In a move expressing confidence in the health of its market for print books, Vancouver, B.C.-based distributor Raincoast Books announced this week that it is moving its warehouse facility to a location that will hold 40% more books.
The current facility will close on December 22, 2010 and the new facility, about two miles away in Richmond, B.C. will begin shipping books by January 3, 2011, the company promised. “Our volume continues to grow and so a bigger and even more efficient warehouse has become an operational necessity,” said John Sawyer, CEO of Raincoast Books. “But customer service is a key priority for Raincoast so we have planned our expansion in such a way to minimize any disruption to our publishing and retail partners.”
Jamie Broadhurst, vice-president of marketing, said that the move is indicative of growth for Raincoast, even as the digital market is beginning to grow in Canada. “We are actually acquiring new publishing lines, …we’ll be making announcements over the next weeks and months for the next calendar year,” he said. “When people talk about this dramatic shift to digital product, what I would say is that there has definitely been exponential growth from a very low starting point for digital books. Definitely areas like fiction, blockbuster fiction and light fiction, are going to be quick to convert to digital to a large degree, but in all sorts of other categories, the traditional book remains an incredibly robust product category.”
The Raincoast warehouse facility processes over 11 million books a year and is the largest book distribution facility in western Canada.
