It appears there are now two main bidders for borders Dymocks and Angus & Robertson. Both of them have about 17% of the Australian book industry. I guess that Dymocks are mostly looking to get a bigger share of the Australian book industry with Borders 24 giant bookshop shops.
On the other hand Angus & Robertson which was owned once by Gordon and Gotch now is owned by a PEP who also owns a Newsagency chain, Supa News which runs about 28 newsagencies in Australia. Obviously they are keen to expand their share of the Australian books and magazines industry. Getting money is not an issue to PEP as they are just huge. Think about it now. This one division of PEP, I worked out has about 348 good shops Australia wide and in New Zealand another 76 good shops. With power like that I am sure they are thinking among things is the bigger that they are the better discounts they can get from the supplier.
I hope now the magazine distributors should think about their smaller retailer as soon they may have little to negotiate. Say I was a magazine producer. I decided to go direct. So off I went to Coles, Woolworths, Angus & Roberts and maybe Dymocks. Now what and soon what!
Also I hope that newsagents’ clients are thinking of all of this too! Not that there is much we can do about it.
