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| Company type | Private company |
|---|---|
| Exclusive Books | |
| Industry | Bookselling |
| Predecessor | Exclusive Books (Pty) Ltd |
| Founded | 1951 |
| Founder | Philip Joseph, Pamela Joseph, Pauline Joseph |
| Headquarters | , |
Number of locations | 40 stores (2018) |
Area served | Southern Africa |
Key people | David Vinokur – chairman Grattan Kirk – CEOStefan Marnewick – CFO Ori Shushan |
| Products | Books, toys,boardgames, coffee |
| Website | www |
Exclusive Books is one ofSouth Africa's largestbookselling chains with stores throughout South Africa, and one store inGaborone,Botswana and one inWindhoek,Namibia. As of 1 December 2013, the chain is owned and operated by a private group of investors. It was previously owned by theTimes Media Group (TMG), after TMG took control ofAvusa.
In 1951, Pam Joseph, in partnership with Philip Joseph's mother, Pauline, purchased a small second-hand bookshop in the centre of Johannesburg and renamed it Exclusive Books.
Philip Joseph expanded the business by setting up a further branch in 1954 in Hillbrow, then one of the most densely populated areas in the world. The bookstore offered late night and Sunday trading, contributing to its growth. The Hillbrow store closed in 1993, and within the same year, the Hyde Park store became the group's flagship. It was the largest bookshop of its kind in Southern Africa at the time.
In 1998, it launched the Fanatics loyalty program, which grew to a membership of 170,000 members by 2001. In 1999, Exclusive Books introduced Seattle Coffee Company cafés adjoining eighteen of the book stores.[1]
Until 2012, they sponsored an annual book prize called theExclusive Books Boeke Prize.
On 22 September 2013, it was announced that Exclusive Books – and its sister companyVan Schaik Bookstore – was being sold by TMG to a private consortium led byMedu Capital for R435 million.[2] At the conclusion of this sale, the company briefly traded under the nameJadeite Trading (Pty) Ltd Trading As Exclusive Books, before being re-registered asExclusive Books Group (Pty) Ltd. On 21 August 2014, the company announced its new brand and a shift in its corporate focus, including the introduction of its own café brand, EB Café.[3]
In July 2017, Market Theatre Foundation partnered with Exclusive Books.[4]
In June 2020, Exclusive Books announced that it would host all upcoming book launches online viaZoom, to comply with the Covid-19 regulations in place.[5]
In 2002, in a move to formalize thecorporate social responsibility programme, Exclusive Books established the Exclusive Books Reading Trust. The three trustees areZakes Mda,Mandla Langa, and Brian Wafawarowa.
The Reading Trust was established to fund literacy, library and reading projects around South Africa. Through the Reading Trust Exclusive Books has opened libraries in Cape Town and Limpopo and has donated thousands of books every year to various organizations and charities.[6]
The first Exclusive Bookse-commerce site was launched as ExclusiveBooks.com and went live in 1999. In 2010, this was replaced by Exclus1ves.co.za,[7] which was one of the first e-commerce sites in South Africa to incorporategamification, they now operate as Exclusivebooks.co.za.
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