Will Indigo Books and Music expand outside Canada?
Is Canada’s Indigo bookstore chain crossing the border?
Indigo CEO and founder Heather Reisman stated that “our intention is that the new Indigo will be a global company” during the annual meeting of the company, according to the Globe and Mail. She declined to elaborate on where new stores might open.
She predicted that the expansion wouldn’t be happening for two years or so.
Indigo Books and Music (also known as “!ndigo”), is often described as the country’s leading bookseller and has gone through other changes recently, with stores selling items such as toys and home goods in an effort to appeal to more consumers. Their lines include Indigo Home, Indigo Tech, and Indigo Kids. The company will also increase sales of Apple products such as the iPad in its stores next year. (Currently only the company's Toronto store has an Apple section.) Reisman called the revamping of the stores “a fundamental transformation.”
“The new physical format store will feel like you can meander through a series of shops, each one anchored by books,” Reisman said of the stores’ multiple product lines.
However, the CEO said books will remain Indigo’s priority.
“Books will remain at the heart and soul of this company, and as long as there are people on the planet who want to buy physical books, we are deeply committed to physical books, both in store and online,” Reisman said.
She stated that sales of merchandise that isn’t books increased during 2013 from 12 percent of the company’s sales to 22 percent.
Indigo had a loss of $8.2 million for the past quarter. For the same period, American bookstore chain Barnes & Noble reported a $118.6 loss.
Indigo was founded in 1996 and acquired the bookstore chain Chapters in 2001. Kobo Inc., the company which creates e-readers that are sold by many indie bookstores, was a division of Indigo Books until the subsidiary was sold to the Japanese company Rakuten in 2011.
