One of the retail formats which is seeing a massive upheaval at malls in recent times, is book stores. Once a favourite for consumers and mall owners, book stores faded away from the limelight due to the onslaught of online shopping with deep discounts and fast delivery at doorstep, from 2010 onwards.
From airports to mall atria, top bookstores such as Landmark, Crossword and Odyssey dotted the retail scape, only to get in to oblivion one by one. By 2015, almost all such bookstores had vacated malls while many wound up fully.
However after the pandemic, we are seeing a resurgence of book stores at malls. This time around, they are being set-up with low capex and in open areas, giving it a look and feel of a pop-up store. The resurgence of book stores is being led by none other than Crossword, India’s premier chain that sells books, stationery, travel & electronic accessories, etc.
The newest Crossword is a 3,600 sq ft store in the city of joy – Kolkata, considered to be an intellectual paradise for several decades. From Bose to Tagore and several native Bengali authors, Bengal, and Kolkata essentially, has been among the preferred places to browse and buy books across genres and languages.
Thoughtfully curated for booklovers. Crossword Bookstores is now open at the Acropolis Mall. The chain operates over 90 stores across 32 cities in India. After the brand was acquired from Shoppers Stop, the new parent company Agarwal Business House, a publishing company, has turned around the ailing retail format with various new innovations and is now making operating profits too.
Crossword Bookstores was founded on 15 Aug. 1992 by R. Sriram, with the first store in Mumbai. In 2005, it was acquired by Shoppers Stop for Rs. 25 Cr for a 51% stake and the “Crossword” brand name and the rest with ICICI Ventures. Later, Shoppers Stop acquired the 49% stake of ICICI Ventures too and scaled the format wherever Shoppers Stop Department store had a presence, especially in malls from 2006 onwards.
Players like Odyssey, Oxford (Kolkata-based), Sapna, Shankar (both from Bangalore) and many others including Crossword started expanding massively across the country between 2005 – 2015. However, book reading habits (along with newspapers & magazines) started moving digital around the beginning of the previous decade with the launch of the Amazon Kindle device. Several publications pushed their content online to ensure they do not lose their readers.
E-commerce sites like Indiaplaza, Flipkart and later Amazon ensured the last nail on the coffin of book stores.
Today, it is good to see this format coming back in action, with an increased surge in interest by discerning customers to visit book stores to browse and buy hard copy books, magazines and stationery.
