Australian online book retailer gets $13m

The capital – which includes a portion of long-term debt as well as equity – came from a consortium of private investors, including Su-Ming Wong, co-founder and CEO of CHAMP Ventures, and John Sampson, founder and CEO of public equities manager JBS Investments. It will go towards increasing capacity and introducing more process automation.

Founded in 2004, Booktopia posted revenue of A$131 million for the 2019 financial year and is on track to reach A$175 million in 2020. The company expects its market share by revenue to surpass that of Big W, Australia's largest book retailer. Big W is controlled by Woolworths Group and has more than 180 brick-and-mortar outlets nationwide.

Booktopia ships more than two million packages a year containing books, magazines, calendars, diaries and other gifts. It also sells e-books and audio books. The company is headquartered in Sydney, operating a 13,000 square-meter distribution center with a capacity of around 650,000 books. It wants to grow this stock and increase double daily inbound and outbound capacity to 60,000 books.

"The funding will allow us to accelerate our growth in a controlled and measured way by investing in our ability to deliver to Australian book consumers through expanded distribution infrastructure and stock. This has been a proven high growth and predictable model for us for 16 years and we are not about to change. We know that's what our customers want from us," said Tony Nash, Booktopia's CEO, in a statement.

AFSG Capital assisted the company with its funding round.

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