Category: Book Depot

Success Story: Salt Lake County Library Services

May 30, 2018

Background

Salt Lake County Library Services is the largest public library system in Utah. They began operations some 79 years ago in 1939 out of two classrooms in the old Midvale School, UT. Today, they offer books, music, magazines – all in a variety of formats – and much, much more.

Salt Lake County Library Services currently runs a highly successful Summer Reading Program from its 18 branches that services approximately 60,000 participants across the county. The program features specially designed reading records to encourage the whole family to keep track of their reading progress throughout the summer. With the program offered to three different age groups for over two months, they need a reliable supplier they can count on to provide the huge breadth of high-interest titles they require for this program with a one-stop shopping experience.

Solution

With the largest selection of titles in the industry from nearly all major North American publishers, Book Depot is able to provide them with the extensive variety of titles in all age ranges they require to run a successful Summer Reading Program year after year. Book Depot offers a user-friendly website that gives clients a real-time view of its inventory and sales representatives to help facilitate easy order placement.

Results

5-10% increase in Summer Reading Program participants each year.

Salt Lake County Library Services chose Book Depot as their preferred supplier because Book Depot allows them to fulfill all their various needs (children’s books, tween, adult, nonfiction, and board books) from just one vendor.

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The Survey Says – Make Your Business Stronger

May 9, 2018

How do your customers truly feel about you? Are you their “go to” source for books? Should you be restyling your store, or offering more products? I am sure these questions and countless others are always top-of-mind for all booksellers, but formalizing the process may get pushed aside in the hectic daily running of your business. One way to truly know how you are perceived – surveying your customer base. At Book Depot we query our constituents for each of our lines of business on an annual basis. We use this data to reflect on where we’ve been and as an important tool for planning our future. Some of the benefits of taking the time to properly plan and execute a surveying initiative include:

Customer appreciation. People inherently love to feel valued and that they have a voice that is heard. They will be impressed that you respect their opinion enough to ask them how you are doing.
Customer retention. Customer acquisition is tough and extremely expensive. Satisfying your customer’s needs will keep them coming back – increasing their lifetime value and providing a revenue stream that will be easier to forecast.
Free information. Utilizing your own client base for information comes at no cost (other than time) and will be completely pertinent to your business as all the questions are about your business.
Improve problem areas. We all like to think that each aspect of our business is running smoothly. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to recognize the areas that need to be addressed.
Recognize trends. Are you carrying the right mix of categories and keeping your finger on the pulse of the industry? Can you expand your product lines by carrying higher margin products? Asking product based questions will reduce your fiscal risk by identifying fact-based gaps in your selection. (It is impossible for one person to know everything there is to know about the publishing world.)
Establishing a baseline. Performing surveys consistently over a length of time will provide you an opportunity to gauge yourself against yourself. Track all the changes you made and monitor how they are received.

I know what you must be thinking, theoretically I see the value – but I don’t have the time or know where to even begin. Let me assure you that it has never been easier than it is today. To make the process manageable, we have broken it down into three basic steps to help ensure your initiative will have success:

Scripting the Survey

Pinpoint exactly what you want to know (i.e. should we expand our bargain book section?).
Use basic language. Stay away from industry lingo that could confuse your customer.
Keep the questions as short as possible and never exceed a total of 10. Only ask the questions that will not have the biggest impact on success.
Utilize the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Book Depot ends every survey by asking, “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend, or colleague”. We feel this is the most powerful way to gauge the overall health of your business. Willingness to recommend your store to a friend, is extremely powerful.

Administering the Survey

Choose a web-based survey provider. We use Survey Monkey for all of ours. It is extremely user friendly, offers great examples & step-by-step tutorials and provides the data in a manageable format.
Define who you want to query. Are you looking to poll your entire list or are you really looking for information from a specific subset of customers in your database?
Decide if you want to provide an incentive. Often times we will offer a predefined discount off the customer’s next purchase if they complete the survey.
Design the survey. Most provide an extremely user-friendly template, so all you need to do is cut-and-paste your questions.

Analyzing the Results

Calculate the response rate (divide the number of completed surveys by the total number of surveys sent). The higher the response rate, the more representative and trustworthy the data will be. Aim for over 10%.
Be open minded. Listen to what the data is really telling you, not what you want it to tell you… this can be harder than you would think.
Categorize the data. “Bucketing” your responses by area of your business will make it easier to focus on the specific needs of each.
Look at your results on both a micro and macro and level. You will glean key “nuggets” by looking at both.
Thank your respondents. Let them know how much you appreciate their time and how you plan to utilize the responses to better serve their book buying needs in the future.

As David Penn succinctly stated, “Measuring engagement and engaging consumers are two sides of the same coin.” At Book Depot this is one of our mantras. We know that not only have our customers made us who we are today, but make us who we will be in the future. If we want that future to be successful, we must keep our finger on their collective pulse.

Making customer surveys a key part of your annual planning will pay off with making your store stronger and more profitable, while keeping your customers loyal!

Greg Sizelove

Business Development Manager

Book Depot

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Product Diversity – The Book Depot Anthem!

May 2, 2018

Diversity: the condition of having or being composed of differing elements; variety.

Diversity is a 21st-century buzzword. How diverse is our society? Would you consider yourself inclusive or exclusive? Do you have enough variety in your life or are you pretty much same old, same old? This word often pops up in discussions about race, religion, politics, or a variety of other social or economic issues.

At Book Depot, diversity in terms of product is something that we have striven for since day one. Offering a wide variety of products is what we feel separates us from most other bargain book suppliers. Whether it is fiction, children’s books (in just about every format), history, biography, crafts, cooking, health, business, religion—you pretty much name it, and we have it. Maybe it is because of our roots in retail many years ago when we had to fill a very large store with as many different books as possible, but we have the mindset that there should be “something for everyone.”

Fast forward some 25 years later and not much has changed. Our motto is “The Largest Selection Pays” and our mission statement (did you know we had one?) is “To save retailers time and money by offering the largest selection of high-margin books.” Having the largest selection of books is our goal, but married to that is the idea that the selection has to be made up of a diverse range of product. It is nice to say that you have 50,000 titles, but it is just as important to have a range of titles over many categories and genres. We want to be a one-stop shop for you and all of your bargain book needs. It doesn’t matter whether you are a specialty store or a full-range bookshop; everyone recognizes how crucial it is to have as much variety as possible to meet your customers’ needs.

Creating this diversity in product means a lot of hard work; relationships with many publishers and suppliers; lots of air miles and meetings around the globe; and leaving no stone unturned in the search for something new and exciting for our customers. We will take the risks to find the product we want you to be successful with. Every one may not be a home run, but Book Depot is a company that is not afraid to take a chance on something if we think it may benefit our customers. I remember 18 or so years ago when our owner came back to the booth very excited after acquiring 10,000 copies of Billy Graham’s autobiography. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Rev. Graham was likely nearing the end of life and this would be a good title to have in relatively short period of time. Needless to say, we sold all those copies long before we ever anticipated, but this is an example of the mindset we have always had at Book Depot—we take risks. A smart buyer once told me that you are not doing a good job as a buyer if you don’t make a mistake once in a while. Certainly, you don’t want to make more mistakes than your successes, but when bringing in product and trying to diversify to meet all your customers’ needs, you need to take some chances.

Book Depot is committed to being the most diversified supplier in the bargain book industry. However, to maintain this reputation, we need your help. We would like to get your feedback on items that you would like to see us consider for additional product offerings! We recognize the importance of good sidelines and the impact they can have in a bookstore, and maybe you have some suggestions for us? What additional items work well for you in-store, whether it is book, book-plus, or non-book product that we can investigate for you? We want to hear from you!

Rick Mechelse

Senior Sales Representative

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Book Depot Shopping Experience

February 14, 2018

In the heart of the Niagara Region—a place that is known for its beautiful vineyards, countryside, and of course Niagara Falls—sits the warehouse and home to Book Depot. At a sprawling 450,000 square feet, our building has a long history and likely many stories to tell, starting with its early days as a paper mill all the way to the major reconstruction it underwent to become the fully automated warehouse that it is today (Click here to read more about Book Depot’s origins). Featuring a sortation machine, miles of conveyors, and even robots to help manage the flow of product, it can seem like a complicated operation. As time shifts and the technologies do as well, however, I think there’s one thing that both wholesalers and retailers alike believe—that the physical presence of books is often best appreciated in person.

Book Depot shopping experience

Technology has afforded buyers some pretty amazing options, such as the ability to simply scan through Excel spreadsheets and PDFs to purchase product for their stores. While these options have proved to be a great resource, the one experience they cannot provide is that of seeing the books in person. Some believe that certain books can be judged by their covers, and that their shelf appeal can be a great factor in their success. Book Depot has for many years opened our doors to wholesale customers from around the globe who, with this principle in mind, have come in the search of new titles.

Why Choose Book Depot?

In dealing with the industry’s leading publishers, our company has been able to amass a collection of almost 60,000 titles, which we’re proud to say leads the bargain book industry in terms of selection. To showcase this selection, we’re extending an invitation to our wholesale customers to come in and see some of the exciting changes we’ve made as a company, as well as shop in a clean, warm, organized, and friendly environment.

Our full inventory can be accessed by perusing the three levels of our main warehouse space, and entering titles into an order couldn’t be easier. We provide handheld scanners, which allow our customers to quickly scan a book’s ISBN to find out the quantity we have in stock, further details, as well as to add it to their order if desired.

As a second option, many of our customers will use our showroom, which generally features books that we have in a higher quantity. Often, this means we have 100+ copies available in our inventory. From within the showroom, you will have the comforts of a kitchenette, WIFI, lots of table space, carts to stack books on, and perhaps even some peace and quiet! At any given time, our showroom features up to 20,000 titles and is updated weekly to add new titles and remove those that have sold out.

Book Depot Warehouse-105

Book Depot currently ships to 80+ countries around the world and we’re very proud to have hosted wholesale shoppers from many of them throughout the years. While we understand the challenges that travel presents, we work closely with visitors and receive preferred rates from some of the best hotels that Niagara has to offer. We are also happy to supply a letter of invitation to customers who may be originating from a country that has visitor visa requirements.

To both our long-term and new wholesale customers, you’re invited! We’d love to show you around Book Depot and provide what we consider one of the best shopping experiences you can find in this industry. For further information, please reach out and speak with your sales representative or our customer service team, who will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Paul Blog Signature Book Depot Sales Rep

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Everything You Need to Know about Remainder Marks

July 12, 2017

“Is it necessary to mark your books?” “Why are the marks so big?” “Can they be a different color or shape?” “Why do you put that mark on your books?” These are just a few of the questions we regularly receive in regards to the infamous remainder marks that can be found on many publisher overstock books. At Book Depot, we are conscious of feedback from our partners and wanted to take a moment to help explain the process for these often misunderstood marks.

These marks serve a purpose in the publishing world, dictated and added by the publishers themselves. When a book first goes to the retail channel, the balance of unsold stock is returned to the publishers for credit. At that time the publisher marks each book to signify it has previously been through the retail channel. Without that designation, publishers would not be able to distinguish the proper life-cycle of their inventory, forcing them to treat all books as new.

So, ultimately, what do remainder marks mean to you?

In a nutshell, it means deeper discounts, a better sell-through rate, and higher retail margins for your store. Book Depot leverages its strong publisher relationships to garner a huge assortment of categories and titles, which we then make available to you for up to 90% off of the original retail price. Usually, the remainder mark is barely noticeable to the end consumer, and some books do not even have one at all. However, if your customers do ask, you can tell them it is there so they may purchase fantastic books at incredible prices.

To help illustrate our point, we have compiled an infographic to walk you through the remaindering process and why it is significant to your business.

From publishers to shelf and back again the life cycle of a bargain book

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Reflection on Book Expo 2017

June 15, 2017

Each spring, the Book Depot sales team embarks on our annual trip to Book Expo America (BEA), the premier event in North America for publishers, book distributors and wholesalers, booksellers, and generally anyone related to the book trade. I think back 17 years ago to Book Expo 2000 (yes, the world did not end that year!), when three people including myself and one of our owners made the trek to attend our very first BEA as exhibitors. We set up our little 10’ x 20’ booth and were ready for business, a little minnow in the ocean of bookselling and publishing. We did come home that first year with a nice order from one of the big retailers in our pockets, along with meeting some of the other great contacts in the bargain bookselling industry, and so began our long relationship with this show.

Eighteen BEAs later, it was off to New York City for this year’s event. We now have a booth that is 10’ x 70’ on both sides of an aisle that runs through the middle of our booth to allow attendees to walk through our corridor of book offerings. That is a total of 1,400 sq. ft. compared to our meager 200 sq. ft. from 17 years ago. We had approximately 8,000 samples at the show in either full-book format or, for a couple of categories, just the front covers for customers to flip through. The show proper opened on Wednesday, May 31 at 1:00pm for bargain booksellers, but there were a handful of buyers who were in the city even earlier, looking for anyone doing “pre-show” selling. That precipitated me selling from my hotel suite already on Monday morning, working with a handful of accounts. Tuesday was set-up day, a day that all of the sales reps circle on their calendars and look forward to with much joy and excitement. Not!!! For most of the reps, it was up early and off to the Buffalo airport to catch an 8:00am flight to NYC. I was the “advance team” this year, so I was already at the Javits Center by 8:00 am to make sure all our pallets had arrived at the floor location and get the carpet down before everyone else arrived. The entire team was pretty much assembled by mid-morning, and we were busy putting together shelves, opening boxes, and displaying the books over the next 8 hours, transforming a bare exhibit floor into the Book Depot bargain book showroom.

Wednesday brought the start of the show, and even though it was scheduled to begin at 1:00pm there were a few buyers who had advance passes to access the show floor early so we kept busy from 9:00am until closing at 6:00pm. For bargain booksellers like us, these shows tend to be very busy at the beginning, as buyers want to come in early and get the good books before they are all gone, knowing there is a limited supply. Typically we will have a very busy first day where we will do 75% of our business, and then the show will dwindle down over the next couple of days with minimal activity going on by the final day. By the end of the first day, you pretty much know if it will be a successful show or not. This year our first day was fantastic. Over the years with more of our customers buying from our website, doing warehouse visits, or maybe reviewing focused lists supplied by a sales rep, we have seen a trend towards fewer buyers attending the trade shows. However, this year at BEA was a bit of a throwback to the old days where we had lots of appointments, and buyers came with pen in hand ready to write some big orders.

As the week went by, some of us were able to leave a bit early, while others headed out late Friday afternoon, and Dave Wiggins, our Sales Manager, hung in right to the end to close the show and pack up the supplies that needed to come back the warehouse before catching the late flight home. We are all glad to be back safely, and Book Depot’s 18th Book Expo is now in the books—at least from a sales standpoint. There is still some follow-up to do with new prospects, but for the most part, the baton has been passed off to the warehouse to do the awesome job of pulling, cleaning, and packing all these orders, and then handing them off to our shipping team to get them out the door. Thank you again to everyone who stopped by to say hello or place an order, and we look forward to another great show again next year!

Rick Mechelse

Senior Sales Representative

Book Depot

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Retail Store Event Feature: Annual Box Sale

April 21, 2017

Every year on the March break, book-loving customers come from far and wide to visit our retail store location and participate in the Book Outlet Box Sale. Tables upon tables are filled with damaged product or slow selling/excess titles that are accumulated over the year from our warehouse location. About a year goes into preparing the 24,000 sq ft warehouse to become a veritable candy factory of books, lined with overladen tables. It has become such a popular local event that our marketing was made easy by the enthusiasm and involvement of the customers, proving day after day that they look forward to this year-round.

Box Sale 2017

This year’s sale proved to be one of the very best in several regards. The product we procured over the year was a big driver of sales. We were selling books by Emma Donoghue, Stephen King, Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, Oliver Jeffers, Sandra Boynton, Julia Donaldson, and so many more! It’s no wonder our customers came in chaotic droves first thing in the morning to rush in and peruse the tables. In past years, we have been accustomed to a line up at the door and rush when we open, but this year was an exceptionally busy year, partially due to the excellent social media campaign that got our customers so excited for this event. As well as visual teasers and daily advertising, we ran a number of new and thrilling contests for our customers, such as hiding boxes in the store and having people rush in to find them, hosting coloring and writing contests for the youth, and a Facebook Like & Share post that reached over 218,000 people, all with the enticing prize of a free box at the sale. Perhaps the most exciting promotion we ran throughout the sale was our Golden Ticket promotion, where we hid a number of shiny tickets within the stacks of sale books, which also entitled the customer who found it to a free box of books at the sale. As a result of all of this incredible dedication and effort from the store staff, we exceeded our past sales results, making this year the best Box Sale ever at a total of 3536 boxes in three days.

We hope this might inspire you to run your own exciting sale in your store that garners a lot of attention! Do you have more questions about the sale and promotions leading up to the event? Please comment below.

BS March 10 2017

Box Sale 2017 3

Box Sale 2017 4

BS March 18 2017 Post 3

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Benefits of Shopping Online for Bargain Books

April 6, 2017

The trend of shopping online over the last decade has continued to see strong gains, with global online sales growing at an annual rate of 17% by some accounts and much higher for the Asia-Pacific market. Total online spending is expected to reach $3.5 trillion worldwide by 2019, or about 12.5% of total retail sales, according to some estimates.

When I look at my own purchasing habits and those of my family, I can certainly see why the growth has been strong over the recent years and why it will continue for some time into the future. Often times I find myself looking for that one specific item; perhaps it’s a part for the faucet I need to fix or some snorkel gear for a Caribbean vacation, or a unique light fixture for a home renovation project. My wife, on the other hand, enjoys the selection and ease of shopping right from our own home. For her, time is very important as she manages a busy household, and the ability to not always have to visit the store is invaluable to her. Not to mention, she loves being able to order several sizes with the convenience of returning the ones that don’t fit!

Over the past few years and particularly the last year, we have seen an increase in the volume of sales through our website, www.bookdepot.com, as more and more of our customers realize the benefit and convenience of shopping online for bargain books. Below, we’ll explore a few of the advantages together.

It’s often said that in order to find the best books, you have to visit our warehouse. Although we would certainly encourage all our customers to do so regularly to spend time in our showroom and see the beauty of the Niagara Region, the fallacy of this thinking is unless you are physically searching through our warehouse every day, you can never see the full breadth of what we have to offer. Each day we are adding hundreds of new titles to our inventory and the easiest way to keep track of them is by viewing our new arrivals online. You can sort the new arrivals by date, price, quantity, and a host of other filters. Those of you who actively shop this section know that the great titles go very quickly. Here’s an insider tip: we upload all our new releases at 8:45 PM EST, so make sure you’re ready to fill your cart and check out quickly in order to get what you want.

Shopping at our warehouse can be overwhelming and time consuming, but with shopping online you can use our powerful search engine to narrow down and search for exactly what you are looking for, which can save you valuable time. Obviously the convenience of shopping online is a huge factor; not only is it easy, it’s cost effective as well since your travel costs will be non-existent. You can even shop for bargain books in your PJs while enjoying your morning coffee!

A large factor in the overall rise in online sales has to do with the growth of mobile networks and the use of tablets and smartphones for shopping. With the advancement of technology and the increase in screen sizes, it’s easier than ever to place orders online while on the go. At Book Depot we’ve also made shopping online even more straightforward; just over two years ago we completely redid our website, which now features a fully responsive design that adjusts to the device you are using. Now, regardless of whether you are shopping on your mobile, tablet, or PC, you will be able to experience the same great features. With the site relaunch we are seeing an increase in orders being placed from something other than their PC. Here’s another insider tip about shopping our website: consider adding titles to your cart throughout the day from your mobile or tablet when you have a few spare minutes, or as you think about some product you need to fill holes in your store, then at the end of the day take some time to review your cart, add some more titles, and check out. Keep in mind that orders are not confirmed until submitted so it is possible some titles will be sold out by the time you check out.

In addition to some of the benefits outlined above, our website has many other helpful features, such as our Wishlist and Favorites tools. You can use your Wishlist to create a list of the books you are looking for that we don’t have in stock. If we receive a book on your list, you will be notified by email, at which point you can add it directly into your cart. The Favorites section is a great place for keeping track of in-stock books that you want to purchase at a later time. Through the website you can also review your previous orders and check on the status of recently-placed orders. Click here for more information on how to get the most out of Book Depot’s website.

We encourage you to send us your feedback on your experience shopping online for bargain books. You have our commitment that we will always seek out new ways to better your shopping experience by consistently improving our platform and offering the largest selection of bargain books anywhere on the internet.

Wilf Blog Signature

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What’s New at Book Depot

February 22, 2017

Two years ago while visiting a prospective university with our oldest son, my wife and I found ourselves in a men’s clothing store that we had paid a visit to a couple years earlier while in the same town. I remembered having a good customer experience the first time and thought I would just pop in for a quick look. Sixty minutes later I walked out with a new suit, two shirts, some ties, and a few other accessories. The gentlemen helping us out was someone I felt comfortable with as he previously owned another men’s clothing store that I frequented close to our hometown. He was also very knowledgeable about his product and took away every barrier for me to buy. Even when I said, “Your store is 90 minutes away and I can’t drive back here next week to pick up the new suit after you alter it,” he said, “No problem, I’ll personally deliver it to your house as I live not too far away.” Wow, now that’s a customer experience, I thought!

Perhaps you have a story of your own that matches an experience like this, or maybe you’ve had an experience that was less than favorable and you would just like to forget it. It may even be possible that you’ve had a bad experience with us somewhere in our history together, and if so, please read on to get to the good stuff and find out why you should try us again.

What’s New

Book Depot Warehouse Conveyor

So what’s new at Book Depot? Over the last 6-7 years we have spent millions of dollars investing in our customer experience. It started with a major overhaul of our 450,000 square foot warehouse, as we retrofitted it with over one mile of conveyors to move product efficiently around the warehouse and ultimately out the door to our customers. The impact of this automation has been nothing short of dramatic for the customer experience—we have the best fill rate in the industry at 98.96% and also the fastest order turnaround time, with most orders being shipped in 3-4 business days.

In 1997 we launched the first bargain book B2B website, and today we have the most user-friendly website with the largest selection of bargain book titles anywhere in the world. When the site was redesigned over three years ago it was important that we made the site responsive so that all our customers, no matter the device they were shopping on, would have the same great experience. If you have not been on our website in the last three years, please take a look; I know you’ll be impressed with what you see and the ease with which you can shop for bargain books all from the convenience of your office (or wherever life takes you!) on your PC, smartphone, or tablet.

Book Depot New Robot Arm

As I said in the opening part of this article, I was impacted by a particularly amazing team member of the men’s store I visited. I know that today we have the team at Book Depot that can provide that same amazing experience to you. Two years ago we invested in our sales and customer service team and held a two day intensive sales training with John Asher Sales Training. Today, our sales team has a combined experience in the book industry of over 80 years, and along with that comes a wealth of product knowledge. Maybe you’re someone who would rather not shop online—no problem. Give us a call at 1-800-801-7193, ext. 229 and ask to speak to a member of our sales team. Or perhaps you enjoy shopping the website but need some occasional help from a member of our customer service team. Give us a call and I guarantee you’ll be impressed with the level of service you will receive, as we have completely revamped our customer service department by adding new team members and training and empowering them to help our customers. Last year we continued our investment in the sales team with the launch of Salesforce, which will give our people even more tools to grow and maintain excellent customer relations.

As you can see, Book Depot continues to take the long-term view on the bargain book industry. We wouldn’t be investing millions of dollars in our company if we didn’t believe in the future of books or in the future of our company. Rather than taking out as much of the profits as possible, we continue to invest for the long term in order to deliver the best customer experience in the industry. I’m excited to say that we continue to push the limits of technology, and this past year has been no exception as we launched and completed one of our most exciting projects to date. New automated sortation equipment (watch video) enables us to sort more books, process them quicker, and assist us in providing you with an even better selection of titles. However, all the infrastructure and systems are worthless if we couldn’t offer you the quality product that we have. We have agreements in place so that shopping here gives you access to bargain books from all the major publishers and many smaller imprints. During the past two years we added some key new suppliers that have complemented our mix to the point where I am confident in saying that our selection has never been better in the nearly 32 years of being in this business.

Maybe you’ve just had a bad experience with bargain books. If that is the case, consider with me the following for a moment. There is continued good news in the industry about printed book sales being up, the decline of eBook sales, and the overall positive outlook by independent booksellers. We are hearing encouraging reports from many of our customers that business is growing and their customers are delighted to have a local bookstore where they can browse, shop, and generally spend a few hours “hanging out.” As the owners of one retail bookstore ourselves, we have experienced the same trend with year-over-year sales being up strongly. What are we hearing from our customers? They love the personal service—the experience of touching and feeling the printed book while being able to get assistance from our knowledgeable customer service team. They love the ability to just browse around and find new favorite authors or titles they would never have thought to buy online. Oh and most of all, they love the bargains.

Everybody loves a bargain right? As a bookstore owner there’s no one who should love a bargain more than you. As mentioned above it is very encouraging to see revenue growth in the category, but ultimately as business owners you need profitable growth. Top line is vanity, bottom line is reality. Let’s face it, double-digit sales growth is fantastic, but if the bottom line is not moving at the same pace, you’re not happy. And you shouldn’t be. This is where bargain books can help you. With a margin that is often double the margin you can achieve with new books, you cannot afford to be without bargain books in your store. With the advance of smartphones, tablets, and eReaders, we’ve seen many changes in the industry and in our business over the years. However, one thing has not changed: booklovers will never lose the appreciation for the tactile experience of the printed book.

If you’re a long-time customer, thank you for your loyalty and for the trust you have placed in us over the years. If this is your first time back after many years, I would encourage you to spend some time browsing our website so you can see for yourself our large selection and the changes we have made to our business. I’m confident you will find that shopping with us is a way to save time and money, and those are powerful benefits in today’s market. If you would rather not shop via our website, please call us and ask to speak to one of our experienced sales representatives, who would be happy to assist you by tailoring a list of products for your specific needs.

Book Depot is the single best seller in bargain books. Our vast selection of titles and fast processing times make us a valuable one-stop shop, cutting down on your purchasing time and overhead costs. More choice. Less time and cost.

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Estimated Shipping Rate Improvements

February 17, 2017

Have you ever considered how much stuff we all have? Think about it: how many pairs of shoes, shirts, pants, jackets, kitchen appliances and utensils, electronic devices, personal care items, works of art, and pieces of furniture do we own? What about all the things in our garages, storage sheds, basements, closets, attics, and maybe even off-site storage facilities? Most of us have a lot of stuff—especially when compared to our grandparents, for example, when they were our age. A lot of this accumulation of things (wealth) can be attributed to the increased productivity of human activity due to technology. Today, the average person can produce a lot more in a given period of time compared to someone living 100 years ago. Just think about the mobile phone you carry today that has more computing power (and features) than a Cray supercomputer of the early 1990s for a tiny fraction of the cost.

So, what does this have to do with shipping? I’ve been in the ecommerce business since 1996 and despite monumental leaps in technology, the cost of shipping goods has not experienced anywhere near the price-per-performance gains seen in other products and/or services and generally speaking has continually risen year over year. It is no surprise then that our customers, who are shipping relatively heavy goods, are very sensitive to the cost of shipping. For us to be competitive we need to provide great value on books and get them to our customers at the best possible price. This is something we have always striven to do but when it came to our websites, Bookdepot.com and Bookdepot.ca, it sometimes appeared that was not the case. Let’s discuss this by looking at what we have done in the past and what we are presently doing now.

Shipping in the Past (not that long ago):

When you were done putting your order together, you would proceed to the shipping page where an estimated shipping cost would be provided. We offered a disclaimer that this was just an estimate and the final shipping price would be determined once the order was picked and packed. In just about every case, the actual price you paid for shipping was less—sometimes substantially so—than the quote since we didn’t want to quote low and have to go back to you and ask for more money.

The above process worked relatively well for small orders of less than 10 to 15 boxes (depending on where they were being shipped), but if you were ordering a skid’s worth of books the estimated shipping cost was enough to almost make you fall off your chair. Unfortunately for first-time customers, this was probably enough of a deterrent to scare them off from buying from us. Behind the scenes we were estimating the shipping cost based on a per-box rate from our shipping carrier. Each box would be individually weighed, rated, and shipped with its own tracking number. Our shipping department knew for each shipping location there was a break-point where it became more cost effective to ship the order by LTL (less-than-truckload) and would rate-shop the shipment with two to three LTL carriers for the best rate. In most cases, for a medium size to larger order, the actual shipping rate charged would be noticeably less than the website estimate. For example, an estimated shipping cost of $400 to $500 could in reality end up costing $175. While our regular customers understood this, first-time customers clicked away. Generally speaking, it was a poor business practice.

Today:

In searching for a solution, we needed a reliable method of estimating shipping for several variables that included weight, number of boxes and skids, presence of a loading dock, location, and delivery time. The goal was to provide the best possible rate without underestimating the shipping cost. Since many of our internet orders are paid for by credit card via a secure and automated processor, we can’t charge more for the order than the original authorization amount.

After some searching and arm twisting, we managed to convince an LTL service provider to give us access to their quoting system. This service provider has access to several trucking companies that offer coverage across North America. Often a trucking company will have more extensive coverage in certain regions of the continent and hence will offer more competitive rates for that area. The quoting system was made available to us via an API (application program interface) that allows us in real-time to pass the shipping information over and receive back the best rates.

For the first few months, we monitored daily what we were quoted from the service provider via the API against what the order actually cost to ship once it was packed and prepped for shipping. Again, the goal was to quote the best rate without overcharging or undercharging. The monitoring period allowed us to fine tune the quoted rates to the point where we are now 95% accurate in ensuring that what you see is what you will pay. In a few circumstances, the estimated shipping rate shown on our website is still higher than what you will actually pay. This is due to the expertise of our shipping department in identifying a carrier with an even lower rate for selected orders.

The results of these efforts can give you the confidence that the rate we quote you is probably the best rate you will ever find. If you are ever unsure about the rate you are being quoted, please contact our Customer Service Department. They will be pleased to work with you and the Shipping Department to make sure you get the best possible rate.

Bill Blog Signature

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