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Published on October 10, 2007

The company is preparing to set up a new publishing business aimed at producing Thai versions of English-language books provided by companies from all over the world.

Managing director Dean Thompson yesterday said the firm, which celebrates its sixth anniversary this year, has set a five-year business plan to increase sales from Bt3 billion to more than Bt6 billion. Despite a troubled year for Thailand's economy, Thompson said the company was optimistic about 12- 15-per-cent growth this year.

He said B2S currently had more than 15 million customers a year across the Kingdom, including Udon Thani, Chiang Mai and Phuket. The company's core customer demographic is young women aged 18-30, but Thompson emphasised that B2S was trying to provide products for a diverse range of consumers. "We have currently almost 400,000 different products in our portfolio, divided into three major categories: books, stationery products and entertainment items, including CDs and DVDs. Between 700 and 900 new books with Thai titles are introduced to the store every month," Thompson said.

He said the company had also developed its own house-brand products, particularly stationery items and books, whose contribution to total sales are expected to grow from 1 per cent now to more than 10 per cent within five years.

The company expects to increase the number of B2S stores by 15-20 outlets each year over the same period.

"We have set a significant budget to invest more than Bt100 million next year on opening new B2S stores," Thompson said, adding that the company had already confirmed plans to open new B2S stores at nine different locations next year.

"We're looking to expand our stores outside Bangkok. The company is studying opening B2S outlets in many provinces in the Northeast, such as in Buri Ram and Khon Kaen, as well as in some eastern provinces like Chon Buri," Thompson said.

B2S currently operates 120 different outlets, with a diverse range of formats to enable greater retailing flexibility. The stores range from small magazine corners with only 15 square metres of space, medium-sized outlets of 150 square metres in major discount stores like Big C, Tesco Lotus and Carrefour and mega-bookstores covering as much as 4,400 square metres.

He said that the company planned to send a purchasing team abroad to places like Germany, the United States, China and Hong Kong to look for interesting new merchandise, including books and stationery.

"The market is changing quite rapidly, driven by new technology," Thompson said, noting that customers enjoyed music and other media downloaded from websites and purchase books over the Internet.

He gave the Japanese market as an example, where consumers purchased books to download and read on their mobile phones, saying B2S intended to focus on that type of service in the near future.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

 The Nation