Tag: customer success story

Customer Success Story: Royal Botanical Gardens

October 24, 2018

Royal Botanical Gardens’ Background

Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) is the largest botanical garden in Canada, a national historic site, and registered charitable organization with a mandate to bring together people, plants, and nature. RBG protects and restores over 2,000 acres of nature sanctuaries and creates gardens that beautify the landscape. They also serve tourists and locals by hosting events and educating about the work they do through tours and their gift shop. RBG’s gift shop sells educational games, garden decor, figurines, books for kids and adults alike, and much more.

RBG’s began selling bargain books in 2008 and became a Book Depot customer in 2009. Since then, their sales have continued to grow year after year. What started out as an endcap of bargain books to give them a try soon grew to two endcaps – one for adults and one for kids. With the demand for more, RBG continued to expand their bargain book selection by branching out to tables in front of the gift shop and even added two additional rolling racks. Even with the extra display space focused on books, they still receive interest for more; however, due to a lack of space, the gift shop physically can’t add any more.

Solution

With RBG’s demand for bargain books continually increasing, they had to get creative with their space to maximize sales. By purchasing more books than they are able to display at one time, RBG can rotate their available stock to keep their displays updated. Book Depot’s variety gives RBG the freedom to cater their selection to their customer base during the interests of the season as well as their special exhibits.

Results

Increase in Sales: RBG’s bargain book sales have increased tenfold over the last ten years.

Not only does Royal Botanical Gardens have tourists visiting the gift shop, but since carrying bargain books, they also have regulars who come with the intent to buy books. By offering a wider variety of items that appeal to the interests of their customer base, RBG has done what many gift shops do not do and that is appeal to a regular stream of locals. By doing so, they have been able to increase their store’s traffic on a day-to-day basis while ultimately increasing store sales.

Quote

“Book Depot offers us a great selection of books at great prices, which we pass on to our customers. This has made us a destination for many people in our area. Books have become one of the top-selling categories in our gift shop.”

Linda Palichuk, Gift Shop Manager – Royal Botanical Gardens

Sidebar

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.

Sidebar

Customer Success Story: The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation

September 6, 2017

Customer: The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation

Business: Nonprofit Organization

Website: ellafitzgeraldfoundation.org

The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation is able to successfully sustain the “A Book Just for Me!” program through Book Depot’s unbeatable, low prices.

The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation

The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, established in 1993 by the late American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, assists at-risk and disadvantaged individuals and families in communities located predominantly in Los Angeles, California, and the surrounding area. One of the foundation’s aims is to help provide educational opportunities for children, which they do in part through their “A Book Just for Me!” book give-away program. The foundation supplies books to 100 nonprofit organizations each year through this program, which was created in memory of Fitzgerald following her passing in 1996. As of 2016, the foundation has given books to hundreds of thousands of children, ranging in age from birth through to college.

In order to keep the “A Book Just for Me!” program viable, the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation requires a dependable source for new, unread, low-cost book product that is suitable for a broad spectrum of ages and interests, as well as flexible, affordable shipping options to service all of the nonprofit organizations they are partnered with.

Solution

Book Depot’s large inventory of children’s and young adult titles provides the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation with the selection and quantities they want at the unbeatable, low prices they need to sustain the “A Book Just for Me!” program. Additionally, Book Depot’s ability to ship directly to the foundation’s nonprofit partners using the most economical shipping method for each location helps save the foundation time and money. While the foundation prefers to place their orders online via Book Depot’s comprehensive, user-friendly website, they are also partnered with a sales representative for personalized service.

Results

Since the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation first began purchasing from Book Depot just over 10 years ago in 2006, we have supplied them with 965,122 units to date at a fantastic average per-unit cost of $0.99 cents, which helps ensure that as many children as possible are able to receive books and benefit from this excellent program.

“There is just no way we could run this program without Book Depot and your amazing selection and even more amazing low prices. We are very, very grateful. (Plus, you are ALL so nice and helpful, what a pleasure!) And you ship wherever we want, which makes my job so much easier. Your website is a pleasure to use.” – Fran Morris-Rosman, Executive Director and Chief Literacy Officer

Sidebar