Waterstones is a British bookshop chain with around 300 branches across Britain. It reported a 7% year-on-year increase in revenue for 2025, to £565m.
Waterstones opened its first store around 1982. By 2011 it was making hefty losses. That year it brought in James Daunt, an independent bookseller, to turn the business round. At the time the chain was preoccupied with controlling costs and "not really giving a monkey's about how it presented its shops", as Mr Daunt put it. He closed nine stores and invested in those that remained, also removing the apostrophe from "Waterstone's". Staff, chosen for their love of books, are given complete control over how titles are positioned around each shop, lending each branch a curated feel. Many of the larger shops have cafes. The chain encourages browsing.
Waterstones has been selling online since 2001, initially through a partnership with Amazon, then from around 2006 in-house. The website tries to offer a "lighthearted, decent alternative" to the e-commerce giant.
Under the dynamic Mr Daunt, Waterstones also acquired Foyles and Blackwell's, two iconic chains that had struggled with profitability.
WHSmith, a bookseller and stationer, once dominated Britain's book trade and owned Waterstones for most of the 1990s. WHSmith developed a reputation for worn-out stores and unhelpful staff; a mischievous social-media account, @WHS_Carpet, posted photos of decrepit flooring in its branches. It sold its high-street stores to a private-equity firm, which renamed them TGJones, removing the centuries-old "Smiths" brand from British streets.
Elliott Management, an American hedge fund, bought Waterstones in 2018, after the turnaround under Mr Daunt had taken effect. A year later Elliott bought Barnes & Noble, an American bookshop chain that was struggling to keep stores open. It gave Mr Daunt the task of reviving that business too, using the same strategy. Elliott is said to be considering taking the transatlantic business public in either London or New York.
A record 213m copies were sold in Britain in 2021. Sales slipped to 191m in 2025. Despite the rise of e-books and fears that people are ditching reading for social media, physical book sales have survived.
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