Booktopia

Booktopia Group Ltd is an Australian online bookseller founded in 2004 in Sydney. The company also owns Angus & Robertson, a major Australian online bookseller, publisher, and printer. In July 2024, the company was placed in voluntary administration.

History
Booktopia was founded in 2004 by Tony Nash, his brother Simon Nash, and his brother-in-law Steve Traurig. By some accounts, Nash's sister Elana Traurig was also among the company's founders. They outsourced website management and order fulfilment until 2007, when they developed a new website and began renting a 500 square-meter warehouse in Artarmon. Two years later, they moved to a larger warehouse in Lane Cove. In 2013, Booktopia was voted as Australia's favourite bookshop in a poll by the Australian Booksellers' Association.

Booktopia moved to a 10,000 square-meter warehouse in Lidcombe in 2014, where they invested $4 million into automation of order picking. By this point, they had a turnover of $54 million, and shipped nearly 3 million books a year. In August 2015, Booktopia bought online retailers Bookworld and Angus & Robertson from Penguin Random House. This acquistion reportedly gave Booktopia an 80% share of the online book sales market in Australia.

In 2016, the company annouced that it intended to list on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with a $150 million initial public offering, but this float was abandoned due to investor concerns about Amazon's 2017 expansion into Australia affecting the business.

Four years later, Booktopia successfully listed on the ASX in December of 2020. Selling 18.8 million shares at an issue price of $2.30, the company raised $43.1 million on a market capitalisation of $357 million. According to the prospectus issued before its IPO, Booktopia accounted for approximately 6% of Australian book sales by this point.

In the same year, they bought university bookstore chain The Co-op Bookshop after the business went into administration, closing its 30 physical stores and moving its textbook sales business online. Booktopia's publishing business Booktopia Publishing was launched in 2019. It publishes authors from Australia and around the world. In 2020, Booktopia launched a joint venture with Rakuten Kobo to provide eBook and downloadable audiobooks through the Booktopia/Rakuten Kobo app.

CEO Tony Nash sold $6 million worth of his shares on 6 December 2021, shortly before the company announced it was anticipating a drop in earnings. Amidst investor ire over the timing of this sale as well as plunging earnings, in May 2022 Nash announced that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO once a replacement had been found. However, in July, the company's board forced Nash to step down earlier than expected, appointing CFO Geoff Stalley as his interim replacement. In August, Nash announced that he intended to spill the board, hoping to remove the chairman and other members. Later that month, the company was forced to pay $6 million by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission on the grounds that it had misrepresented consumers' rights to refunds and returns.

From a high of $3 in August 2021, the company's share price steadily crashed to reach $0.17 by June 2022; Booktopia suggested this was due to a decline in business faced by online retailers after the lifting of pandemic restrictions. In June 2024, Booktopia requested a suspension on trading of its shares, which had by then fallen to $0.05.

In June 2024, Booktopia announced it would make at least 50 employees redundant in addition to other cost-saving measures. Leadership changes including the resignation of chief executive David Nenke were also announced.

In July 2024, Booktopia entered voluntary administration. The administrator disclosed that the company held debts totalling around $60 million. Writing in The Conversation, Australian academics Katya Johanson and Bronwyn Reddan cited competition from Amazon, increased operating costs, and a slump in book sales after the Covid boom as factors in the business's demise. Australian business publication iTnews also reported that costs from setting up the Strathfield warehouse had caused the business to sustain heavy losses in the lead-up to its collapse.