Thalia (bookstore) explained

Thalia Bücher GmbH
Industry:Retail

Thalia is a chain of more than 200 book shops in Germany (a country with fixed book prices), Austria, and Switzerland.[1]

Book stores

The shops are often located in shopping centres[2] where they can regularly welcome a certain number of walk-in customers, who actually didn't go out to buy books, but do that then en passant anyway. Depending on the local situation, Thalia sometimes also refrains from building a new shop in favour of purchasing an available edifice.[3] Also whole book store chains have occasionally been taken over by Thalia Cervantes.[4]

Local reception

Since Thalia, mainly owned by Herder Publishing Group,[5] is a prosperous enterprise [6] which can afford to sustain relatively large, well equipped [7] shops with many books in stock [8] [9] and long opening hours, small local shops are prone to resent the settling of a Thalia shop in their area.[10] Still the fixed prices for books in Germany give smaller competitors a chance.[11] However Thalia has also adopted single book shops. Moreover, there is support for local businesses in the way that every Thalia chain store has a section for local literature (featuring local history, vernacular etc.), keepsakes and related articles.

Multichannel marketing

The company early on picked up the concept of multichannel marketing and therefore taken a stake in an established German online book shop.[12] Thalia's very own shop [13] has a share in Thalia's growth.[14] Customer from rural parts of the country can order books online and hereby make sure that even special titles are available and reserved when they go shopping on the weekend. Elderly people who have difficulties leaving their house can phone a Thalia chain store and ask to have books sent to their home and the receiving employee will carry out the order online instead of the customer. (The national competitor Weltbild provides thus options too.) Thalia also sells gift cards that can be used in their shops as well as online.[15]

E-books

In 2008, Thalia committed itself to the German e-book market and made a deal with Sony related to Sony's e-book reader.[16] The growing demand in e-books convinced Thalia to announce the release of their own device.[17] In the same year, the "Oyo" (basically a German version of the 4FFF N618) was launched in cooperation with Medion, a company well known for its previous cooperations with Aldi.[18] [19] [20]

Subsidiaries

Thalia Germany has also sister companies in Austria and Switzerland.[21] [22]

References

  1. Web site: Independent Booksellers and the Fixed Book Price: a Horror Story?. Heijdenrijk. Kim. 2009. Bookstore Guide. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20110414102435/http://www.bookstoreguide.org/2009/07/independent-booksellers-and-fixed-book.html. 2011-04-14. 2020-02-17. Thalia is a chain of bookstores in Germany, one of the first countries that introduced the fixed book price..
  2. Web site: Further tenants are a Rewe grocery store, Intersport Voswinkel, a dm drug store, Deichmann shoes and a Thalia book store. 2011-05-07.
  3. Web site: This week saw the long awaited opening of the Thalia Bookshop in Bonn's Market Square. 2011-05-07.
  4. Web site: Thalia Buchhandlung GmbH acquires Buch Kaiser GmbH. 2011-05-07.
  5. Web site: Neuer Mehrheitsgesellschafter / Herder steigt bei Thalia ein. 2016-07-11. Börsenblatt. de. 2020-02-17.
  6. Web site: Thalia Bookstore Sales Up 7.5% . 2011-05-07.
  7. Web site: Thalia as reference for a producer of escalators. 2011-05-07.
  8. Web site: English-language bookstores in Hamburg. 2011-05-07.
  9. Web site: a large-ish section of "International Books", the majority in English.. 2011-05-07.
  10. Web site: Showdown in Germany. 2011-05-07.
  11. Web site: They were incredibly jealous to hear of the fixed-book pricing law in Germany which allowed independent brick-and-mortar stores to compete against Amazon and Thalia, the German online bookstore giant.. 2011-05-07.
  12. Web site: Douglas Sales Beat Forecast on New Stores, Germany. Elfes. Holger. 2010-10-07. Bloomberg. 2011-05-07. [...] revenue at Douglas’s Thalia bookstore chain gained 10 percent to 905 million euros, propelled by the unit taking a majority stake in buch.de, an online service..
  13. Web site: a chain called Thalia that runs over 230 bookstores in Germany and also has an online shop. 2011-05-07.
  14. Web site: Following the release of their 2010 sales figures, the second largest German book store chain, Thalia, has also pinned its success on multichannel approaches. 2011-05-07.
  15. Web site: Giftcards from Thalia. 2011-05-07.
  16. Web site: Top German chain bookstore Thalia struck a deal with Sony to sell content for its Reader devices in Thalia stores and online. 2011-05-07.
  17. Web site: Germany's Thalia Bookstore to launch ereader. 2011-05-07.
  18. Web site: Oyo reader review (on english) . . 2011-05-07.
  19. Web site: Thalia to sell Oyo e-reader with Wifi, touchscreen. Hoffelder. Nate. 2010-09-04. The Digital Reader. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20150913085903/http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/09/04/thalia-to-sell-oyo-e-reader-with-wifi-touchscreen-139e/. 2015-09-13. 2020-02-17.
  20. Web site: Those who purchase it receive mobile access to thousands of e-books. In the case of Thalia, that number is even in the hundreds of thousands. . 2011-05-07.
  21. Web site: Thalia Group expands in Austria. 2011-05-07.
  22. Web site: With a total of 23 stores and 650 employees throughout most of Switzerland, the Swiss book dealer Thalia Bücher AG is the market leader in the country.. 2011-05-07.

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