Abebooks turns the page on European expansion
When Abebooks Inc. launched an e-commerce site in 1996 to help independent book sellers market their rare, used and out-of-print books, the company relied heavily on third-party reseller agreements to drive sales.
Now as Abebooks enters its second decade as a web retailer, the company is relying less on third-party reseller agreements and more on international expansion, organic growth and making site upgrades that make its web store more attractive to upscale book buyers, says CEO Hannes Blum.
In 2006, Abebooks, No. 58 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, will expand into Italy sometime in the first half of the year, Blum says. Abebooks will also spend more than $2 million upgrading its e-commerce platform to give customers a more personalized shopping experience. The resources will be spent on improving site search and security, Blum says.
Organic growth is important to Abebooks, which grew its e-commerce sales almost 16% in 2005 to $150 million from $130 million in 2004. Selling used, rare and out-of-print books online is a lucrative business that’s attracting the attention of mainstream web retailers such as Amazon.com. Compared to the growth rate for selling new books online, which the Book Industry Study Group says grew at an annual rate of about 3% in 2004, the growth rate for selling used books was almost 40%.
To grow its present book business and stay ahead of bigger rivals, Abebooks continues to expand overseas. The company so far has signed up 35 independent booksellers in Italy and now has a major e-commerce presence in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. “There are expansion opportunities overseas and we will take advantage of them through organic product development and possible new acquisitions,” Blum says.
In October 2004, Abebooks acquired Iberlibro.com, an online platform for used and antiquarian books in the global Spanish-speaking community. Now the company is preparing its latest acquisition, BookFinder.com, a comparison shopping site, for a bigger European debut sometime in 2006.
BookFinder.com lets buyers search through over 100 million new, used, rare and out-of-print books for sale from thousands of booksellers. By extending Bookfinder.com to European book buyers and by giving customers the ability to search for books in their native language, Abebooks will be offering international customers a large inventory and comparison service to find used, rare and out-of-print books. For instance, BookFinder.com lets visitors search for books written in French, German, Spanish, Italian and English. The site also lists book prices in 40 currencies. “We have already trodden the path into Europe by expanding the Abebooks network of sites, and we know the markets well,” Blum says. “With BookFinder.com, we are simply doing what we already know works in a market we understand.”
Abebooks chief operating officer Boris Wertz will speak at the Internet Retailer 2006 Conference & Exhibition in a pre-conference marketing work shop session titled Affiliate Marketing: The Unsung Hero of Online Marketing .
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