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Waterstones

This article is about the British book retailer. For stones used to sharpen steel tools, see sharpening stone.

Waterstones Booksellers Limited
Formerly
  • Fine Recordings Club Limited (1958–1997)
  • Waterstone's Booksellers Limited (1997–2012)[1]
Company typePrivate
IndustryRetail
Bookshop
FoundedOld Brompton Road, London, 1982 (1982)
FounderTim Waterstone
HeadquartersLondon, England
Number of locations
311 shops (June 2022)[2]
Area served
United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands
Key people
James Daunt (MD)
ProductsBooks, stationery
RevenueIncrease £399.8 million (2022)[3]
Number of employees
3,500[4]
ParentElliott Management Corporation
Websitewaterstones.com

Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones (formerly Waterstone's), is a British book retailer owned by the American investment group Elliott Investment Management. It operates 311 shops, mainly in Britain and other nearby countries.[5] As of February 2014 it employed around 3,500 staff in Britain and Europe.[5][6] The average Waterstones branch sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books,[4] as well as stationery and other related products.

Founded in 1982 by Tim Waterstone, the bookseller expanded rapidly until being sold in 1993 to WHSmith.[7] In 1998 Waterstones was bought by a consortium of Waterstone, EMI, and Advent International.[8] The company was taken under the umbrella of HMV Group, which later merged the Dillons and Ottakar's brands into the company.[7] Following several poor sets of results for the group, HMV put the chain up for sale. In May 2011 it was announced that A&NN Capital Fund Management, owned by the Russian billionaire businessman Alexander Mamut, had bought the chain for £53.5 million[9] and appointed James Daunt as the managing director.[10] The company is incorporated in England and Wales as Waterstones Booksellers Ltd, with its registered office at 203–206 Piccadilly, London (which is also the location of its flagship shop).

Waterstones also owns Hodges Figgis (the oldest bookshop in Ireland, founded in 1768),[11] Hatchards (the oldest bookshop in Britain, founded in 1797),[12] and Foyles (a chain of seven bookshops in England).[13]

In April 2018 the American investment-management firm Elliott Management Corporation bought a majority stake in the company.

The bookseller has concession agreements with Paperchase and previously had ones with the coffee chains Costa Coffee and Starbucks in some shops, but since 2012 has introduced its own Café W brand.[14] For a time, Waterstones sold e-readers, including in 2012 partnering with Amazon to sell the Amazon Kindle,[15] but has since pulled out of this market for commercial reasons.[16]

Waterstones administers and supports various literary awards, including the Children's Laureate award[17] and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize.[18]

  1. ^ "WATERSTONES BOOKSELLERS LIMITED overview". Companies House. 22 August 1958. Retrieved 23 January 2024.
  2. ^ "Waterstones to open new bookshops in London, Lichfield, Suffolk and Oldham". The Bookseller. 22 April 2022. Archived from the original on 22 April 2022.
  3. ^ "Waterstones sales, profit up in year to April 2022". 20 January 2023.
  4. ^ a b "About Us | Waterstones.com Help". Waterstones.
  5. ^ a b Flood, Alison (28 February 2014). "Waterstones boss James Daunt: 'We can sell enough books to stay alive'". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 September 2016.
  6. ^ https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/02/05/waterstones-irish-sales-rise-4-amid-increased-popularity-of-reading-and-physical-bookshops/
  7. ^ a b "Waterstone's: a history". The Telegraph. London. 20 May 2011. Retrieved 17 January 2012.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference WH Smith History was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ "James Daunt: the man who saved Waterstones". Evening Standard. 10 December 2014. Retrieved 4 September 2019.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Waterstones sold for £53million was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Falvey, Deirdre (21 April 2018). "Hodges Figgis: A 250-year-old story of selling books". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 15 June 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
  12. ^ Marcan, Peter (1982). Directory of Specialist Bookdealers in the United Kingdom Handling Mainly New Books: With Appendices Listing Specialist Directories of Museums, Libraries, and Associations. P. Marcan. p. 6. ISBN 978-0950421131.
  13. ^ "Waterstones buys Foyles to defend bookshops against Amazon". BBC News. 7 September 2018. Retrieved 8 September 2018.
  14. ^ Campbell, Lisa (25 May 2012). "Café W to be rolled out at Waterstones". The Bookseller. Archived from the original on 3 April 2017. Retrieved 24 September 2016.
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kindle was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ "Waterstones Children's Laureate". BookTrust. Retrieved 30 January 2024.
  18. ^ "Waterstone's Children's Book Prize 2011 winner". Waterstones. Archived from the original on 28 January 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
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