Socially-conscious Better World Books, a for-profit online bookseller that shares its revenues with literacy initiatives worldwide, released some pretty impressive holiday sales figures recently which we thought were worth sharing.
First, a little background about the company. It was founded back in 2002 by three friends from the University of Notre Dame who started selling textbooks online to earn some extra dough, and has now grown to a company with more than 200 employees. The store sells new titles, but also actively supports book drives and collects used books and textbooks through a network of over 1,600 college campuses and partnerships with nearly 1,000 libraries across the U.S.
Better World doesn’t charge any shipping fees for shipments within the US (and only $3.97 worldwide), and every order gets shipped carbon neutral with offsets from Carbonfund.org. Unlike traditional for-profit companies, Better World Books adds a social component to everything it does as a commercial venture. So far, the company has converted more than 16.4 million donated books into $5 million in funding for literacy and education.
It’s a remarkable company, and I’m really happy to see that they seem to be doing very well, and that they killed during the holiday period. Better World Books reports that its overall traffic increased 131% during the holiday rush, and that they saw a 500%+ increase in gift certificate sales over the previous holiday season. That translated into 194% revenue growth for the site in December 2008 (up until Christmas), compared to the year before.
We asked for some more details, and got some absolute numbers for the holiday sales: December revenues grew to $2.1 million and revenue for this month is expected to top $4.5 million (apparently January is always the best month for BW thanks to textbook sales). The company says it’s on target for $31 million in revenues this fiscal year, which ends June 2009.
If revenues in January actually ramp up to $4.5 million, that will match in just one month the amount they raised in venture capital from Good Capital in April 2008.
Not bad for a bunch of do-gooders.
I will never buy anything from a company that plays along with the crap Gore has invented. I will purposefully buy from companies that do NOT give a hoot about carbon offsets or whatever the going guilt-satisfying program the liberals come up with in a given year.
“the company has converted more than 16.4 million donated books into $5 million in funding for literacy and education”
let do some math, $5,000,000 divided by 16,400,000 books they received from non profits . That comes out to about .30c a book for the non profits. hmmm that is a good deal
You must have missed that it’s a “for-profit” company.
Hell, it’s $5mil more than the charities had before.
I feel sorry for people like you- who equate anything relatively green to Al Gore. I think it’s a good idea, it’s only 4 or 5 cents! Plant your own trees then.
Troll meet flame.
Tom
Enjoy the Ann Coulter books you buy from companies that do not care about future generations. Al Gore didn’t invent the idea of creating sustainable funding for non profits …he just invented the internet.
Good job TC for featuring these companies… never heard of… good to hear that a word “SOCIAL” associated with a company actually making money
I wonder if Amazon ever heard of them as well? I would bet that they will be on their radar from now on.
Jon
http://WoodMarvels.com – Create Unique Memories
“Mishawaka, Indiana, United States.”
Bet you never thought you’d see that listed as HQ to a rockin’ company, huh?
Note that you covered StyleHop a couple weeks ago; CEO from Mishawaka.
Oh yeah, and there’s us here at uSphere. CEO from Mishawaka.
And, Mishawaka is the “Princess City,” of course, named after Princess Mishawaka.
Off the Mishawaka soap box.
BTW, cool company…
Can you get their numbers for profit instead of just revenues? They seem to be cutting it in so many different ways – free shipping, carbon offsets, literacy programs: how much does this cost them? Do they just eat it or pass it on to customers?
There is no such thing as free shipping. You will be charge the same amount of money on amazon.com or betterworldbooks.com. If you look closely, to the prices betterworldbooks charges it is the value of the book on amazon plus shipping.
for example. If a book cost a 1c on amazon + $3.98 shipping. Betterworldbooks will charge you $3.98. So no such thing as free shipping. They also end up keeping the 20% fee amazon charges.
It cost them nothing, the ones that are paying for everything are the charity’s and library’s that supply BWB free of charge. The non profit are the ones doing the hard work on the ground, they should get a more money out of it.
Sounds like Ash doesn’t have much of a clue how BWB conducts their business.
Also what is their relationship to Amazon? I looked at the same book on both sites, and BWB seems to have the reviews taken from Amazon but without attributing them to the users who wrote them.
For example Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1 and Gone with the Wind
That indeed is awesome news!
Very cool, I went to college with these guys.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with giving money to groups that you support as long as you uphold your responsibility to shareholders and they are on board with your plans. If you have charitable ambitions rooted in your mission and vision then I’m sure you attract a different kind of investor. I’m not sure if BWB worked with them at all but there was a very active group of ND Alums called Irish Angels that love ideas like this. For a smaller company it makes a lot of sense to use that as a marketing edge as well.
That’s a huge increase in traffic. Congratulations to them!
Wow, everyone here is so hypocritical. First people are complaining about them being “green.” Then people are complaining about them being selfish and wanting all the money to themselves.
Can’t you just accept that there is a business that is making money AND doing good in the world?
I am personally a huge fan of BWB, and am leading a book drive with them right now through Invisible Children.
Great job, guys.
Hey Danielle – thanks for the kind words and thanks for helping Invisible Children end the war in Northern Uganda. We are really excited to be working with such an amazing organization. I’m not sure if you saw the video about the drive, but you can check it out at http://www.invi...hp?id=191677070
Thanks also to Dave for representing Mishawaka, Matt for closing down the Linebacker Lounge more than once with us, Rahul for giving a damn, and everyone else who has supported us in our work. We believe we’ve found a market-based mechanism to fund literacy, and we’re going to push as hard as we can to be the best bookstore in the world.
–Xavier
Co-Founder, Better World Books
I LOVE this company. I read an article about them way back when they were just starting out and contacted them right away about taking books weeded from our library collection. (Our recycler had just told us they couldn’t handle books any more, and we just couldn’t see putting them in the landfill.) For us this truly is a “win-win” situation. Some of the money raised from selling our discards goes to worthy causes, some of it goes to job creation in the region, and a bit of it even comes back to us in the form of occasional checks for a small percentage of what is sold (not necessary but certainly appreciated).
BWB has been wonderful to work with, and I’m so glad they’ve opened a retail store in our city as well. Now I can give them my business as an individual customer in addition to being a “corporate” customer.
Hurray for a company that gives me hope for doing good *and* doing well at the same time!
BWB makes it easy to have you send books to them, but it is still your staff packaging up the books. That is a cost.
However, you get less money than you think sellign through them, you remove a lot of books from your local area by sending them away, and you lose local revenue (tax and income) by doing so .
1. For every $100 book you get $17 for, there are 50 books you could sell for a buck or 2 that BWB sells for $1 or less, and still give you just 17% or so. If you do the math, you will find you lost money. If you use friends organizations to run your booksales, then the library can avoid staff costs, so the numbers still fall against BWB. If memory serves, they also discard books that do not sell after a time, so those books might be total losses of income to you, which might otherwise be sold locally or given to a local literacy effort.
2. Some areas do not have a lot of books to begin with, and by sending ex-library or donated books out of your area, you actually may be doing a disservice to literacy efforts and reading programs in your area.
3. Many people sell books online now. But if books that went to BWB were sold locally instead, the income would stay in the area, and more professional shops and sellers would even pay local taxes on the goods – taxes that support local libraries.
BWB is definitely a 2 edged sword. Yes they saw a big rise in income this year. But that money came from somewhere.
And as for worthy causes – St. Vincent DePaul (and other donor organizations) puts more far money into charity per dollar then BWB.
I see where you’re going with your whole argument, but BWB acquires old library books when they are going to be thrown out, essentially saving them from landfills. Then, part of the profit goes back to that library and others to help fund the purchasing of new books. They also “discard” only a very small percentage of the books they have because of condition, and those are recycled.
I personally LOVE this website! It’s the only place I buy books anymore. Their prices are incredible and the service is amazing. I’m also compiling a stack of books to donate.
Keep up the good work!
I think this is a great idea and that more For-Profit companies like BWB should incorporate giving into their vision/mission statement from the very beginning (Ex. Salesforce.com).
You now have a customer for life BWB. I am kicking myself for signing up on Amazon Prime now.
I am excited to learn about this company. There will always be imperfections and sometimes more “perfect” alternatives; regardless, it’s obvious the owners intend to do some good running their business so I say kudos for that! I wish every business was oriented in a socially responsible way.
Well i know a guy and his wife who both work for this company. The guy beat his 3 year old daughter and put her in the hospitol. He is back in court again for punching her in the ear and in the stomach, he also used to beat his ex wife with his fist. Now he is married to this other women and has a kid with her. She smokes cigerettes with her baby in the car and probly gets beat by him too. This guy is working for salary and gets paid whether he is at work or not. He has spent many days in court for betting his kids. So when you give your books to this company you are helping to support child abuse.