Vintage book dealers turn shared passion into a high-speed business with help from BlackBerry MessengerIDEA Books is a business concept as rare as the books it deals in. Run by David Owen and Angela Hill, IDEA Books sells an eclectic range of vintage fashion, photography, design and architecture books through third-party outlets in London, Paris and the U.S. Prior to starting the business, Owen and Hill had spent most of their careers in the creative industries of music, photography and fashion. They began collecting books for personal use and as sources of inspiration for their work. Over time they ended up with multiple copies of the same titles and decided to sell the spare books as a side business to likeminded collectors and connoisseurs.

Key Benefits

• BBM for quick customer communications

• Email attachment viewing for faster sales reporting

• Twitter app for helping to interact with customers and followers

• Web browser for checking book prices

From hobby to business

A couple of years ago, Owen and Hill were invited to open a temporary pop-up shop at a hotel in London.

It was at this point that they decided to devote all of their time to developing their business under the

IDEA Books name. “We had built up a customer database at that point,” explains Owen. “We told them

all by email that we were opening the pop-up shop. As people came into the store we collected more

and more emails.” Today IDEA Books has a small but faithful following of customers.

IDEA Books buys and sells vintage titles in a very un-vintage way. “As a company we sell books very,

very fast. Speed is all it’s about. We don’t keep a huge inventory and we have a very high working capital

turnover ratio,” says Owen. In addition, they run a very lightweight business operation. “From the

outset we wanted to be streamlined,” he explains, in order to devote as much time as possible to finding

rare books rather than keeping the books or focusing on heavy business infrastructure. As devoted

BlackBerry® smartphone owners, they turned to the solution they knew worked the best.

BlackBerry Customer Success – Wholesale & Retail BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™)

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BlackBerry as a business partner

The trickiest part of the rare book business is matching buyers with titles they might be interested in.

First, you have to find the right books. “We buy books every day,” says Owen. “Since we can’t physically

be everywhere at the same time, we keep in touch with our suppliers by email. They know the kinds

of things we’re looking for. To make sure we get them before anyone else does we rely on BlackBerry.”

Second, you have to pay the right price. For that, both Owen and Hill use the BlackBerry web browser.

When they come across an interesting book a quick check on the web will tell them if the price is right.

“People used to buy with gut feeling and it’s still part of what we do. However, if you can also look

up the price you can’t really go wrong,” says Owen. He explains that it also helps him to negotiate,

when he can show a seller that the same book is available for less elsewhere.

Owen credits the BlackBerry smartphone with helping him buy with confidence. “Sometimes you see

a book that is competitively priced, and you would buy it if you could be sure that the customer you have

in mind hasn’t already got it,” explains Owen. “If that customer is on BBM I will ask them in the moment,

while I’m standing there with the book in my hand. That’s a very, very powerful tool.”

In fact, BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) has become a vital part of customer relations for IDEA Books.

“As soon as we buy a book we think a customer would be interested in, we let them know as quickly as

we can. And the fastest way is by BlackBerry Messenger,” says Owen, who adds that a growing number

of IDEA Books’ customers are BBM users. “On average we show at least one book to one customer every

hour of every day, usually by BBM. For this reason, we actively seek out more and more customers with

BlackBerry. We can see if they’ve received and read the message, which is incredibly useful when we

have one copy of something very scarce that’s of interest to several people.”

Owen and Hill also use the Twitter® for BlackBerry app to keep customers and followers abreast of their

activities. “Oftentimes we’ll use it to show off something unusual or interesting that we’ve found. You can

take a photo and post it to Twitter,” explains Owen. “It’s incredibly responsive. Sometimes followers will

tell us the book isn’t as rare as we thought, which helps us avoid buying something we don’t need.”

As the business has grown, BlackBerry has helped to enable IDEA Books to stay lean. For example,

now that the company has outlets in three countries, they receive Microsoft® Excel® files with daily

sales figures via email, which they can open on the device.

Thanks to BBM, they also receive live sales information. “The staff

keep us informed of sales throughout the day,” says Owen.

Owen is very clear about the role that BlackBerry helped to play

in taking IDEA Books from being a hobby to a successful business:

“Thanks in large part to BlackBerry the two of us are able to run

a business that 10 years ago would have required a staff of eight.”

Industry: Wholesale & Retail

Region: UK

Company Size: Small

Solution: BlackBerry® smartphones

BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™)

Twitter® for BlackBerry® app

“Thanks in large part to BlackBerry the two of us are able to run a business that 10 years ago would have required a staff of eight.”David Owen IDEA Books

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