Troubador Publishing have moved into a brand new warehousing and office facility near Market Harborough, on the border of Northamptonshire.
The move expands the company’s warehousing and distribution facilities and houses all staff in a purpose-built office environment that includes dedicated meeting spaces.
The £400,000 investment positions the company for growth in the author services market and will enable it to broaden its book distribution operation to other publishers.
In parallel moves, the company has improved its book distribution capabilities for its authors and publisher partners through a special arrangement with wholesaler Gardners
Books, investment in the Nielsen PubEasy book buying system for retailers, and by offering sales representation from its own warehouse through Star Book Sales.
Troubador’s purpose-built office space includes not only fully-equipped meeting rooms, but a large meeting space used to host events, and a bookshop where titles from the company’s Matador, Book Guild and Troubador imprints will be sold direct.
Managing Director, Jeremy Thompson, said: “This marks a significant step up for the company as we have changed the way in which we distribute our titles to the retail trade for the better, with new arrangements that are faster, cheaper and more robust than when previously using a third-party distribution company. By investing heavily in new systems and processes, we can not only offer our authors and retail customers a better service, but we reduce our environmental impact by minimising road miles for our books.”
The company acquired new premises in June last year, and have spent the last six months of 2021 amalgamating stocks from three warehouses into a single warehouse.
In addition, a new environmentally-friendly office building has been built from scratch, featuring solar panels, automatic lights and super-insulation. The moving process was completed in December last year.
Operations director, Jane Rowland, said: “We have been aiming for some time to strengthen our book distribution capabilities, as we knew that our distribution could be done more efficiently and at a lesser cost (financially and environmentally) if we managed this ourselves. This has meant significant investment in both back office systems to supply
P&A data daily to retailers, and warehouse infrastructure to manage the distribution process. Both are paying off as we are seeing increased sales of titles across our imprints already.”
