Annual Report 2009/10 Excellence in Retailing - Douglas Holding

Thalia in Figures
employees, who successfully instilled their passion for
Thalia’s virtual world in their customers. Over and beyond
this, the Thalia teams please customers with personal
– and always up-to-date – book reviews in the online
shop, as they do recounting their experiences at
the “lit.COLOGNE,” Europe’s largest literature festival
for which Thalia is the lead sponsor.
In stores and online alike, customers and their wishes
always come first at Thalia. The “2010 Retailer of the Year
Award” supplies eloquent testimony to this absolute customer
orientation, with Thalia topping its “Books and
Magazines” category for the third year in succession.
The jury particularly commended the attractive range
of merchandise, the professional and friendly personnel,
the service, and the inviting store ambiance.
In the traditional bookselling segment, works such as
“The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown and “Limit” by Frank
Schätzing ranked among 2010’s best-sellers. “Millennium
Trilogy” by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson was
the top-selling eBook. In the non-books segment, gifts
– seasonal and otherwise – proved increasingly popular,
as did reading accessories and trend items. With
its rollout of “Thawis” during 2009/10, Thalia also laid
the foundations for a standardized merchandise management
system. “Thawis” is scheduled to replace the
various existing systems with a single, highly efficient
platform.
Thalia rang in the 2010/11 financial year with a true
showstopper. At the end of October 2010 the Group
launched its own eReader “OYO.” The “OYO” – so to
speak “Thalia for your pocket” – allows users to access
books at all times, wherever they may be. It has capacity
for some 1,000 eBooks – and purchasing them could
scarcely be easier. The digital works are downloaded
using the integrated WLAN function, with the device’s
menu guiding customers directly to the Thalia eBookshop
where they can buy, download and read digital
Net sales in EUR m Stores Employees
Divisions
Thalia · Books
2009/10 2008/09 2009/10 2008/09 2009/10 2008/09
Germany 689.7 628.7 232 238 3,890 3,886
Austria 118.7 112.9 33 32 756 710
Switzerland 97.4 78.1 24 24 540 555
Total 905.8 819.7 289 294 5,186 5,151
books. Thalia also initiated a unique partnership in Europe
during the year: the “OYO Alliance,” a joint venture
between four of the continent’s leading multi-channel
booksellers. In addition to Thalia, “Chapitre.com” from
France, “Selexyz” of the Netherlands and “Empik” from
Poland will be selling the “OYO” in their domestic markets.
With these initiatives Thalia is once again demonstrating
its status as one of the industry’s innovation
leaders and bolstering its market position as a multichannel
vendor in the German-speaking countries.
Simone Hehl
Bookseller, Hürth
The Hypnotist
(Lars Kepler)
“Would you allow someone to
hypnotize you? A family is brutally
murdered in a Stockholm
suburb. The sole survivor, the
15-year-old son, is seriously
wounded and suffering from
amnesia. For Detective Joona
Linna, there is only one way to
get a statement and save the
boy’s sister who lives far away:
the former hypnotist Erik Bark.”
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