Berjaya Books ropes in partner

KUALA LUMPUR: Berjaya Books Sdn Bhd, which signed a 15-year brand licensing partnership with Smartwheels Resources Sdn Bhd, is investing RM20 million to open 10 new Borders bookstores within three years.
Under the partnership, Berjaya Books will provide its experience and expertise including the planning and store layout while Smartwheels Resources will provide the capital and operating expenditures.
The first new store, which is already under construction, will open in May. The 5,800 sq ft bookstore in Mesamall will be the first lifestyle bookstore in Nilai and costs up to RM2 million to set up.
The bookstore in Nilai will also house a sizeable children’s section with activities and events for the family during weekends as well as Short Cut Barber, where customers can grab a book and get a haircut.
Berjaya Books director of business development Hishammudin Hasan said the lifestyle concept bookstore is in line with the changes in reading trends today.
“The book market is actually not hit by e-books. It is hit by the trend today, where millennials and the young are more into reading social media. They read less books in general. It is not e-books that threaten the print books. In general, the reading trend has changed,” he told SunBiz at the signing ceremony yesterday.
He said there is still space for print books and there is still room for bookstores to expand but through a different approach.
“We need to change the whole ecosystem and offer things that will be interesting for people to come to a bookstore first, then perhaps pick up a book and that’s where it starts moving again,” he added.
Hishammudin said Borders bookstores’ sales are small but still growing year-on-year and the new lifestyle concept will help boost sales.
Berjaya Books currently has seven Borders bookstores in Peninsular Malaysia. In addition to the Nilai store, it will open two more new stores with Smartwheels Resources this year, bringing the total to 10 by year-end.
“We are going to open 10 with Smartwheels within the next three years. These 10 will be lifestyle bookstores. They will have different formats, tailor-made for different demography. For example the hipster barber in Nilai is because the demography there is mainly university students. We have the ability to carve our model according to the demography,” he said.
He said the average cost of a new bookstore is RM1.8 million. The company also plans to refurbish its existing bookstores and has allocated about RM400,000 for the exercise.
Smartwheels Resources managing director Datin Yuskiahniza Md Yusof said it was in talks with Berjaya Books for six months before deciding on the partnership.
“It was very swift and very fast. Opening a bookstore is our lifetime dream and we are proud to have this international brand. We wanted to open a bookstore but we believe in international brands and chose to work with Borders,” she said.
Smartwheels Resources is a subsidiary of the Smartwheels Group, which is involved in property development and management, financial consultation and hospitality.