SSAA CONVENTION 2019 | 19
SSAA Convention 2019 Special guest speaker Tony Nash
Booktopia Publisher Services (BPS). This division offers book distribution and wholesale services for local and international publishers in the Australian marketplace. This means bookstores and businesses need to buy those books from BPS directly if they want to on sell them to their customers. After being a finalist for 7 years Booktopia finally took out the top award as the 2018 NSW Business of the Year and Medium Sized Business Award at the Telstra Business Awards 2018. In July 2018 Booktopia also won Best Pureplay Online Retailer at the Online Retail Industry Awards and Tony was acknowledged with the Industry Recognition Award. l
At the SSAA Convention Tony will inspire you as he shares his insights into market growth.
T
ony is an Australian entrepreneur like no other, he started his first internet business in 1996, with a background in recruitment, programming, business development, selling, SEO and internet marketing, Tony has developed outstanding negotiation and leadership skills with a thorough understanding of sales, forecasting, bootstrapping, PR, empowerment and managing an executive team. In 2004 Tony founded Booktopia, an online bookstore, with an allocated budget of $10 a day. The company’s first book sold in three days. Fast track 10 years and Booktopia now sells one book every 10 seconds, with an annual turnover of $115 million a year. It was listed in BRW’s Fast 100 from 2009 to 2014, 2016 and 2017, and was voted Australia’s Favourite Bookshop by the Australian Booksellers Association. One of the defining aspects of the business is its philanthropic program. At the SSAA Convention Tony will inspire you as he shares his insights into market growth. Book shops were closing down on every High Street and he saw an opportunity, his business adapted, defied the odds and grew in what was perceived to be a dying market. So far Booktopia has donated $750K in books and cash to literacy based projects in Australia including indigenous literacy, writers’ festivals, readers’ conferences, library fundraising projects and book industry awards. 2014 saw Booktopia win the Telstra Medium Sized Business of the Year award for NSW and the Smart Company Community Award for its philanthropic program supporting literacy, writers’ festivals and readers’ conferences. Booktopia recently launched a business within its business called
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JUNE / JULY 2019 INSIDER 107
