another train wreck to watch, I suppose…