Bertram Group, one of the top U.K. book wholesale companies, is up for sale, according to The Bookseller. An advertisement online notes that the company had revenuer of some £250 million last year, with a gross profit of £9 million. The assets that have been put up for sale include the company's 185,000 sq ft warehouse, as well as 200,000 titles held in stock. In addition, Bertram's subsidiaries, Dawson Books and Education Umbrella, are also for sale.
The company had shut down its warehouse temporarily due to the pandemic and sold off Wordery, its online bookstore, to Elliot Advisors (which also owns Waterstones and Barnes & Noble) earlier this month. Bertram also divested its European library businesses, Erasmus Antiquariaat en Boekhandel BV and Houtschild Internationale Boekhandel BV, to the Italian company Casalini Libri SPA.
On May 3, the company announced it would go under "strategic review." The Bookseller has noted that numerous publishers interviewed by the magazine are owed money by Bertram's.
The move to sell the company is widely viewed as a means of trying to avoid bankruptcy.
