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With over 96 stores in Australia, New Zealand Hong Kong and over 60 million books sold last year, Dymocks is a leading bookseller in the Asia Pacific region.
Dymocks is passionate about books in everything it does.
As a family owned business and the oldest Australian-owned bookstore, Dymocks prides itself on meeting the leisure, learning and gift needs of all booklovers by offering superior customer service and an enhanced book buying experience.
As the retail environment becomes more impersonal, the opportunity for Dymocks to take the high ground becomes ever greater.
The company constantly introduces innovations and new range of services, setting the standard in bookselling and leading the way in the 21st century with the same enthusiasm and progressive retail approach that has ensured its business success to this day. Strategically, Dymocks is already a leader in growth segments such as digital books.
The origin of the Dymocks flagship store on George Street – Sydney’s greatest bookstore – goes back to 1879 when young William Dymock commenced business as a bookseller in nearby Market Street.
In 1922, the Dymock family purchased the site of the old Royal Hotel in George Street upon which was built the historic, Art Deco landmark Dymocks building, completed in 1930.
As his business grew, William moved to larger and grander premises until, in the 1890s, he had a million books in stock. He died in his thirty-ninth year. Unmarried and childless, he left the business to his sister Marjory, who was married to John Forsyth. From that time onwards, the Forsyth family has managed Dymocks.
In 1981, John Forsyth, William Dymock’s great nephew, decided to take over the company, selling his own successful printing and publishing business.
As Chairman of the Dymocks Group of Companies, John Forsyth wished to preserve the company's heritage and great bookselling tradition whilst making sure it constantly reinvented itself and kept abreast of the changing Australian market.
After investigating innovative book retailing concepts in the U.K., America, Europe and Japan, he returned ready to implement retailing concepts which were unheard of in Australia, and only recently introduced overseas.
The flagship store on George Street was completely revamped. Specially designed gondolas and displays were built, colour corrected lighting was introduced and the most sophisticated computerised customer enquiry service for books in the English speaking world was designed and installed. Dymocks also established a telephone ordering facility to cater for those customers who were unable to visit the store to purchase books.
In 1986, the Dymocks Franchise System was set up, allowing people to have their own piece of this great bookselling tradition. Since this time, Dymocks stores have been successfully opened throughout the country. Following the opening of a store in Hobart in 2000, Dymocks opened its flagship store in Melbourne’s CBD in 2001 and in Brisbane in 2002 – completing the line up of flagship stores in all states.
These stores, along with expansion into key metropolitan and regional centres, are part of an overall brand strategy to consolidate Dymocks’ market presence.
The past five years have also seen Dymocks expand internationally to a total of 9 bookstores in New Zealand and 12 in Hong Kong. Overall, there are now 96 Dymocks stores in Asia Pacific. This has been a significant achievement for the company, with plans to keep expanding both within Australia and overseas.
At the same time, the Dymocks website was being developed as the most successful Australian bookselling site. Launched in 1997, it is consistently one of the most visited sites on the Internet. According to online search agency Hitwise (June 2007), www.dymocks.com.au annually ranks in the top two websites within the category of Australian book sellers.
In addition to being a successful and growing sales channel, the website provides product news, recommended reads and promotional information to over 4 million visitors and Booklovers annually.
In March 2006, Dymocks also re-launched its customer loyalty program, Booklover, introducing superior technology and a sophisticated card to fulfill its loyalty marketing objectives.
The new program is now a much more flexible points-based program. The card contains a built-in magnetic stripe storing a customer’s relevant demographic information, preferences and points earned and redeemed. With this, Dymocks now has much greater customer information to enable them to build a profile for each customer – which in turn enables more effective one-to-one marketing.
An aggressive membership campaign followed the re-launch and resulted in a 40% increase in new members into the program. A large percentage of the membership base has also elected to receive information electronically.
In November 2006, Dymocks re-launched the www.dymocks.com.au website with new design elements and a world class search engine.
With this new superior website, Booklover members are now able to log in and check their reward balances, update their details and find out the latest information on their favourite authors and member rewards.
In 2006, Dymocks ran over 50 Literary Events nationally with more than 12,000 of our customers attending events to hear from a great range of authors such as Peter FitzSimons, Jackie Collins, Alexander McCall-Smith, John Connelly, Colleen McCulloch, Peter Carey and more.
The program has continued to grow and now includes hundreds of local and international authors, alliances with some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s leading broadsheets and suburban events.
As part of a national literary program, Dymocks currently has exclusive formal relationships in place with The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Brisbane News, The New Zealand Herald and The West Australian.
Other elements of the Dymocks Communications Strategy include developing Dymocks’ own National Literacy Foundation, founded by Dymocks Chairman John Forsyth in 2001. Dymocks is involved in Australia’s literary community through various well known and loved writers’ festivals at a national and local level.
At a local level, there is a great deal of support and involvement in Book Clubs such as the one run in Perth with The Western Australian newspaper.
Dymocks’ in-store marketing and merchandising initiatives provide a highly differentiated book retail experience. The initiatives are designed to help customers make an easy and informed book purchase.
They include Booklover newsletters featuring new release reviews and highlighting the Dymocks “Book of the Month” and “Author of the Month”, Critic’s Choice recommendations that put stars on the covers of selected books and Staff Recommended Reads which are displayed in all stores.
The positioning of Dymocks as “experts” in the field is extended to the staff who are hired and trained to provide a high standard of customer service.
Dymocks’ advertising strategy involves a range of promotional offers which are seasonal and timely, designed to reach the widest range of book buyers. This includes national catalogues which are distributed during peak retail periods such as Christmas, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day plus radio and television support for tactical promotions. |
