Julian Blackwell
Blackwell UK, also known as Blackwell's and Blackwell Group, is a British academic book retailer and library supply service originally founded in 1879 by Benjamin Henry Blackwell, after whom the chain is named. Based in Oxford, the original Broad Street branch is now part of a larger chain of 45 shops, as well as an accounts and library supply service, employing around 1000 staff across all divisions.
The Broad street branches, which include specialty music and art/poster shops, remained the only branches until expansion in the early 1990s, when at peak after taking over the Heffers brand in Cambridge in 1999 and the James Thin academic chain in Scotland in 2002, the company had over 70 branches. The company's library supply chain serves internationally, but parts were sold off in 2009, with the North American arm of Blackwell Book Services and Australian business James Bennett sold to Baker & Taylor and folded into Baker & Taylor's existing academic library arm, YBP Library Services. The group were also publishers, under the Blackwell publishing brand which published over 800 journals when it was sold to publishers John Wiley & Sons in 2007 for £572 million to form Wiley-Blackwell.
The Blackwell family have been in charge of the company since its foundation, with a share structure divided between voting shares owned by the family and wealth shares owned by family and other parties. However, following a public spat between Julian 'Toby' Blackwell, current owner of the group and Nigel Blackwell, former chairman of the publishing arm in 2002, concerning the possible selling of the publishing business, leading to an offer from Taylor & Francis of £300 million and to the eventual deal with John Wiley & Son in 2006, Nigel Blackwell and Toby's son Philip Blackwell left the business, leaving Toby Blackwell the sole family member still part of running the company. The other voting shares left by the other family members are currently held by a trust, which Toby's shares will transfer to when he dies, eventually bringing an end to the Blackwell family involvement with the company. Toby Blackwell announced in 2009 that the wealth shares would be distributed between staff, transforming the company into an employee-partnership, similar to that of retailer John Lewis, when the company returns to profitability having spent several years experiencing losses. The company reported it was expecting to return to profit in 2012.
On 29 October 2012, Blackwells was - with Foyles, John Lewis department stores, Waitrose, Sainsbury's and Argos - among the retailers to launch the nook e-reader - and from, November, the nook HD and nook HD+ tablet computers.
Famous quotes containing the words julian and/or blackwell:
“The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, “The very rich are different from you and me.” And how someone had said to Julian, “Yes, they have more money.””
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)