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2nd December 2008

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Six jobs go at BookRabbit

10.07.08 Graeme Neill

Social shopping website BookRabbit has made six of its 10 staff redundant, including managing director Kieron Smith.

The staff—IT director Will Jones, community manager Ian Thomas, systems manager Oliver White and developers Tony Dylan and Jason Merry—were informed of the redundancies this week. All staff will continue to work at the business for their respective notice periods. Smith's replacement has not been announced.

Last month parent company ArgentVive revealed that following an internal review, BookRabbit required "working capital properly to fund its marketing and development activities". ArgentVive finance director Kevin Fleming said at the time that he would "consider" offers made for BookRabbit. The business had received interest from several companies but no financial offers have been made.

In May, majority shareholder Charles Denton told the board of directors that he would no longer examine the possibility of making an offer to take the company private. Denton had told The Bookseller that it was difficult to raise money for the business while it remained AIM-listed.

A spokesperson for ArgentVive confirmed the redundancies and said that the company "was continuing to look at various options for BookRabbit".

Just this week BookRabbit put out a press statement saying that it had achieved record sales conversion rates of 5.04% in its first full month of trading in June, compared to an industry average of 2.8%. But speaking to The Bookseller in June, Kevin Fleming, finance director of ArgentVive, said the site had an "unproven revenue model".

Retail Jobs Graeme Neill Charles Denton Home Kieron Smith bookrabbit ArgentVive

Comments on this article

By Joe Schnitt

I've followed BookRabbit since it's early conception. I think new companies promise the world and hardly ever deliver. I just feel sorry for the six (to-date) employees who have almost certainly left previous (highly paid) jobs before this.

10 Jul 08 15:00

By Ray Hollingsworth

Surprised to hear that...thought it would be all 10. The book industry is neck and neck with the building industry in the chill of summer.

10 Jul 08 19:30

By Calan Davies

"Unproven revenue model" being the selling of books? Bookrabbit has been open to the public for what? 6/7 weeks? Perhaps ArgentVive could have saved a lot of bother by just sticking their money into a saving account instead... This is a bit like spending £20 on a taxi to go to a Casino, placing a 50p bet, lose it and get cold feet and then pay another £20 to go home

10 Jul 08 21:17

By A Successful Online Bookseller

Perhaps their next project could be 'samedayrabbit.com' that would get then loads of publicity again at its launch, merge their two pointless book sites and give the world one less online bookselling portal.

11 Jul 08 09:03

By Calan Davies

Yeah - or perhaps something like this : http://firstbookshop.com/ Scenario here would be to get a site designed by a 5 year old and spend 50p on it and hope it makes lots of money :) - whatever works I guess

11 Jul 08 09:48

By Molly

These comments all seem a little harsh. People are losing their jobs. its not a nice feeling - it happened to me last year. Maybe a little compassion wouldn't go amiss?

11 Jul 08 10:48

By Sharon

I also think its a shame for all of the people who have used and enjoy the concept of BookRabbit - despite only being open for a few weeks there is definitely the start of a strong community on there. Such a shame that the project isnt going to get the backing it deserves!

11 Jul 08 12:07

By A Successful Online Bookseller

Edited, 11th July
Long live 'Booksconnect' I say - any jobs going guys?

11 Jul 08 13:16

By 3 more hours

If Amazon's existence (from 1995) was compressed into 24 hours, Amazon posted it's first ever net profit about 12 hours later (2002). BookRabbit's 7 weeks of public launch makes an appearance about 17 minutes before midnight. 3 more hours might have made a difference.

11 Jul 08 15:35

By A Successfull Online Bookseller

Amazon's idea was original, Book Rabbit was not - that actually makes a difference between something that succeeds and something that fails. The First Bookshop idea was original too, being first for Book Tokens online. Both companies are today long established with many, many loyal and returning customers that actually spend money online. I have my doubts that very much money was ever spent online at Book Rabbit.

11 Jul 08 18:29

By Calan Davies

Of course - it is commonly accepted that healthy competition in the market place is a bad thing ! ( Sarcasm btw) Also comparing sites like First Book Shop and Bookconnects with Bookrabbit is like comparing a broken kettle with an HD TV

11 Jul 08 19:55

By Calan Davies

By the way - the last time I looked in a very useful book called a dictionary, 'successful' only had one 'l' on the end.

11 Jul 08 20:08

By A Very Successfulllll Online Bookseller

Multi million pound turnover, with profit in excess of one million pounds is hardly 'broken kettle'

11 Jul 08 20:24

By Broken kettle

Having looked on the firstbookshop site I was immediately struck by the number of affiliate links - is this how you make your £1m ( ehhmm , really ? ) profit. The other thing i struggled to find was where i could actually buy a book ? ( other than from your affiliate links of course). Smashing if you want a book token obviously !

11 Jul 08 20:31

By 3 more hours

how much money can you report in 7 weeks? Amazon wasn't successful until 6 1/2 years later. firstbookshop.com doesn't even appear in Google trends or Alexa traffic reports, has only 274 links on Google, and anything with a Golden Web Award hints at desperation. I can't see that this website does £1million profit from affiliate links, even AOL or MSN shopping channel wouldn't see those figures. Even at top whack 10% commission that would be £10million turnover in affiliate sales, btw, where is the £1million quoted from?

11 Jul 08 21:02

By Better bookseller

I think he/she means £1 million Yorkshire pounds. They're like British pounds but the exchange rate is based on giant shoulder chips.

11 Jul 08 23:49

By Firstbookshop.com

Thanks for the publicity guys :) To enlighten you all the main sales at our company come from retailing the Theatre Token at theatretoken.co.uk Closely followed by Book Tokens at tokenline.co.uk and bookvouchers.co.uk Both these vouchers being sold together from sendtoday.co.uk Our sales of books is however on the up and up, particularly since our worldwide establishment of booksdepository.com The jobsite also brings in around £800k

12 Jul 08 06:18

By Broken record

Ha ha .. brilliant , I absolutely love the book(s)depository.com -- guess what , it takes you to the 1st book shop. Could have sworn that someone else thought of a similar name - someone who sells those things with pages inside. Maybe you should post on the booktokensandnationaltheatretokensandhundredsandhundredsofaffiliateslinksseller site. This is about people who sell , and are passionate , about books - people who have lost their jobs.Your discourtesy and seeming glee about this sets you aside from the rest of the booktrade who are generally very supportive of their own. But then , as we have seen , you do not sell books so that somehwat sets you aside already. On a totally different note , I was wondering about the testimonials from all your satisfied book token customers, the style and language make them seem as though they could have all been written by the same person... weird.

12 Jul 08 07:31

By Firstbookshop.com

Roger Crossland worked for WH Smith until he was made redundant. Yesterday £1257.50 worth of books was despatched from this very office, many were from Book Token redemptions. All testimonials are genuine - to post fake ones is illegal. Full names and addresses and originals can be inspected by anyone who cares to visit our office to see them. Booksdepository.com is a very clever marketing ploy - as Calan Davies said 'whatever works I guess'

12 Jul 08 07:48

By Broken record

Where should I come to inspect the testimonials ? As Roger was made redundant , why does he feel it necessary to post inappropriate , rude and disrespectful comments. He should be supportive of any initiative to sell more books and welcome healthy competition - and in fact from what i can see bookrabbit and the like pose no competition to his business in any instance. His reaction and comments are at the very least rude , and at worst offensive. If he feels that is an appropriate way to behave, then it comes as no surprise that people feel the need to react as they have. There will undoubtedly be more redundancies in all industries as the year progresses , some sympathy towards people in that position is very little to ask.

12 Jul 08 08:13

By Anon

As an employee of ArgentVive (though all my comments are my own and not representative of company) I thank Calan Davies and the like for their sympathy. We thought bookrabbit had the chance to do something quite fun and different with bookselling. Though it's aim, of course, is to make money for the company it was conceived from a love of sharing books. We are obviously bitterly disappointed at the turn of events. To SuccessfulOnlineBookseller, these were nice people with friends and families, have a heart.

12 Jul 08 08:23

By philip j

BookRabbit appears to have fallen victim of the credit crunch: Amazon wouldn't have grown so large had it not had very nice investors during its early years. I do think the BookRabbit model is unproven, but then it never had a chance. I'm hoping that someone with deeper pockets will take it on and run with it. Clive Keeble, Felix Dennis where are you?

12 Jul 08 09:03

By Jessica R

How dare all you ferrets trash the warren. BookRabbit just needed a little more time, credit crunch or not. I think you anti's out there are breathing a sigh of relief at the downfall of this young and potentially successful Company. Who's next out of the warren? Good Luck to the 6 who probably put in a lot of hours, passion and belief into the project.

12 Jul 08 11:54

By Ray Hollingsworth

Felix Dennis? Best left wherever he is...let's not bring him into the equation....things are bad enough as it is...( he was last seen hang gliding over the Dorset hills ).

12 Jul 08 12:17

By Ray Hollingsworth

Question. Can anyone explain how this works. I go into WHS about once a week in Colchester. It's a ten minute walk and I get the office stuff there...the bits I buy are located on the ground floor..it always seems to be busy with 4 or 5 tills constantly is use and about 10 to 15 people waiting to be served. The mags / newspapers / stationary etc is all on the ground floor...it's several thousand square feet. Above on the first floor is the book section which is allocated about 70% of the space. There is a single till, which is often unoccupied. I looked around today, it was around 2pm...two staff and me...so 3 of us in the book section and maybe around 50 to 60 downstairs. Maybe it's just Colchester...it just seems to me like they are going through the motions as a book retailer. As a standalone business they would improve margins by closing the books section and renting out several thousand square feet to a local business...not to mention saving a couple of salaries. I don't think I have ever seen more than about a dozen people on the books floor in the last 10 years...including Christmas...maybe I'm missing something. I doubt WHS Books and Waterstone's will both be in the frame in a couple of years. A couple of other WHS branches I visit seem to be similar - though not as pronounced as this. Would be interested to see clear margin of books factored into the square footage equation in Colchester, wonder if it's ever considered. BTW - I could never quite understand how my contact at Head Office ended up working for Poundland, and how every other contact there since never lasted longer than a few months. I gave up with them.

13 Jul 08 20:21

By anonymous for justice

Seriously, boasting about firstbookshop on news about redunacies is harsh, and hardly sympathetic. If anything, it's just a cheap stab, trying to boast one's company over another.. Well to say the least, firstbookshop is the worst website i have ever seen - why use all the bright colours, the flashing fonts? these are simply html codes any scriptkiddie could do.. and unfortunately, all those claims about firstbookshop have no prove. i even did a comparison on alexa with firstbookshop and bookrabbit, unfortunately has a traffic rank of 10,389,100, whilst bookrabbit has 254,39575 rank. considerably higher than that of such an 'aclaimed' website. please, at least use another decent comparison, say the bookshelf feature like librarything.com

14 Jul 08 12:44

By anonymous for justice

Sorry, I copied down the number wrongly, BookRabbit.com has a traffic rank of 254,575. Compared to Firstbookshop.com which has a traffic rank of 10,389,100. In case there are those unfamiliar with alexa's traffic ranking, the most visited website is Yahoo.com, which is at rank 1. Now I wouldn't say that BookRabbit.com has all it's traffic due to their advertisement (perhaps a considerable amount), but then you would see it on the traffic graph. The reason why people go on there, and stay on there is the look and function of the website. It looks professional, it looks authentic, it feels safe. In my opninon, as stated before, compared to that of Firstbookshop.com, you can see which website is easier on the eyes, and you could also consider which one is more safer to buy from. In my opinon, firstbookshop.com looks as though it was one of those hacker websites, or for crack software or porn. Sorry, but I've been around on the internet, and that's what it resembles the most.

14 Jul 08 12:52

By Firstbookshop.com

Traffic doesn't mean sales. With more sales not more traffic Book Rabbit would be hiring not firing. The reason why we do so well is that we had a simple idea with a simple website and it is not broken so it won't be mended. It makes us more money than we could ever have dreamed of when we sold our Bookshp of 16 years in Leeds, 5 years ago to cater specifically to our online customers throughout the world (that Bookshop is still trading by the way, when most around it have closed down) Loyal customers take a long time to get, we have customers that spend a lot of money that have supported us for over 20 years including members of the Royal Family and other famous people that shall remain nameless. One of our most regular customers is St. Paul's Cathedral. If times ever get hard we may consider treating ourselves to a new website, perhaps next year when the current website is 10 years old it can have a facelift as a celebratory event!

14 Jul 08 14:24

By Anon

But surely you sell tokens, not books? Couldn't find your brand on the bookselling pages, just random pages of other companies. That's not really bookselling.

14 Jul 08 16:00

By Firstbookshop.com

Read the thread ANON we redeem Book Tokens as well as sell them.Captured market too as nobody else can be bothered to do this online. You all should look for something original in bookselling to do like we did instead of all trying to plough the same furrow and before you reply by saying ah but Book Rabbit was original - it wasn't. Mr Customer redeems a £10 Book Token one day then a month later buys £100 Book Tokens. Six weeks later he buys £300 in Theatre Tokens and tells all his friends. All this results from that £10 Book Token redemption. You should all try it sometimes, we could do with some healthy competition here (as an earlier posting suggested)

14 Jul 08 16:35

By Anon

I agree that redeeming book tokens online is an original idea. I think the example of customer return is a slight exaggeration. My question was that you don't appear to sell the books yourself, rather act as a middleman to accept the payment, then pass the sale to another company, was just curious. I just don't understand how dismissive you are of Bookrabbit, to the point of condemnation, when it is obviously designed to appeal to a market so completely different to yours, as you have already pointed out. (It's "Captive" market btw). Original or not, the issue in question was the problem with the business model re the article above. I think we can all agree that economic downturn is a major concern to all booksellers in what is already a tough market. I think cackling at the misfortunes of others is tempting fate my friend.

14 Jul 08 16:48

By Firstbookshop.com

The point we are trying to make was if there had not already been a company doing pretty much the same thing as Book Rabbit then they may have been more successful. Yes I know there is room for more than one, as I invited you all to redeem and sell Book Tokens online so we are not loners, but those that get in first will usually have the competitive advantage. Oh dear I forgot - aparently the bookselling chains have very little interest in Book Tokens (as reported elsewhere on this site). Good luck to all that have lost their jobs at Book Rabbit, for your next job please please find yourselves an original project to work on!

14 Jul 08 17:24

By Rabbit Hunting

Bookrabbit had the potential to be the biggest innovation in bookselling in years. I rather think that ArgentVive have made a huge mistake here. If they are looking to sell Bookrabbit, then they will find that it is worthless without the team that grew it. No doubt the majority of the company will have moved on within weeks, if not days, and ArgentVive will have a unsellable business. Good luck to all those made redundant.

15 Jul 08 09:28

By Cynical Bookseller

If only there were as many tears and platitudes for the dedicated staff of the Methvens book shops who lost their jobs (minus hefty redundancies!) when Argent Vive took over and subsequently shut down all bar two of the branches. Goes to show what happens when people full of IT verve do not listen (or want to listen) to the experienced booksellers on the frontline! Hopefully the current staff who have been loyal to the company for many years are not the ones who are left without jobs (or hefty redundancies!) There will be a few ex-Methvanites whispering under their breaths "Told you so!" Spare a thought for those guys.

16 Jul 08 08:24

By White Rabbit

Just a note of clarification to 'Cynical Bookseller'. 1. No redundancy monies were paid to any staff made redundant from BookRabbit, they were just served notice. 2. Only one shop was closed when ArgentVive took over (Gosport) the others were sold to their managers/the outgoing FD. Offline bookselling is very tough (as is online) so experiencing closures, Methven's made enough on its own; Canterbury, Woking, St Albans, Aylesbury, Hertford, Orpington & Windsor - and is a sign of the times for the mid-sized chain unfortunately. BookRabbit might actually have help turn around those fortunes.

23 Jul 08 09:20

By Cynical Bookseller

Keep telling yourself that White Rabbit... Might actually make it so. However... Try listening... Try asking... Try the concept of books on shelves as opposed to bunks and showers in cushy IT offices. Think about the guys on the ground working at a fraction of your wage doing their best while you slog out your latest Wii Tennis office competition. Go figure...

25 Jul 08 09:59

By Realist

"bunks and showers in cushy IT offices" That sounds nice. I guess they installed them so you could work 24 hrs a day just to be fired when the Rabbit is born.

30 Jul 08 20:50

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