Booktopia

History

Booktopia was founded in 2004 by Tony Nash, his brother Simon Nash, and his brother-in-law Steve Traurig. By some accounts, Nash's sister Elana Traurig was also among the company's founders. They outsourced website management and order fulfillment until 2007, when they developed a new website and began renting a 500 square-meter warehouse in Artarmon. Two years later, they moved to a larger warehouse in Lane Cove. In 2013, Booktopia was voted as Australia's favourite bookshop in a poll by the Australian Booksellers' Association.

Booktopia moved to a 10,000 square-meter warehouse in Lidcombe in 2014, where they invested $4 million into automation of order picking. By this point, they had a turnover of $54 million, and shipped nearly 3 million books a year. In August 2015, Booktopia bought online retailers Bookworld and Angus & Robertson from Penguin Random House. This acquisition reportedly gave Booktopia an 80% share of the online book sales market in Australia.

In 2016, the company announced that it intended to list on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with a $150 million initial public offering, but this float was abandoned due to investor concerns about Amazon's 2017 expansion into Australia affecting the business.

Four years later, Booktopia successfully listed on the ASX in December 2020. Selling 18.8 million shares at an issue price of $2.30, the company raised $43.1 million on a market capitalisation of $357 million. According to the prospectus issued before its IPO, Booktopia accounted for approximately 6% of Australian book sales by this point.

In the same year, 2020, they bought university bookstore chain The Co-op Bookshop after that business went into administration, closing its 30 physical stores and moving its textbook sales business online.