The Bookspeed Story - Our Evolution
The evolution of Bookspeed
As many of our customers will know, Bookspeed was begun back in 1986 by Annie Rhodes and Kingsley Dawson. We chatted to them in our first blog about how Bookspeed began 35 years ago They had both been part of a book distribution co-op, which offered sales, marketing, and distribution for the wealth of feminist, radical, green, and LGBT publishers that had evolved throughout the preceding decade.
The co-op disbanded in 1986 and they decided to make the move north to Edinburgh to take over the premises. Shortly after, Bookspeed was born!
Annie & Kingsley were both committed to establishing a workplace that would reflect their own progressive social attitudes.
Bookspeed’s founding principles
For Annie & Kingsley, Bookspeed should be a place of work where people are comfortable, free from prejudice and fear, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or religious beliefs.
These principles are a lot more prevalent in organisations today and were certainly a progressive and liberal approach to business in the late eighties.
It is a testament to Annie & Kingsley that Bookspeed has some long-standing staff members as part of their now expanding team of Bookspeeders.
The early days
Bookspeed, Hamilton Place in the early days. A 1987 prize draw for customers, with a vegan fruit cake as a prize, won by Mushroom Bookshop, Nottingham. Pam Smith of Polygon Books drew the winning entry out of the hat.
Pitching originally to provide an efficient, next day, UK-wide wholesale delivery service, Bookspeed gradually evolved, changing shape and direction as different markets were identified. During this period of growth and development of the business, Annie & Kingsley realised that they could harness their broad knowledge of the publishing industry to curate tailored book ranges for customers, aiding time-poor customers by doing the hard work for them.
Bookspeed still works hard to enhance customers’ retail offering through this careful consideration of books from the wide range of UK publishers it sources titles from.
As we know, starting a business is very exciting and nobody knows everything from the off, which means that there is a lot of learning along the way. Annie and Kingsley’s experience was no different. Similarly, you cannot predict the opportunities that present themselves as a company grows. In 1992, Bookspeed saw an opportunity to purchase a rival book wholesale company based in the West of Scotland called Carrick.
It was through his acquisition that Bookspeed met a fantastic sales rep called Morris who is still cherished to this day by Annie & Kingsley. Morris Harrison is a skilled salesperson and wonderful character. Indeed, he and his late wife, Margaret, both joined the Bookspeed team and played critical roles in the development of the company’s customer base across Scotland.
Kingsley & Morris hard at work, 1994
This acquisition was the steppingstone to expanding their business within Scotland, helping more customers to achieve the most suitable book ranges for their retail space.
Bookspeed continued to grow
While emphasising close customer and supplier relations, the Bookspeed team learned to read market trends and identify opportunities, and in the late nineties the company began to apply its unique business model to new markets.
After exhibiting thematic, attractive and colour coordinated book ranges at various Gift Trade Fairs, it was quickly evident that Bookspeed could capitalise on its unique offer of providing bookselling selection skills to the growing Gift and Heritage sector across the UK.
The company started off with a small office and warehouse on Hamilton Place in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge area. Annie and Kingsley both realised that growth for Bookspeed meant that those premises would soon no longer be big enough, and in the late nineties they started a search for a larger site to locate the Bookspeed HQ…
An early trade show for Bookspeed in New Jersey, USA in 1996. Yvonne Brady and Lesley Rennie on the stand during a brief foray into the North American market.
Salamander Yards
In 2001, there was a huge step change for the business in opening their new warehouse in Salamander Yards, Edinburgh.
Many people were involved in turning this unit into a fantastic new warehouse to enable Bookspeed to expand their distribution capacity and include brand new offices on a mezzanine level, which are still our HQ today!
Even our now Managing Director, Lewis Dawson, took charge at the age of 10. Here he is overseeing the build!:
Bookspeed’s new purpose-built site was opened in March 2001, just 15 years after the company started. Growth demanded a review of the management structure, resulting in Annie becoming MD and Kingsley, Commercial Director. The huge enthusiasm and support that was expressed back then is still alive and kicking with us today, with our company serving UK-wide and overseas customers.
Bookspeed has always been a family business. Here is Kingsley and their two sons, Patrick and Lewis, while they were packing up before leaving Hamilton Place.
Patrick took his first steps between kickstools at Hamilton Place and both boys as babies had afternoon naps in a back room there!
Transforming the company reach South of the Border
Shortly after opening Salamander Yards as its new, much larger HQ, Bookspeed began hiring again. In 2003, Gavin Cook, who is still one of our Senior Key Account Managers today, joined the company and played a pivotal role in bringing Chatsworth House to Bookspeed’s list of customers (and an account Gavin still works with to this day!). This helped to transform Bookspeed’s profile in England, with heritage sites Highgrove, Waddesdon, Sandringham and Westminster Abbey also starting to work with Bookspeed shortly after.
Bookspeed acquires Compass Books of Norfolk
In 2006, Bookspeed saw another opportunity to significantly bolster their business by acquiring Compass Books of Norfolk which allowed the company to expand its fast-growing heritage and cultural site customer base.
Now in its 20th year, Bookspeed was growing its team by appointing new field sales representatives based in England to strengthen their Southern and Eastern English regions.
Bookspeed expands by winning the contract with the Tussauds group in 2006.
A challenging time
In 2004, Annie became seriously ill and had to step down from her operational roles within the business. Up to this point, Annie and Kingsley had run the company jointly, but with Annie no longer able to work, Kingsley had to learn to run the business himself. Kingsley added two senior roles to the business to support him, one role to lead our sales efforts and another to take over the buying side of the business. Fiona Stout joined the company as Sales Director, and with a background in jewellery and general retail Fiona played an important role in taking Bookspeed into the UK Gift markets over the coming years. Matthew Perren, a lifelong “booktrade-er” joined Bookspeed and headed up its supplier relationships, before ultimately going on to become Managing Director from 2013 to 2017.
The (unexpected) next generation
In early 2008, Lewis – Annie and Kingsley’s youngest son – made a pitch to them to let him join Bookspeed. Neither Annie nor Kingsley had ever imagined that either of their two sons would want to go into the business but Lewis had different plans. Throughout his teenage years, Lewis had always shown an interest in things relating to business, and like many other youngsters with a desire to make some extra pocket money he had devised various plans to buy and sell products to friends and local businesses (to varying degrees of success, it is worth noting!).
Despite their initial hesitancy, they eventually agreed, and Lewis started his first day at Bookspeed on 1st September 2008, working in the customer service team.
A long overdue digital revolution
By 2010 Bookspeed had been in business for over 20 years. However the company was still using a computer system that was first installed in 1990. It was decided that Bookspeed would modernise its internal operating systems, and after a lengthy tendering and scoping process a new system was found and the process of implementation began. By late 2011, the new operating system was up and running and began an important next step in the adoption of technology across the business.
30th Birthday Celebrations
Bookspeed turned 30 years old in 2016 and here are some of the fabulous photos from the celebrations. This year, we turn 35 and we are very excited to celebrate in any way we can!
Changing the model
While Lewis was Commercial Director for Bookspeed, the company undertook a major evolution by converting from a field based sales model to a fully digital sales operation. This saw our Account Managers working remotely to provide their excellent customer service to their now over 2,000-strong customer base. Bookspeed continues to strive towards its environmental goals and lowering its carbon footprint, whilst increasing productivity by bolstering business efficiencies through utilising technology.
Lewis said: “We believe the strength and longevity of Bookspeed’s business model has always been our highly-personalised and responsive service, combined with the team’s industry insights and track record for being ahead of the game for upcoming trends and developing specially-tailored ranges.”
Lewis became our Managing Director in 2017, after working closely with Bookspeed’s Sales Director at that time on business development. This included updating our IT infrastructure to increase efficiency, as well as increasing the company’s operational capacity the previous year with the opening of a second warehouse on Albert Road near our main warehouse and HQ, Salamander Yards.
He had an aim to reinforce Bookspeed’s position for future growth.
Next week, we talk to Lewis himself about his journey with Bookspeed and his vision for the future.
Until next time.
