Company History
Bookpoint was founded in 1973 to supply distribution services to a small number
of publishers. In 1992 the business was purchased by Headline Book Publishing
to offer high quality distribution for the book industry, including publishers
outside the Hodder Headline group.
Following the merger of Hodder and Stoughton and Headline in 1993 the decision
was taken by the newly created Hodder Headline Group to centralise its
distribution at Bookpoint on Milton Park. There followed significant investment
in state of the art warehousing systems to meet the growth in the business,
which has increased its output from £40m to over £150m today.
In June 1999, WHSMITH plc acquired the Hodder Headline group including
Bookpoint. The business continued to run as an independent supplier of
distribution services for Hodder Headline and a number of third party client
publishers.
After more than 20 years on the Milton Park leasing up to 6 warehouses during
peak times the decision was made to move to one multifunctional Warehouse in
2001. The cost, a cool £7 million.
W.H.Smith agreed the sale to Hachette Livre in September 2004. Hachette are
part of the French publishing giant Lagardère.
The warehouse holding 21 million books, 15,000 titles covers 19,000m2
despatches approximately 120,000 books per day.
In addition to storage and distribution, the business includes specialist
Customer Service departments with clients, large and small worldwide, offering
Credit Control and Telesales.
Bookpoint currently employs 270 staff.